Transcript for
Re-release: Inclusive practice with rainbow families

Narrator (00:00):

This is a re-release of one of our early episodes from the Emerging Minds podcast. We will be back in 2022 with a fresh series of engaging conversations about supporting children’s mental health.

Narrator (00:15):

Welcome to the Emerging Minds podcast.

Sophie Guy (00:21):

You’re with Sophie Guy. And today, I’m speaking with Dr. Priscilla Dunk-West. Priscilla is a sociologist and social worker, and has worked in academia in both Australia and England. Her research interests include identity, sexuality, intimate relationships and parenting. She is currently a senior lecturer in the College of Education, Psychology and Social Work at Flinders University in South Australia.

Sophie Guy (00:44):

In today’s episode, we discuss what inclusive practise looks like, when working with children from LGBTIQ families, and ways that practitioners and organisations can orient their services to be more welcoming of the growing number of rainbow families in Australia.

Sophie Guy (00:59):

Well, thank you very much, Priscilla, for joining me today for a podcast interview.

Dr Priscilla Dunk-West (01:03):

Thanks for having me.

Sophie Guy (01:04):

And we’re here today to talk about growing family diversity, in terms of sexual orientation, maybe gender identity, things like that, in Australian families. Perhaps, well, I’d like to start off though, just by asking you a little bit about your background and how you came to be working in this space.

Dr Priscilla Dunk-West (01:26):

So, I’m a social worker, and I’m also a sociologist. And, I started out my work as a social worker in child protection, and worked with a range of families and children, both here and in the UK, in London. And then, I went on to specialise in sexual health counselling, so I would see couples and individuals about intimacy issues or problems, sexual dysfunction and struggles with sexual or gender diversity.

Sophie Guy (01:57):

Interesting. Interesting.

Dr Priscilla Dunk-West (01:59):

Yeah.

Sophie Guy (01:59):

Did you get into that in London or that back here?

Dr Priscilla Dunk-West (02:01):

No. I mean, because I worked in child protection, I worked with teenagers, so often, issues about sexuality, whether it was sexual behaviour or risk taking would emerge. And particularly for young women, for example, being able to navigate and negotiate their relationships as they enter into adolescence or later adolescence, and work out who they are and what they want. So yes, those were kind of there, but this was more of specialism, which then led me to want to do a PhD. So, I finished my masters and did a PhD, looking at day to day sexuality, the ways in which people reflect on and live out their sexuality or sexual identity in day to day life.

Sophie Guy (02:45):

Okay. That sounds really interesting. So, when you talk about, I mean, I wouldn’t even know how you would start to talk about day to day sexuality. Could you talk a little bit more about what you mean about that?

Dr Priscilla Dunk-West (02:56):

So we have this idea, in terms of sexuality, that it is something that manifests in the bedroom or during sexual behaviour. But, we also know that single people have a sexuality, or people who aren’t having sex or sexual interactions also have a sexuality. So, it’s this approach to sexuality that says, sexuality is something that is felt inside, but it’s affected through things like the social context within which people live, and sexual behaviour may not match up with people’s idea of their own sexual identity. So, for example, in sexual health, historically, there was a term that came about, because there were men who were having sex with men, but were married in heterosexual relationships, or in heterosexual relationships, and would say, “I’m not gay.” And so, it was this recognition that actually people’s behaviour doesn’t always match how they identify themselves.

Dr Priscilla Dunk-West (03:54):

So it’s quite a complex terrain. So this idea that sexuality only exists within relationships doesn’t take into account the social and cultural context within which we live out our identities. And so, when I first started interviewing people and asked them, “Tell me about your sexuality,” people would talk about being at work and the clothes they wore and the language they used and the way they taught their children about respectful relationships, for example. So, sexuality is present in our micro interactions in day to day life, and comes about through language, but also symbols, if you think about people wearing rings to signify that they’re in a relationship. We have a whole lot of practises that sometimes are overlooked, and we don’t necessarily think about them. So sexuality is something that is kind of reproduced through social interactions.

Sophie Guy (04:52):

And then, I feel like there’s probably a lot of pulling apart as well of… You can talk about someone’s sexuality or sexuality, but then gender and gender identity is related, but it’s different as well.

Dr Priscilla Dunk-West (05:05):

And I think, in relation to gender identity, we are only just now starting to really talk about the ways in which gender can be differently connected to someone’s sense of identity. So we have lots of research, historical research, for example, where there was that famous study where someone was given a baby and told this is a girl. And so kind of went, “Oh, you’re so beautiful, and you’re so cute.” And then dressed the baby in what we would consider socially as boy clothes, and the ways in which somebody interacted with that baby were very different. And that kind of speaks to the attitudes that we have about gender from birth, right? So there’s this kind of from birth, this socialisation of gender. And, we know that children who don’t identify with a particular gender, binary, so male or female, girl or boy, that they can struggle with that binary. And so, we talk about that as gender nonconformity in children, where there’s a sense of feeling different, feeling like that label doesn’t fit.

Dr Priscilla Dunk-West (06:09):

And, this isn’t new, but the way we’re talking about it is becoming more recognised. So for example, girls who didn’t want to sit and play dolls were often characterised as being tomboys. Boys who want to dress up in girl’s clothes, people can often be very shocked by that. And, it speaks to the ways in which we construct gender socially. And just because something’s a social construction doesn’t mean that it’s not real or not tangible or not powerful. It just means that these are very powerful messages that we give one another in society, through our day to day practises.

Dr Priscilla Dunk-West (06:47):

For some people, the idea of that has never occurred to them, because they felt a fit between the gender they were assigned at birth and the gender that they live out in their day to day life.

Sophie Guy (07:00):

Yeah.

Dr Priscilla Dunk-West (07:01):

But I guess identity changes across context as well. So, the self that we present in our work, or the self that we present at home, or the self that we present going shopping or in more public settings will differ. And in the same way, sexuality or sexual identity can change over time. So I guess that’s the other thing to say is that, although somebody… Social workers might be seeing a client who is a parent and has been married, we don’t assume that they’re straight or that they identify as heterosexual. So, it’s an acknowledgement that actually sexuality can change over time, and gender identity can change over time, or the ways in which people express their gender can change over time, but are always connected with the social and cultural context and historical context within which we live.

Sophie Guy (07:58):

I’m just thinking about children, young people who may be questioning their gender identity, and if you’re a practitioner, or you’re in a service, is it helpful to have conversations about sexuality as well? Or is it more helpful to sort of think of those as separate things?

Dr Priscilla Dunk-West (08:15):

It’s a tricky one. In fact, I was reading about this yesterday, about a woman who identifies as lesbian, but then, there are now people who are saying, “Well, I’m gender non-binary, and I identify as lesbian.” So we’ve always had this connection with gender and sexual identity, because they’re connected in terms of the way we make sense of different categories. But, research from the UK with young people, people will talk about all sorts of different genders and sexualities, and they’re much more kind of tangled up and deliberately don’t fall into those very binary notions that we have. So, they’re connected, but it’s up to individuals to kind of recognise those connections or think about those connections. So, for practitioners, it’s about just understanding, being curious, understanding how that fits for somebody, rather than putting on a heteronormative lens, which is the assumption that everybody is heterosexual and cisgendered, and cisgendered is that idea that people’s gender identity matches their identity assigned at birth.

Sophie Guy (09:22):

And, do you feel as though that those assumptions are still present quite a lot in even social work students and social workers or practitioners out there?

Dr Priscilla Dunk-West (09:32):

Yeah. So I’ve been working for a while in the area of sexuality in social work. And, there’s now a fairly good group of academics who do research into, for example, same sex parents or rainbow families that we might term them as, people who don’t fit that kind of heteronormative conceptualization. So I think for social workers, it’s really important to understand that, not only are families changing and configurations of families are changing, but that they’ve got to start from a point of really trying to understand, rather than assume, that somebody’s family or conceptualization of family fits within a certain framework or way of thinking. So there’s lots of different types of family diversity now, that social workers should be aware of.

Sophie Guy (10:23):

Okay. Is it helpful to sort of identify and say, there’s these kinds of families and these kinds of families for the purpose of this interview? Or is that not really a helpful thing to say?

Dr Priscilla Dunk-West (10:32):

Yeah. I mean, I think this kind of umbrella term of rainbow families is a way that some families will talk about themselves. So we know a couple of years ago, during this awful period in Australian history, where children of parents who were same sex parents or gender nonconforming or trans, found themselves in the spotlight and being questioned about their rights to marriage equality. And so, we know, through research, that that had really profound impacts on people. There’s been historical research that’s looked at the ways in which queer people, or people who are non-heterosexual, think about their relationships, their families. So for example, we have a very biologically driven way of thinking about family. Your mom, your dad, your uncle, which is the brother of your mother or the brother of your father, that very traditional way of thinking about family. And often, social workers will want to rely upon these bio narratives, if you like.

Dr Priscilla Dunk-West (11:37):

So, some research from the 80s looked at this idea of families of choice. And that was because when people came out as being non heterosexual, or we can say nonconforming in terms of gender, that their families rejected them, that their birth families rejected them. But that what happens in queer communities is that people develop relationships with friends that are family, become family. And so this idea of families of choice came about. So, talking to people about, who are the significant people in your life? How are you connected to them? What do you think about as family, is a useful starting point, rather than relying on that biological narrative.

Sophie Guy (12:22):

And so, are these sorts of approaches to practise being taught in the social work courses now?

Dr Priscilla Dunk-West (12:31):

Yeah, I think they are, increasingly so. We have a lot of traditional tools that we use in social work. So we have the genogram, where we have this map of way of mapping. But these tools can be adapted, so that they’re not about biological connections, but about meaningful connections that people have in their lives. So we can adapt those tools, if you like.

Sophie Guy (12:56):

Okay. We sort of have some broad principles at Emerging Minds that we’ve gotten some consensus around, in terms of what we think is helpful practise. And one of them is this idea of child-focused and parent-sensitive. I wonder if you could talk a bit about what child-focused and parent-sensitive practise looks like, with rainbow families.

Dr Priscilla Dunk-West (13:16):

So, I guess the first thing is not making assumptions and coming from a perspective of being genuinely curious about the child’s world, so who are the significant people in their life? I suppose I’m coming at it from the child-centred perspective. So I think, in terms of social workers and social work students, I think the skills that that requires is the use of imagination, right? Being able to imagine life through a child’s perspective, through a child’s eyes, seeing who are the connections they have. Are they significant people who live close by? Are they people who live in a household with the child? So often, we have these ideas of families all having to live under the same roof. But we know that the ways in which families are configured can sometimes include co-parenting relationships, can include new partners into the mix.

Dr Priscilla Dunk-West (14:10):

And so, those people might become significant to them. We used to talk about step families. But thinking about significant people in the child’s life, I think, is a really important step and requires that sense of imagination and curiosity. So they’re the key ingredients, I guess, that social work students and social workers need to look at, understanding, better understanding rainbow families.

Sophie Guy (14:36):

Okay.

Dr Priscilla Dunk-West (14:36):

I suppose the other thing is to always bear in mind, and this kind of speaks to being parent-sensitive, is to bear in mind that we do live in a society that is discriminatory against rainbow families. So although we have marriage equality, it’s very new. It’s very contested. We know there’s still homophobia. There’s still violence. We know there’s a fallout emotionally from families who have been affected by this very public debate about their lives.

Dr Priscilla Dunk-West (15:07):

And so, being parent-sensitive means not being heteronormative, not making assumptions, but really seeking to understand what are the key connections that parents have. So, we can be parent-sensitive in terms of, if we see the primary couple, but we know that people sometimes have relationships with more than one person, so polyamory, for example, or co-parenting relationships. So, just because people aren’t parenting together in the same space doesn’t mean that they don’t still have a really good relationship with the person who was once their intimate partner. And so, that’s a relationship. And so, being parent-sensitive involves acknowledging that those connections exist, and working with people to strengthen those connections from the child’s perspective, if that makes sense. So it’s not an either or. They have to go hand in hand.

Sophie Guy (16:00):

Yep. And could you even give some examples of how you might ask those questions? Like, I suppose, with a kid who might… The assumption, the heteronormative would be like, “So who’s your mom? Who’s your dad?”

Dr Priscilla Dunk-West (16:11):

Yeah.

Sophie Guy (16:11):

Or, to someone presenting a parent, “Are you married?” What are some alternative questions to start that conversation? Because it can be tricky if you haven’t done it before.

Dr Priscilla Dunk-West (16:22):

Yep.

Sophie Guy (16:22):

Yeah. You can feel awkward changing your language.

Dr Priscilla Dunk-West (16:26):

Yeah. So, I mean, it depends on the age of the child, but sometimes practitioners will use [raw rings 00:16:33] and “can you tell me about”. “Can you tell me about special people in your life?” And, if you’re asking a five year old, that could include their family pet. And so, recognising what they see as important connections in their life and being curious and asking, “Tell me about that and tell me about this person, and what do you do together?” Those sorts of things just help to flesh out, if you like, the connections that children have with significant people. So not starting with, “Who’s your mom? Who’s your dad?” Because, you can imagine, if it’s a child who comes from a family where they’re a same sex parents or parents who identify in terms of being gender diverse, that that immediately is going to kind of set up this awkwardness between a practitioner and a child. It’s going to give the message that that’s not somehow normal. So really not engaging in that kind of heteronormative way of thinking or fixed binary way of thinking.

Sophie Guy (17:35):

Yeah. And what about some examples with parents, with adults?

Dr Priscilla Dunk-West (17:40):

So, sometimes, organisations will use a kind of [recent 00:17:46] thing where they’ll get people to write about their relationships or write about their gender identity. So making sure, at the very beginning point, that organisations have a very flexible tool that is able to capture people’s experiences. So if you’re filling out a form, and the only box is male or female, that immediately gives the message that this is an organisation that isn’t aware of gender diversity or gender nonconformity or trans issues. And so, immediately, that sets up a barrier. So making sure that those kind of intake forms are there. I think, if you’ve got somebody who is cisgendered, it also gives a message. This is an organisation that welcomes rainbow families. This is an organisation that understands sexual identity and gender diversity.

Dr Priscilla Dunk-West (18:38):

So it sets it up, not only for people who are part of that rainbow community, but sets it up for people who aren’t, to give that kind of, I guess, it’s role modelling. I guess, it’s saying, “These are our values, as an organisation.”

Sophie Guy (18:51):

Yeah.

Dr Priscilla Dunk-West (18:51):

So that’s the first step. I guess the second step is about then looking at the form, interpreting it and asking questions of somebody. So for example, saying, “Do you have a partner or partners?” gives somebody the opportunity to talk about their key relationships or key relationship if they have one. So being open and asking those questions, I think, as I said, gives the message that A, this practitioner is open and understands the range of diversities that exist in our society, and B, makes people feel welcomed.

Sophie Guy (19:25):

Yeah. Okay. I was going to ask you also about the change in law and marriage equality, and what sorts of flowing effects have you seen as a result of that, good and bad?

Dr Priscilla Dunk-West (19:40):

I think it’s so early to know what the fallout is. I know there’s some research that’s happening at the moment, to look at what have been the impacts. But we know that people who are affected, in terms of identifying as being queer or lesbian or gay or bisexual or trans or gender nonconforming, that this group of people accessed services to help with the impacts of that. So having one’s personal life just debated and discussed very publicly, I think, was incredibly damaging. And so, we don’t know yet, really, what the longer term effects are, but we know that people, for example, may have become ostracised from their family of origin. So they may have stopped talking to people. They may have lost friends. But at the same time, they may have also gained a sense of community and kind of found strength in community.

Sophie Guy (20:41):

Yeah.

Dr Priscilla Dunk-West (20:41):

And that’s where the families of choice concept is really useful to understand that.

Sophie Guy (20:46):

Yeah. Could you talk a bit more about this families of choice idea? Is it something that you hear people referring to, more so, in rainbow families? Is that kind of where it originated in-

Dr Priscilla Dunk-West (20:59):

It did. So, it originated through the work of Jeffrey Weeks, from the UK. He’s one of the key thinkers in this area. And it’s less used now as a concept, but I think it’s an important one, because it speaks to the strength of connections that people have, in light of, perhaps, times when they were ostracised from their birth family or family of origin. And so, it was a way of recognising that, yes, we live in a kind of homophobic and heteronormative society, but it’s not all that, because what people do is they find resilience through alternate relationships with people who are significant, and whether that’s community, a sense of community. And so, we talk about the rainbow community, as though it was this very clear, lovely, fun community. But of course, there are tensions between different members of these communities. So, it was a way in which people’s resilience could be acknowledged, and that we could better understand key relationships that people have.

Sophie Guy (22:06):

Okay. I’m wondering about social and emotional well-being of children, who come from rainbow families. And you mentioned something, when we spoke on the phone, about how there’s research that suggests they actually fare better. Could you talk a little bit about that?

Dr Priscilla Dunk-West (22:21):

Yep. So, I’ve co-edited two book collections, where we showcased research around gender and intimacy research, from the UK, Australia and lots of other places. And, there’s been a couple of studies that we’ve included in those collections. But it’s generally found that children from same sex parents fare better, than children from opposite sex parents. And, I kind of like that finding, because people’s assumption sometimes is that, there must be an impact on the child, or how is that for them, or that’s fine for people to have same sex relationships, but what about the children? And so, people can go into this narrative, which is very problematizing and heteronormative, I guess. And so, that findings just kind of says, “Actually, we’re doing fine.” And, it is on a range of emotional well-being in terms of being able to articulate one’s self, feeling happy with life, feeling loved, all of those ingredients we know are important for children’s development. So it doesn’t matter, really, someone’s sexual identity. It’s about what a child needs.

Sophie Guy (23:39):

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. You talked a little bit about what services can do to practise in a more inclusive way, for example, through the forms and the way we ask people about their gender identity. Is there anything more to add to that? And I’m also wondering, are there things that you can identify that are barriers to services doing this?

Dr Priscilla Dunk-West (24:02):

One of the things that’s kind of emerging is, that when you introduce yourself, you say what your pronouns are. So, my name’s Priscilla, and my pronouns are she and her, so that I show that that’s my gender identity. So, for some organisations, that means role modelling that behaviour, in terms of just introductions. The other concept that’s quite helpful in social work is when we’re working with diverse families is think about being an ally, like what being an ally looks like. So if somebody is not part of a particular part of a rainbow community, so gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, intersects, queer, asexual, that being an good ally means sitting back and listening to the needs of that particular group and learning from that particular group, rather than thinking that you know it all, but actually sitting back and listening.

Dr Priscilla Dunk-West (24:54):

And I think that’s really important, particularly with indigenous queer voices, and lots of different ways that those identities can intersect, with culture, sexual identity, gender identity, disability, those sorts of other aspects of identity. So, organisations, if they want to be more queer friendly or rainbow family friendly, can do a lot in terms of the symbols that they display. So, having a rainbow, being rainbow ticket credited, those sorts of things are practises that organisations can do to show a sense of allyship and to show this is a welcoming space. So that physical environment is important, as well as the forms, the practises, the policies, the starts sometimes the organisations will take. So, people kind of saying, and you see this in organisations where people will put up something saying, “We don’t tolerate homophobia” or “We believe,” so those value statements are important. So it’s the kind of physical, the procedural and then the value base. So those three aspects, I think, help organisations to be more inclusive.

Sophie Guy (26:07):

Okay, great. Thank you very much, Priscilla, for coming in and talking to me. I really appreciate it.

Dr Priscilla Dunk-West (26:12):

My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Narrator (26:15):

Visit our website at www.emergingminds.com.au to access a range of resources to assist your practise. Brought to you by the National Workforce Centre for Child Mental Health, led by Emerging Minds, the National Workforce Centre for Child Mental Health is funded by the Australian government Department of Health, under the National Support for Child and Youth Mental Health Program.