LGBTQ-parent families in Chinese societies: Queering kinship and mapping the ‘queer economy of welfare mix’

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) people’s pathways to parenthood have been increasingly facilitated by legal changes concerning their rights to marriage and parental status, increased access to assisted reproductive technologies, and growing social support for diverse families. Existing research has predominantly examined the experiences of LGBTQ+ (intended) parents in Euro-American contexts. This chapter, focusing on Chinese societies, examines novel and important research developments concerning LGBTQ+ parenthood over the past decade. It presents a distinctive analytical contribution by conceptualising LGBTQ+ parenthood through the ‘queer economy of welfare mix’ framework, which moves beyond Western paradigms centred on identity affirmation and rights-based discourses to map the mixture of consumer strategies, citizen strategies, and consumer-citizen strategies used by individuals. The chapter examines Chinese LGBTQ+ people’s pathways to parenthood as a relational process of negotiations associated with: (a) family change and continuity, (b) market exchanges of local and transnational resources, and (c) state regulations and policy change. It contributes a context-sensitive understanding of Chinese LGBTQ-parent families, identifying the roles of the family, market, and state in reproducing and/or queering kinship. The chapter concludes by discussing the implications of the ‘queer economy of welfare mix’ framework for understanding and queering kinship and pinpoints key directions for future research and social work practice.