(Il)legal parenthood: examining the complexities of queer parenting in Russia

Russia is a famously hostile state to its LGBTQ+ citizens. The past two decades have been marked with increasingly homophobic legislation which excludes queer individuals from parenthood and portrays them as a threat to the country's core values. Queer parenting has been a particular target of Vladimir Putin’s political narrative in the past 15 years. The ‘anti-gay propaganda’ law of 2013 has become a dividing point in contemporary Russian history and has caused a wave of queer families and activists emigrating in fear for the wellbeing of their families. However, even more remain. Countless interviews, testimonials and blogs suggest that a significant number of LGBTQ+ people in Russia are parents. The stories of these families are missing from the academic and political discourse. Despite the dangerous homophobic legislation, queer people successfully build families, access adoption and assisted reproduction, and co-parent with their partners. This paper will examine how diverse makeups of queer families make the decision to have children, and their parenting strategies. Through building close-knit communities and utilizing informal networks, queer families manage to minimise their interactions with state-run institutions which pose the most danger to their wellbeing. The work also seeks to investigate the realities of queer family building in relation to activism and its role in LGBTQ+ lives in contemporary Russia.

About the speaker

Olga Doletskaya (she/they) is a social anthropologist and reproduction researcher who completed an MSc at the University of Edinburgh and is currently undertaking a PhD at the University College London’s School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies (SSEES). Her past research concerns the experiences of surrogate mothers in Russia. Olga’s PhD is on queer parenthood in Russia and is interested in the topics of assisted reproduction, alternative families as well as Russian queer history. Olga is also a curator; she is most proud of organising the UK premier of the first Russia queer web-series at Flatpack Festival in 2021 and curating a recent discussion panel and lecture at Pushkin House on Russian queer activism and art in the past decade. She can be found on twitter @odoletskaya, you can also email her at olga.doletskaya.21@ucl.ac.uk

Image credit: Wokandapix on Pixabay