Presentation: Risk and Resilience in Adoptive Gay & Lesbian Families

A summary of my recent talk @ Birkeck, University of London as part of the New Frontiers of Family seminars, April 20, 2016.

Research on children’s development in gay and lesbian parented families began in the 1980’s, brought about by custodial disputes between parents of which one of them has disclosed being gay or lesbian. Since then, studies comparing matched groups of children brought up in same-sex and different-sex parented families have shown little or no evidence that children who grow up in same-sex parented families do not fare as well as their peers. In fact, studies have found that it is family processes, and not parental sexual orientation, that link into children’s psychological adjustment. Nevertheless, same-sex parented families are faced with unique challenges brought about by social stigma that may have repercussions for the stability of the family. Literature has identified a number of risk factors that may act against children’s well-being in planned gay and lesbian parented families. The parents may have internalized societal stigma or adopted negative coping skills to deal with social discrimination, which may negatively affect their parenting practices. Furthermore, the children may have to cope with societal stigma and heterosexism in it various forms, and if they were adopted from care, there are additional biological, environmental and psychoemotional risk factors related to their pre-adoption histories. In fact, children who were adopted by same-sex couples are more likely to start out with more risk factors than their peers who were adopted by different-sex couples. However, considering that both parents and children in gay and lesbian parented families are generally happy and well adjusted, some studies have started to look at how these families manage to be resilient and counteract the effects of the risk factors. This talk will present the results of an online cross-cultural survey conducted in Portugal and in the United Kingdom about risk and resilience in gay and lesbian parented families formed through adoption, and uncover intrafamilial and extrafamilial protective factors against the effects of social stigma on family well-being.