As Chapter Two discussed, there has been an expansion of research into shifting familial and partnering structures within sociology and social policy. Intimacy is seen as a site of social transformation within contemporary society (Giddens, 1992; Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 1995). Lesbian and gay partnering and parenting relationships are positioned at the forefront of changing affective structures (Weston, 1991; Giddens, 1992; Sandell, 1994; Stacey, 1996; Roseneil, 2000; Weeks et al, 2001; Roseneil and Budgeon, 2004). For Stacey, lesbian and gay families are the “pioneer outpost of the postmodern family condition, confronting most directly its features of improvisation, ambiguity, diversity, contradiction, self-reflection and flux” (1996: 142). This research suggests that transgender intimate practices further illustrate how family life is subject to ongoing contest, negotiation and innovation.

Studies of same-sex families and intimate relationships pose a challenge to a sociology of ‘the family’, which theorises intimacy through an all-exclusive focus upon the nuclear, heterosexual, monogamous, reproductive family. However, as Roseneil and Budgeon argue, non-normative patterns of intimacy tend to be relegated to “subfields of the sociologies of family and gender” (2004: 136). Further: “these practices, relationships and networks largely fail to be registered in a sociological literature which retains an imaginary which, without ever explicitly acknowledging it, sees the heterosexual couple as the heart of social formation, as that which pumps the life-blood of social reproduction” (Roseneil and Budgeon, 2004: 136).

Moreover, the partnering and parenting relationships of transgender people are ignored not only within sociologies of the family, but also within gender research. Thus sociologies of the family, studies of samesex intimacy and analyses of gender relations have yet to take account of the specificities of transgender. While the impact of transition upon relationships with partners, lovers and children will differ in individual circumstances, the process of transition will always take place to some extent within a social framework of intimacy. It is from this juncture that I move on to explore changing experiences of intimacy through transgender practices of partnering and parenting.

In the first section of the chapter, patterns of intimacy are explored in relation to the reconfiguration of existing partnerships. The chapter moves on to consider the narratives of participants whose transition is linked to partnership separation. It then addresses the formation of new intimate relationships following transition. Finally the chapter explores how participants negotiate gender transition as parents.