Feeding the hand that bit you: lesbian daughters at mid-life negotiating parental caretaking

Like other women in our culture, lesbians find parental caretaking is a gendered expectation that often falls to them. This article explores how we negotiate competing demands and integrate our parents' needs into our lives. The daughter/parent relationship may have been strained by parental homophobia, exclusion of our partner, "splitting" between our lesbian and birth family lives, and physical distance. We may recall feelings of metaphorical and physical caretaking not offered to us when we came out, when lack of parental support may have brought financial abandonment and emotional upset. Inversion of the relationship into the child as parental caretaker, fraught with mixed emotions, can bring resolution of long-held resentments and pain.