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This study reports how lesbian families negotiate their family identities via symbols and rituals. Sixteen couple interviews were conducted with lesbian co-mothers (for a total of 32 participants) who had their children via donor insemination in the contexts of their current same-sex relationships. Interviews were analyzed using grounded theory. Framed by symbolic interactionism, this study reports how these families negotiated affirmation and disconfirmation of their identities when interacting with families of origin, social networks, sperm donors, and community institutions.

This study explores the processes by which a group of lesbian women report managing public-private dialectical contradictions at the external border between their relationship as a couple and networks, social norms, and laws. Specifically, 18 dyads and 2 individuals, all of whom had been in a committed relationship for at least 1 year, were interviewed about the rituals that are part of their relationship. Transcripts of the interviews were analyzed using grounded theory. Participants reported using the dialectic response strategies of integration and segmentation to manage the inclusion-seclusion and revelation-concealment dimensions of the public-private contraction.

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This interpretive study focused on messages reported by commuter wives from social network members concerning unpaid family labor, including domestic work and relational work with spouses and children, and wives' subsequent communication about the accomplishment of such labor within their marriages and families. We conducted a thematic analysis of interview transcripts with commuting wives from five focus groups (n = 25) and 50 individual interviews through the lens of gendered role expectations. We found commuter wives received messages from social network members portraying men as incapable of family labor and expressing traditional gendered expectations for wives to perform caregiving. Commuting wives discussed how they and their families implemented several strategies for accomplishing the domestic chores of family labor. In addition, many couples needed to negotiate new strategies for relational maintenance, and communication emerged as a discrete form of caregiving labor. In spite of the fact that these wives were resisting cultural expectations for married women by commuting to pursue their own careers, the findings of this study illustrate tensions in the (re)production of traditional gendered expectations for unpaid family labor for commuter wives.