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

Abstract

Findings are presented on a study of 40 gay father families created through surrogacy and a comparison group of 55 lesbian mother families created through donor insemination with a child aged 3–9 years. Standardized interview, observational and questionnaire measures of stigmatization, quality of parent–child relationships, and children's adjustment were administered to parents, children, and teachers. Children in both family types showed high levels of adjustment with lower levels of children's internalizing problems reported by gay fathers. Irrespective of family type, children whose parents perceived greater stigmatization and children who experienced higher levels of negative parenting showed higher levels of parent‐reported externalizing problems. The findings contribute to theoretical understanding of the role of family structure and family processes in child adjustment.

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

“…Children also did not differ as a function of family type (lesbian, gay, or heterosexual parents) in their reports of parentchild relationship quality when they were in middle childhood (W2); children generally described high-quality relationships with their adoptive parents. Our finding aligns with the broader literature on child outcomes, parenting, and family relationships among LG parent families indicating healthy and close parent-child relationships with no differences as compared to heterosexual parent families, further underscoring the greater significance of family processes over family structure to individual and family adjustment (Erich et al, 2009b;Golombok et al, 2014Golombok et al, , 2018Carone et al, 2018;McConnachie et al, 2019). Previous studies, however, have generally assessed parent-child relationships from parents' perspectives or via video-recorded observations of parent-child interaction (with the exception of McConnachie et al's interview-based study with children in middle childhood-average age of 11 years).…”

“…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).…”

“…Indeed, few differences in outcomes have been uncovered in comparing children in LG parent families versus those in heterosexual parent families (Bos et al, 2016;Farr, 2017;Patterson, 2017;Calzo et al, 2019). LG parents, including LG adoptive parents, demonstrate high levels of effectiveness and competence in their roles as parents and healthy psychological adjustment as compared with their cisgender heterosexual parent counterparts (Bos et al, 2004a;Goldberg and Smith, 2009;Golombok et al, 2014Golombok et al, , 2018Farr, 2017;Calzo et al, 2019). Moreover, studies of LG parents (including adoptive parents specifically) have described relatively few mental health symptoms and low psychological distress, below clinical cutoffs, and often failed to uncover differences in comparison to heterosexual parents (Goldberg and Smith, 2011;Lavner et al, 2014;Calzo et al, 2019).…”

Cross‐border surrogacy: Experiences of heterosexual and gay parents in Sweden

“…2 Research on the experiences of gay father families using surrogacy is still limited, but recent studies found no differences in parental and child well-being when comparing gay fathers following surrogacy with lesbian parents using sperm donation. [3][4][5] Surrogacy with own and/or donor gametes is an option for heterosexual couples due to medical indications, such as the absence of uterus functional, 1 and it is the only option for gay couples who desire genetic relatedness without entering co-parenting arrangements. Parents following third-party reproduction are recommended to disclose the mode of conception to their offspring, as information about one's genetic heritage is regarded as a fundamental right and relevant to identity a information.…”