Chasing Rainbows: Exploring Gender Fluid Parenting Practices





Price: $24.95

Page Count: 200

Publication Date: September 2013

ISBN: 978-1-927335-18-5

Feminist parenting creates unique challenges. As women experience the unique powerlessness of motherhood, they also hold the uncom- fortable power of acting as advocates for and as agents of socialization and social control over their children. Fathers may feel the desire for feminist parenting whilst experiencing a backlash and a lack of sup- port, while some parents may attempt to resist the binaries of mother- ing and fathering in their feminist parenting journey. Feminist parents may attempt to resist gender binaries; they may submit to them while attempting to foster critical dialogue; they may struggle with the dis- play of their own femininity and masculinity or, for some, its perceived lack. This book attempts to cast a lens on the messy and convoluted ways that feminist parents approach parenting their children in gender aware and gender fluid ways.  

Chasing Rainbows is a celebratory exploration of gender fluid parenting through critical contemplation, an openness to multiple gender trajectories and most importantly, unwavering love. Indomitable and inspiring, these individuals and families risk placing themselves on the front line of critical resistance in order to live authentically. Challenging the boundaries of our own gender literacy, Chasing Rainbows facilitates self-reflection on how we parent and how we were parented within deeply entrenched systems, expectations and understandings of gender.
—Reece Malone, Certified Sexologist, Sexuality Educator

Chasing Rainbows dares to ask how we as parents can guide our children—and ourselves—not only beyond the confines of the gender binary, but beyond the notion of gender itself. Inspired by past classics like The Transgender Child and Growing Up Free, Chasing Rainbows is a parenting revolution within the pages of a book. I can’t wait to see how parenting practices, gender “norms,” and in fact, all of society, may change as a result of its publication.
—Rachel Pepper, author of Transitions of the Heart

Chasing Rainbows is an important and engaging addition to the field. It represents that rare theoretically sophisticated academic text that is also a personal and captivating “pleasure” read. Just as importantly, it is also an impassioned manifesto for a community of practice around gender fluid parenting practices.
—Jason Laurendeau, Sociology Department, University of Lethbridge, Alberta

Chasing Rainbows; Exploring Gender Fluid Parenting Practices was featured in a recent Macleans article: Boys will be Girls: Inside the growing movement of families and experts embracing gender fluidity. By Cathy Gulli

New Article: Toronto Star Story on Chasing Rainbows: Exploring Gender Fluid Parenting Practices

Book Review: Chasing Rainbows: Exploring Gender Fluid Parenting Practices edited by Fiona Joy Green and May Friedman

Introduction
Fiona Green and May Friedman

Chapter One:
Dancing in the Eye of the Storm: The Gift of Gender Diversity to Our Family
Kathy Witterick

Chapter Two:
Get your Gender Binary Off My Childhood! Towards a Movement for Children's Self- Determination
Jane Ward

Chapter Three:
The Boy in the Red Dress
Susan Goldberg

Chapter Four:
Trapped in the Wrong Body and Life Uncharted: Anticipation and Identity within Narratives of Parenting Transgender/Gender Non-conforming Children
Jessica Ann Vooris

Chapter Five:
Transgender Men's Self-Representations of Bearing Children Post-Transition
Damien Riggs

Chapter Six:
We're Having a Stanley
j wallace

Chapter Seven:
Between the Village and The Village People: Negotiating Community, Ethnicity and Safety in Gender Fluid Parenting
May Friedman

Chapter Eight:
Feminist Parents' Strategic use of Liminoid Experiences to Produce Sites of Empowerment for Young, Gender-Diverse Children
Sandra Schneider

Chapter Nine:
Complicating the Truth of Gender: Gender Literacy and the Possible Worlds of Trans Parenting
Jake Pyne

Chapter Ten:
Pink Butterflies and Blue Caterpillars
Arwen Brenneman

Chapter Eleven:
I Wish I Knew How to Make Cabbage Rolls:
An explanation of Why the Future of Ethnicity Relies Upon Gender Fluidity
Sarah Sahagian

Chapter Twelve:
The Parental Transition: A Study of Parents of Gender Variant Children
Elizabeth Rahilly

Chapter Thirteen:
Our Fluid Family: Engagement, Feminism and Expression
Fiona Joy Green, Barry Edginton and Liam Edginton-Green