Lesbian Moms and Their Kids At Court

The project Lesbians and Their Kids at Court (LeMoKiaC) investigates the extent to which children’s voices are listened to by mothers and by professionals within the procedures for the legal recognition of French and Italian intended mothers in lesbian-headed households.

Its overarching aim is to provide an ethnographic account of the exercise of article 1.2 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, namely the right to be listened to and taken seriously in the judicial and administrative proceeding affecting them.

It is organised around 3 research questions (one ethnographic, one theoretical/methodological and one regarding public anthropology): 1) What are the variables affecting the exercise of Article 12.2 in the recognition of lesbian-headed households? 2) How are children recognised as social actors of kinship relations? 3) How can an ethnographic child-centred knowledge of the politicisation of childhood promote children’s welfare and rights?

By focusing on the recognition of mothers’ ties with their children despite a lack of biogenetical link, LeMoKiaC will fill 3 scholarly gaps: 1) in the field of children’s rights, the lack of ethnographic child-centred knowledge on the exercise of Article 12.2; 2) within critical kinship studies, the lack of child-centred theoretical concepts for the analysis of children as social actors within family relations; 3) in public anthropology, the absence of art-based dissemination products for children.

It will produce empirical results, theoretical child-centred and gender-sensitive concepts, and art-based child-centred dissemination products, having a scientific, inter-sectoral and educational impact at a national and international level.

It will also have a major career development impact due to the development of creative competences in research dissemination through the acquisition of more accessible forms of communication necessary to effectively communicate social sciences to the wider public, including children.