Your Family, My Family

Overview

Your Family, My Family is a 1980 picture book by Joan E. Drescher, published by Walker. Public cataloging describes it as a book about several kinds of families and the strengths of family life. The Mechanics catalog and later bibliographies identify a two-mother family within that wider frame, making the item historically important without making it a single-topic lesbian-family book. Its value is chronological and structural. It shows same-gender-parent representation appearing inside a broad many-family format before better-known titles centered one child with lesbian mothers. The record is strongest when read with later concept books and centered family stories, not as an unqualified first claim.^{[1][2][5][6][7]}

A Many-Family Frame

The book's representational strategy is broad rather than centered. It describes different households and family arrangements, with the two-mother family appearing as one example among others. That frame is historically useful because it shows inclusion through social taxonomy: the child reader encounters family variation as part of ordinary life. The item therefore differs from later picture books that focus the whole plot on a child explaining two mothers or two fathers to peers.^[1][2][5][8]

Bibliographic Afterlife

The title survives in several kinds of public record: library cataloging, curriculum bibliographies, school-library research, and historical essays about early LGBTQ-family picture books. Those traces are not the same as a full reception history, but they are meaningful. They show that educators, librarians, and collectors continued to notice the book's same-gender-parent example after its original publication. In this case, bibliography is itself part of the object's story.^[2][5][6][8]

Chronology Without Overclaiming

Several secondary sources place Your Family, My Family early in the history of picture books with lesbian or gay family content. That chronology matters, but the page avoids unqualified first-language because boundaries differ by genre, country, and definition. The safer claim is stronger anyway: this 1980 book documents a broad family-diversity mode that predates many widely known centered LGBTQ-family titles. It helps visitors see that representation did not begin in only one form.^[6][7][5]

Contrast With Centered Titles

The collection can use this item to compare two forms of representation. In Your Family, My Family, the two-mother family appears within a catalog of many households. In Heather Has Two Mommies and later classroom stories, the family structure becomes the main narrative situation. Neither form is inherently more important. Together they show different ways children were invited to recognize family difference: through lists, examples, school conversations, direct plots, and ordinary picture-book description.^[1][7][6]

Timeline

1. 1980PublicationWorldCat and bookseller records place Your Family, My Family with Walker in 1980.^[2][3]
2. 1990Curriculum bibliographyA Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute curriculum unit included the book among family-life resources.^[8]
3. 1995School-library researchAn ERIC-indexed paper listed the title in a bibliography for children living in lesbian and gay families.^[5]
4. 2013-2014Historical placementCollector and university-center essays later placed the book in histories of early LGBTQ-family picture books.^[6][7]

Edition Notes

Known public records describe a 1980 Walker title, with binding and exact copy details to be confirmed from the held object.

Citation

Your Family, My Family. Joan E. Drescher. Walker, 1980. Tarpey-Schwed LGBT Families Children's Book Special Collection, Mechanics' Institute. Collection ID: KB-115.

Sources

Cover image from Open Library.

1. Local collection catalog record for Your Family, My Family · catalog
2. WorldCat record for Your Family, My Family · library_catalog
3. Open Library ISBN record for Your Family, My Family · library_api
4. Goodreads record for Your Family, My Family · book_database
5. ERIC, Children Who Grow Up with Gay or Lesbian Parents · education_research
6. Book Club of California Quarterly, Summer 2013 · historical_essay
7. Worlds of Words, Picture Books with LGBT Characters · university_center
8. Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute curriculum unit · curriculum
9. Open Library cover image for Your Family, My Family · image