Gay and lesbian adotpion

This is the first study to examine change in depression and anxiety across the first year of adoptive parenthood in same-sex couples 90 couples: 52 lesbian, 38 gay male. Given that sexual minorities uniquely contend with sexual orientation-related stigma, this study examined how both internalized and enacted forms of stigma affect the mental health of lesbians and gay men during the transition to parenthood. In addition, the role of contextual support was examined. Higher perceived workplace support, family support, and relationship quality were related to lower depressive and anxious symptoms at the time of the adoption, and higher perceived friend support was related to lower anxiety symptoms. Lower internalized homophobia and higher perceived neighborhood gay-friendliness were related to lower depressive symptoms. Finally, individuals with high internalized homophobia who lived in states with unfavorable legal climates regarding gay adoption experienced the steepest increases in depressive and anxious symptoms.

We first hear of out LGBTQ parents around the time of World War II, mostly in the context of cases that denied them child custody after divorce from different-sex, cisgender spouses. Several other states continued to ban unmarried couples, though, effectively stopping same-sex couples from adopting until marriage equality became federal law in In the s, too, female couples and single women increasingly began to start their families together through pregnancy. In , the Sperm Bank of California opened as the first fertility clinic in the country to serve this market although many queer people had been doing home inseminations for years before. In , Matt Rice became possibly the first transgender man to give birth in the U. They are our queer parental forebears, regardless. A decade later, the Wisconsin Supreme Court was the first state high court to say a nonbiological mother may seek visitation after separation.

This study aimed to identify the social representations of adoption by homosexual couples in the Brazilian reality. Structured interviews and sociodemographic questionnaires were used and were analyzed using the IRaMuTeQ software, which organized the social representations into classes of lexical proximity. Results showed, a Descending Hierarchical Classification, with two classes in the corpus of same-sex parent adoption and five classes in the corpus about childhood development.

The report of the American Academy of Pediatrics in February 1 supporting the introduction of legislation to allow the adoption by co-parents of children born to lesbian couples sparked enormous controversy not only within the medical profession but among the public as well. Almost without exception, only the mother who gives birth to or adopts the child may currently be the legal parent, even in cases where a couple plan a family together and raise their child in a stable family unit. The academy has taken the view that children in this situation deserve the security of two legally recognised parents in order to promote psychological wellbeing and to enable the child's relationship with the co-mother to continue should the other mother die, become incapacitated, or the couple separate.