The project Families of Choice in Poland sheds light on the actual practices of queer kinship in Poland. We draw on diverse findings from this research. The following are investigated more closely:   (1.)Quantitative study concerning the family life of 3085 LGBT people(2.)Ethnographic studies of 21 families observed for one month: we compare 2 lesbian planned families and 2 step-families(3.)Focus group interviews with lesbian mothers and their children.By focusing on LGBT families’ ways of describing their kin-relations and reproductive choices we are particularly concerned with their struggle to make sense of their own family configurations and their need to be recognised. It is important in Poland where there is no legalisation of same-sex relationships, ART is strictly  for heterosexual couples, and the very existence of non-heterosexuals parents is silenced. In this context LGBT families develop different strategies of displaying which reveal contradictions between biological and social relatedness. In our presentation we will focus on those ambivalences. Studying the family maps of our participants we will demonstrate their vision of the family and how it is (re)negotiated between different family members. We will show how through different family practices lesbian mothers and their children are often “trapped” in an old kinship imaginary/scenario and  nomenclature while at the same time creatively transgressing them. By doing this we intend to show that the main feature of queer kinship lies in its own plasticity and betweeness of  blood and choice.

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