Submit a Manuscript to the Journal
LGBTQ Family: An Interdisciplinary Journal
For a Special Issue on
Aging Queerly: LGBTQ+ Aging within Diverse Family Formations
Manuscript deadline
Special Issue Editor(s)
Susie Bower-Brown,
University College London
[email protected]
Aging Queerly: LGBTQ+ Aging within Diverse Family Formations
This Special Issue aims to explore family experiences that transcend, complicate and sit outside of the gender binary. Non-binary identities are becoming increasingly socially visible and family practices are diversifying, with more people ‘doing family’ in ways that challenge binary understandings of gender, kinship and care. However, much family research focusses on the experiences of men/women and boys/girls, and dominant methodological and theoretical approaches are often not inclusive of non-binary experiences. In a global context marked by increasing societal transphobia and resistance to family diversity, it is especially urgent for family studies to engage more deeply with family experiences that transcend the gender binary.
This Special Issue seeks to bring together innovative family research that moves beyond binary frameworks, whether in empirical focus, theoretical orientation or methodological approach. We welcome contributions that explore, but are not limited to:
· Non-binary experiences of parenting, including fostering and adoption
· Non-binary children and young people in family contexts
· Gender-open, gender-neutral, and gender-expansive parenting practices
· Non-binary kinship, including chosen family and alternative care networks
· Non-binary experiences of pregnancy, birth, and reproductive care
· Institutional and legal encounters shaping non-binary family lives
· Intersectional perspectives on non-binary family lives (e.g. race, class, disability, migration)
· Theoretical and methodological innovations for researching family beyond the gender binary
Submission Instructions
For consideration, please submit via email an abstract detailing the intended submission to Dr. Bower-Brown ([email protected]) by September 1, 2026. Invitations for full manuscript submission will be sent out in October 2026. Papers that are not reviewed as an abstract first will not be considered for the special issue. If a full article is invited after abstract review, full articles will be due March 15, 2027. Full articles will be submitted to a full peer-review process which will determine final acceptance for the special issue. The review and revision process for full articles will continue throughout 2027 with special issue publication expected in early 2028.
Instructions for abstracts: Abstracts should not exceed 500 words, and should address the following:
-What is the subject matter of your proposed manuscript
-In what ways is the project appropriate for the special issue
-Where applicable, methodological details including sample and methods (only completed data collections will be considered for review)
-Specific implications of the work (2 of 3 needed: research, policy, clinical)
Authors are encouraged to consider the journal guidelines before submitting an abstract