Gay fathers by surrogacy: Prejudice, parenting, and well-being of female and male children.

Stigma Experiences, Mental Health, Perceived Parenting Competence, and Parent–Child Relationships Among Lesbian, Gay, and Heterosexual Adoptive Parents in the United States

“…This is aligned with our results above and again may reflect the generally low levels of mental health symptoms and adoption stigma among parents in this sample. It could also be that parents are effective in buffering their relationships with their children from their own individual experiences of difficulty or challenge (e.g., Golombok et al, 2018;Green et al, 2019), reflecting family resilience among minority (i.e., adoptive and LG parent) families (Prendergast and MacPhee, 2018); future research could explore these possibilities further.…”

“…What we know from existing research is that children and their (adoptive) sexual minority parents do face stigma, overt discrimination, and microaggressions based on parental sexual orientation (Bos and Gartrell, 2010;Vyncke et al, 2014;Farr et al, 2016a;Haines et al, 2018;Green et al, 2019). Moreover, these minority stress experiences have been associated with a variety of negative outcomes among sexual minority parent family members, such as lower behavioral adjustment, negative health outcomes, lower well-being, and less positive parenting and coparenting (Tornello et al, 2011;Lick et al, 2013;Crouch et al, 2014Crouch et al, , 2015Carone et al, 2017Carone et al, , 2018Golombok et al, 2018;Calzo et al, 2019;Goldberg et al, 2019;Green et al, 2019). In terms of understanding associations between individual adjustment and homonegative microaggressions in particular, research has demonstrated that it is important to include consideration of past and current experiences, as well as perceptions of their impact (and how this interacts with past or current experiences; Wright and Wegner, 2012).…”

“…Given some previous research examining similar linkages between mental health, parenting, and adoptive family relationships (Goldberg and Smith, 2009;Brodzinsky, 2011;, we hypothesized that greater mental health symptoms and lower perceived parenting competence would be linked to perceptions of greater adoption stigma and lower relationship quality, respectively. Based on our theoretical frameworks of family and minority stress as well as some relevant existing research regarding sexual stigma and homonegative microaggressions as related to LG individual and parent outcomes (Goldberg et al, , 2019Tornello et al, 2011;Wright and Wegner, 2012;Carone et al, 2017;Green et al, 2019), we also anticipated that greater mental health symptoms and lower competence, respectively, would be associated with more microaggressions. 3.…”

Pathways to Fatherhood: Psychological Well-Being Among Israeli Gay Fathers Through Surrogacy, Gay Fathers Through Previous Heterosexual Relationships, and Heterosexual Fathers

“…In light of social, political, and technological developments, gay men are becoming fathers nowadays more than ever before (Carneiro et al, 2017;Carone et al, 2017b). Gay fatherhood has attracted growing research attention in recent years in varied countries (e.g., Tornello et al, 2011;Shenkman and Shmotkin, 2014;Baiocco et al, 2018;Bos et al, 2018), and has focused both on the development of children of gay fathers, alongside the psychological functioning of the parents themselves (e.g., Goldberg et al, 2010;Shmotkin, 2016, 2019;Farr, 2017;Patterson, 2017;Green et al, 2019), yet little attention has been given to the comparison between different paths to gay fatherhood both in the developmental domain of the children and the psychological well-being of the parents (Tasker, 2013). Thus, this study aims to examine the broad concept of psychological well-being (as indicated by parenthood satisfaction, depressive symptoms, life satisfaction, and the Big Five personality dimensions) among three groups of Israeli fathers: gay men who had become fathers through surrogacy, gay fathers through a previous heterosexual relationship, and heterosexual fathers.…”

Parenting and the Adjustment of Children Born to Gay Fathers Through Surrogacy

“…Although there has been a dramatic rise in the number of gay men having children through surrogacy (Berkowitz, ), the creation of gay father families through assisted reproductive technologies is such a recent phenomenon that there is little research on children born in this way. In an uncontrolled, questionnaire‐based study of 68 gay father families with 3‐ to 10‐year‐old children born through gestational surrogacy, the children of gay fathers were reported to show significantly lower levels of adjustment problems compared to data obtained from general population norms, with the daughters of gay fathers appearing to exhibit particularly low levels of internalizing problems (Green, Rubio, Bergman, & Katuzny, ). In a questionnaire‐based study in Italy, gay father families formed through surrogacy did not differ from lesbian mother families formed through donor insemination or heterosexual parent families with naturally conceived children with respect to parent‐reported family functioning or the emotional regulation or adjustment of children aged around 4 years (Baiocco et al., ).…”