Family Proclamations: Rethinking Relationships, Gender, and Sexuality

Jessica Pryce believed a career at Child Protective Services would be a rewarding way to help keep kids safe. What she learned on the job completely changed her mind, as the system itself kept getting closer and closer to home. Now she's a scholar of the system and works as a public advocate to help change it for the better. 
About the Guest
Dr. Jessica Pryce earned her Master's of Social Work degree from Florida State University and a PhD from Howard University. She is currently a research professor at Florida State University’s College of Social Work. Her book is called Broken: Transforming Child Protective Services—Notes of a Former Caseworker.
 
Full transcript available here (familyproclamations.org).

Caregiving for aging and dying parents can be tough for anyone, but it's even tougher when it forces you to confront longtime family dynamics of abuse. Sociologist Deborah Cohan blurs the lines between academic research on family caregiving and violence, and her own personal story about a father she calls both adoring and abusive. 
Her memoir is called Welcome to Wherever We Are: A Memoir of Family, Caregiving, and Redemption.
About the Guest
Deborah J. Cohan is a professor of sociology at the University of South Carolina-Beaufort. She earned her PhD in Sociology and Joint Master of Arts in Women’s Studies and Sociology at Brandeis University. Alongside her many academic publications, she is the author of the popular blog “Social Lights” for Psychology Today.
 
Full transcript available here (familyproclamations.org).

With the legalization of same-sex marriage in 2015, queer families are more visible today than ever. But the path to becoming a parent is complicated for LGBTQ people. We talk about about the challenges and joys of queer family building with expert Abbie Goldberg, author of LGBTQ Family Building: A Guide for Prospective Parents.
 
About the Guest
Dr. Abbie E. Goldberg is a psychologist and researcher who provides LGBTQ parents and prospective parents with the detailed, evidence‑based knowledge they need to navigate the transition to parenthood and help their children thrive. 
 
Full transcript of this episode available here (familyproclamations.org).

Divorce can be a difficult process today, but it's nothing compared to what it used to be. In the late 1800s, women from around the country had to fight for the right to separate from their husbands on their own terms. April White explains how their stories still impact us today. 
About the Guest
April White is author of The Divorce Colony: How Women Revolutionized Marriage and Found Freedom on the American Frontier. She has served as an editor and writer at Atlas Obscura and Smithsonian Magazine. Her historical stories have also appeared in publications including the Washington Post, Boston Globe Magazine and The Atavist Magazine.
 
Full transcript available here (familyproclamations.org).

Angela Tucker is a Black woman who was adopted by white parents as a very young child. Angela says transracial adoptees like her grow up wrestling with complicated feelings of gratitude and love, but also rejection, loss, and confusion about their heritage. 
About the Guest
Angela Tucker is author of “You Should Be Grateful:" Stories of Race, Identity, and Transracial Adoption. Her family story was featured in the documentary Closure. She has over 15 years of experience working within adoption and foster care agencies, mentoring over 200 adoptees as founder of the Adoptee Mentoring Society. In addition to producing the podcast The Adoptee Next Door, she consulted with NBC’s This Is Us.
 
Full transcript available here (familyproclamations.org).

When Jessi Hempel came out of the closet she had no idea her whole church-going family had been hiding in there with her. And things got complicated fast when the closet door kept swinging open. 
 
About the Author
Jessi Hempel is author of The Family Outing: A Memoir. She is also host of the award-winning podcast Hello Monday, and a senior editor-at-large at LinkedIn. Her features and cover stories have appeared in Wired, Fortune, and TIME. She has appeared on CNN, PBS, MSNBC, Fox, and CNBC, addressing the culture and business of technology. Hempel is a graduate of Brown University and received a master’s in journalism from UC Berkeley. She lives in Brooklyn with her wife and children.
REFERENCES
Jessi Hempel, "My Brother’s Pregnancy and the Making of a New American Family," TIME (Sept. 12, 2016).
 
Full transcript available here (familyproclamations.org).

One hundred years ago, a bright new age for children was dawning in America. Child labor laws were being passed, public education was spreading, and more. But Adam Benforado says America stopped short in its revolution of children's rights.
Today, more than eleven million American children live in poverty. We deny young people any political power, while we fail to act on the issues that matter most to them: racism, inequality, and climate change. That's why Adam is calling for a new revolution for kids.
He joins us to discuss his book, A Minor Revolution: How Prioritizing Kids Benefits Us All.
About the Guest
Adam Benforado is a professor of law at the Drexel University Kline School of Law and the New York Times best-selling author of A Minor Revolution: How Prioritizing Kids Benefits Us All and Unfair: The New Science of Criminal Injustice. His research, teaching, and advocacy is focused on children’s rights and criminal justice. A graduate of Yale College and Harvard Law School, he served as a clerk on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and an attorney at Jenner & Block in Washington, D.C. He has published numerous scholarly articles, and his popular writing has appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, Scientific American, Slate, and The Atlantic. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife and children.
 
Full transcript available here (familyproclamations.org).

Your family is...loving? Your family is...hurtful? Your family is...all this and more? If you feel overwhelmed when you think about your family, this episode will help you understand your anxiety and give you evidence-based tools to repair it. 
Dr. Mariel Buqué is a leading specialist in trauma psychology. She says our physical and mental health challenges can be rooted in family trauma passed down through the generations—not just culturally, but even biologically. 
We're talking about her new book, Break the Cycle: A Guide to Healing Intergenerational Trauma.
 
About the Guest
Dr. Mariel Buqué is an Afro-Dominican psychologist who received her doctorate in counseling psychology from Columbia University, where she also trained as a fellow in holistic mental health. She is a world-renowned intergenerational trauma expert.
 
Full transcript available here (familyproclamations.org).

Cat Bohannon says for far too long the story of human evolution has ignored the female body. Her new book offers a sweeping revision of human history. It's an urgent and necessary corrective that will forever change your understanding of birth and why it's more difficult for humans than virtually any other animal species on the planet. 
Her best-selling book is called Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution, and we're talking all about it in this episode. 
 
About the Guest
Cat Bohannon is a researcher and author with a Ph.D. from Columbia University in the evolution of narrative and cognition. Her essays and poems have appeared in Scientific American, Mind, Science Magazine, The Best American Nonrequired Reading, The Georgia Review, The Story Collider, and Poets Against the War. She lives with her family in Seattle.
 
Full transcript available here (familyproclamations.org).

Dad, mom, two kids, a white picket fence, and everybody knows their role. It's the classic nuclear family. I grew up believing this was the one right way to be a family—until I started getting to know real people who didn’t fit that mold. Now we're watching this old nuclear family model explode in real time, but we don't need to hit the panic button. We can let curiosity lead the way. 
 
I'm Blair Hodges, host of Family Proclamations. I'm on a quest to find out everything I can about family, gender identity, and sexuality. I want you to join me. On this podcast I'm talking to best-selling authors about marriage, divorce, cohabitation, single adulthood, parenting, childlessness, adoption, fostering, gender identity, human biology, and lots more. We'll learn  more about different families and identities, past, present, and future. So please get ready to surrender old stereotypes and embrace new perspectives. 
 
There’s no single way to be a family. And every kind of family has something we can learn from.
 
Family Proclamations arrives in January. Follow for updates on IG @famprocs.