Two Daddies and Two Mammies: new families in children’s literature.

Abstract

Recent children’s literature highlights themes that were banned in the past, such as homosexuality and particularly homoparental families. The present paper aims to analyze how homoparental families are represented in seven books published from 2007 on. The most recurrent tendency has been to feature love between men or women in a way similar to the ways heterosexual relationships are traditionally represented – drawing on the discourse of romantic love. Some of the frequent issues are family happiness and the resulting discussions about raising children and/or managing a house. However, two works skip this mainstream tendency, foregrounding
children’s curiosity for love and birth.