cover image The Other Mother: A Lesbian's Fight for Her Daughter

The Other Mother: A Lesbian's Fight for Her Daughter

Nancy Abrams. University of Wisconsin Press, $50 (282pp) ISBN 978-0-299-16490-4

The lesbian baby boom of the 1980s has, unfortunately, spawned child custody battles in the '90s, as partners have uncoupled and biological mothers have refused to cede custody to non-biological mothers. Abrams became one such ""other mother"" when she and her partner, Norma, broke up. Although Abrams contends that she continued to support their three-year-old daughter, Amelia, over the next year and a half, Norma retained custody and eventually denied Abrams access to the child. In a narrative that's part memoir and part reportage based on interviews with other lesbian mothers undergoing custody battles, Abrams tells a harrowing tale of love, loss and reclamation. After reluctantly accepting the role of co-parent when the two women were in their early 20s and had been together for only a year, she grew to revel in the position, only to suffer the pain of losing Amelia. Abrams launched a legal fight to get her back and, just as she had given up all hope of being reunited with her daughter, made contact again, nearly five years after losing her. According to Abrams, Norma had suffered powerful depressions and suicidal feelings before they got together, which she portrays as influencing Norma's decision to bar Abrams from Amelia's life. Equally irrationally, according to Abrams, Norma called five years later to apologize. The downside of lesbian and gay parenting has gotten little play: Abrams's book--unevenly written though it is--provides one woman's perspective on what can happen when the law lags behind social change. (Sept.)