“She’s your mom.” “They’re your family.” “Blood is thicker than water.”

For generations, these familiar idioms have illustrated what Rin Reczek and Emma Bosley-Smith, co-authors of the 2022 book “Families We Keep: LGBTQ People and Their Enduring Bonds with Parents” (NYU Press), term compulsory kinship: the social expectation that biological and legal family ties must be preserved at all costs.