NCFR

The weekly adventures of gay couple Mitchell and Cameron and their baby on the popular television program Modern Family highlight a common contemporary media image of gay parenting: wealthy, urban, and White gay men raising an adopted child. But U.S. Census Bureau data suggest that the demographic characteristics of same-sex couples raising children are substantially more diverse than the predominant subjects of scholarly research and media images of lesbian and gay parenting.

Occasionally a concept comes along that resonates with the research community. A recent example is the idea of ambivalence. Alexis Walker's decision as the editor of Journal of Marriage and Family to publish an exchange on the concept of ambivalence (vol. 64(3), August, 2002) sparked international interest among family scholars in pursuing this idea. Despite some reservations, an impressive array of studies has used ambivalence in creative and thoughtful ways to enhance our understanding of intergenerational relations.