Midlife Lesbian Relationships: Friends, Lovers, Children, and Parents
Marcy R. Adelman
In this thoughtful and timely collection of research and essays, multiple authors discuss and explore issues of midlife lesbians. With the growing cultural acceptance of lesbian and gay individuals, as well as the aging of the baby boom generation, an increasing number of lesbians are dealing with or approaching these issues. This collection addresses issues that many women face at midlife, such as friendship, aging and its impact on relationships, the death of parents, dating and courtship, chemical dependency, parenting, and familial support--all with a particular emphasis on how these issues may vary for midlife lesbians. Overall, this book is a refreshing and necessary addition to current literature on lesbians.
Editor Marcy Adelman opens the collection with a preface that addresses not only the need for such a collection of work, but also the "complexities of relationships and bonds that sustain and nurture our lives" (p. xiii). Adelman's preface introduces each chapter, as well as discusses overarching themes lesbians balance in their relationships at midlife. It is on the myriad of relationships lesbians have at midlife that this book focuses. Jaqueline Weinstock presents three principal ways that middle class White lesbians organize their friends as: (1) as a substitute for family, (2) as a challenge to a traditional family structure, and (3) as in-laws. Although Weinstock argues that these varying styles of relational organization have different implications for lesbians, they all recognize the high value placed on interpersonal relationships for midlife lesbians. Friendships also play a role in Dana Finnegan and Emily McNally's chapter on chemical dependency at midlife. While they deal with the difficulties of becoming or staying sober at midlife and everything that goes along with that journey, lesbians also often have to juggle relational problems so that they may stay sober. For many, that may mean severing ties with their previous group of friends or their most recent partner because they are still involved with chemical usage. These relationships may also alter because the process of becoming sober causes a strain in the relationship or a new understanding of oneself or others. Finnegan and McNally also address the extra issues that chemically dependent women who are just coming out at midlife may face.
Family also plays an important role in the lives of midlife lesbians. Although families of origin deal with lesbian daughters in various ways, Sharon Raphael and Mina Meyer present two portraits in their chronicle of their history as a lesbian couple and the roller coaster of events over more than two decades, as their families struggled independently to deal with their daughters. Though their families differed in their levels of understanding and acceptance, both seemed to improve as time passed. Raphael and Meyer's account ends with only one of the four parents still living, thus showing that parental death is something many midlife lesbians face. Jeanette Gurevitch reviews both the positive and negative effects of parental loss and bereavement in the context of continued adult development. In the most clinically oriented chapter of the book. Gurevitch uses case studies to illustrate adult growth after the deaths of parents. Although many midlife lesbians are dealing with aging parents or parental loss, many may have also chosen to raise children. Midlife lesbian parenting is the subject of Christa Donaldson's chapter, and she addresses themes such as balancing children, parents, and careers. Donaldson also tackles the issues of children's effect on lesbian relationships and perceptions of acceptance of lesbian headed households in society.
Though friends and family play important roles, intimate relationships with other women are often at the center of midlife lesbians' lives. Valory Mitchell delves deeply into these relationships by looking at some positive and negative events and life-orientations that affect midlife lesbians and their partners. Mitchell contrasts three sets of lesbian couples to show the range of circumstances in which midlife lesbians live. The three couples show a harmonious balance of individual strengths, a relationship filled with stress due to the multiple demands often placed on midlife women from young children, aging parents, and careers, and a relationship on the rocks due to an affair. For midlife lesbians not involved in monogamous or long-term relationships, dating and courtship scripts come into play. Suzanna Rose and Debra Zand compare the usage of three different scripts--friendship, romance, and sexual explicitness (with examples of each)--in three different age cohorts of lesbians. Though not focused entirely on midlife lesbians, they are still very much present in the chapter, and this is fabulous groundwork for future research.
This collection is a well thought out and insightful window into the lives of a growing segment of the population-midlife lesbians. A wonderful addition to classes on interpersonal relationships, lesbian and gay issues, or adult developmental psychology, this book invites both discussion and introspection. Therapists will find many helpful ideas with which to assist midlife lesbian patients with a range of personal difficulties; researchers will find foundations for many future lines of research. Finally, everyone, midlife lesbian or otherwise, will find pieces of themselves in these pages.
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