The Kids

The Children of LGBTQ Parents in the USA

With an introduction by Benoit Denizet-Lewis

A stunning new photobook featuring more than fifty portraits of children brought up by gay parents in America, the sixth in a groundbreaking series that looks at LGBTQ communities around the world

“My mom is gay. But it took me a long time to say those words out loud.”
—Gabriela Herman

Judges, academics, and activists keep wondering how children are impacted by having gay parents. Maybe it’s time to ask the kids. For the past four years, award-winning photographer Gabriela Herman, whose mother came out when Herman was in high school and was married in one of Massachusetts’s first legal same-sex unions, has been photographing and interviewing children and young adults in America with one or more parent who identifies as lesbian, gay, trans, or queer. Building on images featured in a major article for the New York Times Sunday Review, and The Guardian and working with COLAGE, the only national organization focusing on children with LGBTQ parents, The Kids brings a vibrant energy and sensitivity to a wide range of experiences.

Some of the children Herman photographed were adopted, some conceived by artificial insemination. Many are children of divorce. Some were raised in urban areas, other in the rural Midwest and all over the map. These parents and children juggled silence and solitude with a need to defend their families on the playground, at church, and at holiday gatherings.

This is their story.

The Kids was designed by Emerson, Wajdowicz Studios (EWS).

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Praise

“In this book of powerful photographs and moving texts, Gabriela Herman traces the reality of gay families in America: who the kids are, how they think of their parents, what they look like. It’s a testament to diversity, inclusion, and integrity, a book full of both pride and introspection, an important document for our time.”
—Andrew Solomon, author of Far from the Tree
“I vividly remember the first time I saw Gabriela’s portraits of The Kids . . . that feeling of connection, being seen, and being given a voice through this stunning visual articulation of who we are—as diverse as 6 million people can be, as united in our shared experiences as any who share a meaningful identity can be. This is more than a book of portraits. It is a narrative of a culture—our culture—created by a photographer who clearly knows our souls.”
—Annie Van Avery, executive director of COLAGE
“I am so grateful for Gabriela Herman’s book. For a long time many of us kids of LGBTQ parents have felt caught between two worlds, a little too queer for the straight community and at times a little too straight for the queer community. But here, in this beautiful collection of portraits, there is irrefutable evidence that we are, in fact, our own community. Though our origin stories are thrillingly diverse we have all known the sting of stigma and we all share a radical perspective on what family and gender can be. It’s exciting to see ‘the kids’ now grown up, stepping out of the shadows and taking on the world.”
—Alysia Abbott, author of Fairyland
“Here, in Gabriela Herman’s amazing collection of photographs and their companion stories, are our sons and daughters, in all their complex, contradictory, celebratory splendor. Inspiring, meditative, and heartfelt, The Kids shows our children for the precious souls they are, and extols the glories of their diverse, human families.”
—Jennifer Boylan, author of She’s Not There and Long Black Veil

Goodreads Reviews