“We Were Among the First Non-traditional Families”: Thematic Perceptions of Lesbian Parenting After 25 Years (original) (raw)
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Voices of the Adult Children from Lesbian/Gay Parent Families
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In this paper, we provide an overview of variability across jurisdictions in family law relevant to lesbian and gay parents and their children, showing that some courts have been negatively disposed to these families. We summarize recent research findings suggesting that lesbian and gay parents are as likely as are heterosexual parents to provide home environments that support positive outcomes among children. Research findings suggest that unless and until the weight of evidence can be shown to have shifted, parental sexual orientation should be considered irrelevant to disputes involving child custody, visitation, foster care, and adoption.
Demographic information updated to reflect latest statistics of LGBT coupling and families. Bibliography and citations updated to include new studies and literature. Updated on 01 May 2014. The previous version of this content can be found here. Abstract and Keywords According to U.S. census data, an estimated 270,313 American children were living in households headed by same-sex couples in 2005, and nearly twice that number had a single lesbian or gay parent. Since the 1990s, a quiet revolution has been blooming in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community. More and more lesbians and gay men from all walks of life are becoming parents. LGBT people become parents for some of the same reasons that heterosexual people do. Some pursue parenting as single people and others seek to create a family as a couple; still other LGBT people became parents in a heterosexual relationship. Although there are many common themes between LGBT parenting and heterosexual parenting, there are also some unique features. Unlike their heterosexual counterparts, who couple, get pregnant, and give birth, most LGBT individuals and couples who wish to parent must consider many other variables in deciding whether to become parents because the birth option is not the only option. Definitions Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) individuals and couples who wish to parent must give more careful consideration to how they will become parents and, at the
Demographic Characteristics of Lesbian Parents in the United States
Population Research and Policy Review, 2013
Your article is protected by copyright and all rights are held exclusively by Springer Science +Business Media Dordrecht. This e-offprint is for personal use only and shall not be selfarchived in electronic repositories. If you wish to self-archive your article, please use the accepted manuscript version for posting on your own website. You may further deposit the accepted manuscript version in any repository, provided it is only made publicly available 12 months after official publication or later and provided acknowledgement is given to the original source of publication and a link is inserted to the published article on Springer's website. The link must be accompanied by the following text: "The final publication is available at link.springer.com". Abstract Most research on lesbian families draws on either nonrepresentative samples or on representative samples of female-partner households. In contrast, this article uses individual-level, nationally representative survey data to provide a demographic description of lesbian parents in the United States. Pooling data from the 2002 and 2006-2010 rounds of the National Survey of Family Growth yielded a sample of 15,784 women aged 20-44 years, about 1.3 % of whom are lesbians.
2020
LGBTQ people of color in North America are raising children in significant numbers and are more likely than are White LGBTQ people to have children under 18 living in their homes. Emerging data point as well to significant numbers of queer parents globally, including many queer people who are raising children in the Global South and who are often left out of the discourse about LGBTQ-parent families. Rather than simply adding such families to existing models, scholars need to radically rethink the assumptions and models that we have built based on narrow samples of White, North American lesbian and gay parents. This chapter highlights theoretical insights and themes from a growing body of work on LGBTQ parenting in US communities of color and in global and transnational contexts. We explore demographic characteristics, structural inequalities, pathways to parenthood, and the rich variation in ways that heteronormative definitions of family are constructed and contested in and beyond...