Jordan B. Downing

The transition from infertility to adoption: Perceptions of lesbian and heterosexual couples

This study explores how lesbian and heterosexual pre-adoptive couples experience and construct the transition from infertility to adoption as a means to becoming parents. Thirty lesbian couples and 30 heterosexual couples were interviewed about the challenges and benefits they perceived in attempting conception and then later choosing adoption. Although similarities in perspectives emerged between heterosexual and lesbian participants (e.g., regarding the factors that led couples to pursue adoption), lesbians often felt less committed to having a biological child and perceived an easier transition from trying to conceive to adopting. Findings support the notion that, due to their unique relational context, lesbian women may embody more expansive notions about how to create a family that are not predicated on biological relations.

Choices, Challenges, and Tensions

ABSTRACT No research has examined the challenges faced by lesbian women seeking to adopt from the perspective of lesbian couples themselves. The current qualitative study utilized data from 70 women (from 35 same-sex couples) who were in the process of adopting to explore how lesbian women experience and navigate the challenges they encounter during this critical life transition. Ecological, minority stress, and feminist perspectives informed our analysis. Results indicated that many women experienced tensions between their desire to be “out” in the adoption process and the legal and social realities of adoption. Based on their reports, women in this sample faced numerous barriers to adopting but engaged in multiple forms of resistance to legal and social inequities. Women also identified supportive practices by agencies that facilitated the adoption process. Findings suggest the importance of considering lesbian womens experiences as a starting point in understanding how heteronormative social practices shape the experiences of same-sex couples striving to adopt.

Making the Decision: Factors Influencing Gay Men's Choice of an Adoption Path

No research has examined the factors influencing gay male couples’ decision-making processes in choosing a particular type of adoption. The current qualitative study of 32 prospective adoptive male same-sex couples illuminates that, similar to many heterosexual couples seeking to adopt, gay men identify a variety of factors (e.g., race, age, health of their adoptive child) as impacting what type of adoption is most appealing to them. However, this study demonstrates that they also hold unique concerns that are specifically related to their relational status as male same-sex couples. Given their sexual minority status, their decision making is often situated within the context of societal discrimination, which directly impacts the kinds of choices gay men have in choosing an adoption path.

Transgender-Parent Families

Transgender-parent families develop their families within a context of systemic discrimination and marginalization. Because they transgress the heteronormative nuclear family ideal, transgender-parent families may uniquely destabilize traditional gender norms within family relationships. Drawing on interdisciplinary research and theory, the current chapter examines how discrimination may impact transgender parents, their partners, and their children. Attention is given to how the timing of “transitioning” for transgender parents influences individual and family development. Given the diversity of transgender identifications (e.g., male to female; female to male), the current chapter examines how different gender identifications of transgender parents may shape family formation. Lastly, focus is given to exploring how social location, with regard to variables such as race, socioeconomic status, and geographic location, may uniquely impact processes of transitioning as well as the experiences of transgender-parent families more broadly.

Lesbian mothers’ constructions of the division of paid and unpaid labor:

Do lesbian couples resist the (re)gendering of divisions of paid and unpaid labor within the context of biological and nonbiological parenting? In this study we explore how primarily Caucasian, North American lesbian mothers of three-and-a-half-year-old children construct divisions of paid and unpaid labor. We analyze 30 lesbian couples’ narrative constructions of their labor arrangements, examining the ways in which they both transgress and accept traditionally masculine and feminine gendering. At the same time that biological mothers and nonbiological mothers often described differences in their contributions to paid and unpaid labor, they rarely invoked biology as a salient factor in explaining their work/family roles. Our analysis suggests that the ‘egalitarian ethic’ of lesbian women is an over-simplification of the multiple ways that women develop their divisions of labor.