Research project on queer families with children - with prestigious grant

Showing how LGBTIQ+ families in Central and Eastern Europe look and function, taking into account their everyday experiences, relationships and needs, different from the Anglo-American patterns - this is the main goal of the project by dr hab. Joanna Mizielińska, which received a prestigious ERC grant.

The European Research Council (ERC) announced the results of the Advanced Grants competition on Tuesday, June 17. 281 outstanding scientists from Europe, including four from Poland, will receive a total of EUR 721 million to carry out ambitious research projects (approximately EUR 2.5 million per project).

The project “Rethinking Queer Kinship: LGBTIQ+ Families with Children in Central and Eastern Europe” (QUEERHSIP), which received an Advanced Grant from the European Research Council, will focus on a multigenerational and multidimensional analysis of queer families with children, including both intra-family relationships and support networks including friends and professionals.

"The marginalization of Central and Eastern Europe in queer kinship and family research creates a serious gap in understanding the global dynamics of LGBTIQ+ families. Dominant theories, derived mainly from Anglo-American contexts, often overlook the diversity of family structures and practices in other regions. The QUEERSHIP project responds to this gap by offering the first transnational, interdisciplinary study of queer kinship in Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Croatia," explained Dr. Joanna Mizielińska, professor at Civitas University.

Queer families are those in which at least one parent identifies as non-heterosexual or non-cisgender. They go beyond the typical image of a family consisting of mom, dad, and children, and are built not on blood ties, marriage, or biological parenthood, but solely on the decision of the partners.

These “rainbow” families can take many forms: same-sex couples without children or with two mothers or two fathers, couples with transgender or non-binary parents. The children in these relationships can come from previous relationships, adoption, in vitro fertilization, insemination, or co-parenting.

These include polyamorous families, joint raising of a child without a romantic relationship between parents or single parenting of LGBTQ+ people. Previous research by Professor Mizielińska shows that there are over two million non-heteronormative people living in Poland, identifying as lesbians, gays, bisexuals or transgender people, and about half of them live in intimate relationships, creating so-called families of choice - built without legal or cultural support.

There is a lack of official data on the number of children raised in LGBTIQ+ families in Poland. This is due to several reasons: censuses do not include sexual orientation or gender identity, same-sex relationships cannot be formally registered, and many people do not want to disclose their family situation for fear of stigmatization and discrimination.

Despite this, based on available national research and proportions known from other countries, experts assume that tens of thousands of minors are raised in queer families in Poland.

Moreover, as emphasized by Prof. Mizielińska, not only in our country, but also in other countries of Central and Eastern Europe, there has been no extensive, comparative research on LGBTIQ+ families. All the knowledge we have about them is based mainly on Anglo-American publications, which, although valuable, do not fully reflect the specificity of our region.

"I would like to change this, because the way LGBTIQ+ families function in this part of Europe may be different than in Anglo-Saxon contexts. That is why we will be implementing the QUEERSHIP project in Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Croatia, which will enable the development of a multidimensional, sociocultural model of queer kinship in this region," she explained.

She noted that an important aspect of the project will be to take into account different points of view and different research methods. The researchers will combine discourse analysis, longitudinal ethnography, interviews with family members and their friends, and quantitative research.

"We will listen to the voices of LGBTIQ+ families, but also their loved ones - friends and distant relatives and people who provide them with professional support. We will take into account the perspective of activists and specialists. All this in order to better capture the complexity of their everyday lives," the researcher said.

"We will also observe them in everyday and exceptional situations to best understand how they function in various aspects of life," she added.

The scientist noted that relationships in rainbow families can be very complicated. "LGBTIQ+ people often experience rejection from their families of origin, but sometimes the birth of their children changes the attitude of grandparents and the bond is rebuilt," she explained.

Prof. Mizielińska hopes that her new project will make a significant contribution to the development of research on LGBTIQ+ families, contributing to a better understanding of their specificity and supporting them in this difficult and dynamic region.

Together with the international research team she has established, which she will be recruiting in the near future, the researcher will carry it out at the Faculty of Sociology, University of Warsaw.

Dr. Hab. Joanna Mizielińska, professor at Civitas University, is a sociologist, gender and queer studies researcher. She deals with the issues of gender, sexuality, families and intimacy, in particular new forms of family, such as families of choice and queer kinship. In 2013-2016 she managed the project "Families of Choice in Poland". She was a Fulbright scholar at Princeton University in the USA, and also conducted research in Finland and Sweden. She is the author of several books and many articles on the issues of gender studies and queer theory, published in prestigious international journals.

Katarzyna Czechowicz (PAP)

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