For Same Sex Couples, a Tale of Two Paths to Parenting

via HuffPost Gay Voices, by Gary J. Gates

The weekly adventures of Modern Family's gay parents Mitchell and Cameron highlight a common contemporary media image of gay parenting: wealthy, urban, white gay men raising an adopted child.

However, U.S. Census Bureau data suggest that same-sex couples raising children are substantially more diverse than these media images. Notably, the data show big differences between same-sex couples who adopt and other same-sex couples.

While those who adopt look more like Mitch and Cam, those who are raising biological or stepchildren are younger, more racially and ethnically diverse, and have lower incomes.

The Cam and Mitchell version of adoptive parenting is actually not yet the norm among same-sex couples. While more than 15,000 are currently raising an adopted child under age 18 (according to my analyses of data from the 2010 American Community Survey), nearly 74,000 same-sex couples are raising a biological or stepchild.

Demographically, Cam and Mitchell are actually pretty typical of same-sex adoptive parents, but same-sex couples raising biological or stepchildren have substantially different demographic characteristics.

For example, same-sex couples with biological or step children show evidence of economic disadvantage. In 2010 they had lower average household incomes than their different-sex counterparts ($82,000 vs. $92,500), and were more than twice as likely to be receiving public assistance.

Conversely, adoptive same-sex parents are economically advantaged. They had an average household income of nearly $157,000 compared to $104,000 among their different-sex counterparts.

Several demographic characteristics explain why so many same-sex couples with biological or stepchildren face economic difficulties. First, they are relatively young. On average, same-sex parents raising biological or stepchildren are nearly two years younger than comparable different-sex couples and six years younger than same-sex adoptive parents.

Many individuals in same-sex couples raising biological or stepchildren have lower levels of education. Among individuals in same-sex couples who have less than a high school degree, one in three (33 percent) are raising biological or stepchildren, while just 5 percent have an adopted child.

It's the opposite for those with a college degree. Less than one in ten (9 percent) are raising biological or stepchildren, but a third of those parents have an adopted child.

Raising biological or stepchildren is substantially more common among racial and ethnic minorities, but adoption is most common among white people. African Americans in same-sex couples are three times more likely, and Latinos and Latinas 2.5 times more likely, than their white counterparts to have biological or stepchildren (29 percent, 23 percent, and 9 percent, respectively).

But white same-sex couples with children are three times as likely as same-sex couples with a non-white partner to be raising an adopted child (18 percent vs. 6 percent).

Same-sex couples with biological and stepchildren are more common in the socially conservative South and Midwest, where LGBT people likely come out later in life and are more likely to have children from a different-sex relationship earlier in life.

In those regions 14 percent of same-sex couples are raising a biological or stepchild, compared with just 11 percent in the Northeast and West. It is an odd irony that social conservatism likely contributed to the formation of many of these LGBT families.

Conversely, adoption among same-sex couples is more common in the socially liberal Northeast and West, where the legal climate is more supportive of LGBT families. Among same-sex couples with children, 20 percent have an adopted child in the Northeast, compared with 14 percent in the West and just 12 percent in the Midwest and 11 percent in the South.

The demographic diversity that we observe among same-sex parents should prompt us to broaden our understanding of the most pressing issues facing LGBT families. They likely face challenges associated with economic disadvantage including poverty, health care, nutrition, and access to quality schools.


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Why Gay Parents May Be the Best Parents

via Yahoo News, by Stephanie Pappas

Gay parents "tend to be more motivated, more committed than heterosexual parents on average, because they chose to be parents," said Abbie Goldberg, a psychologist at Clark University in Massachusetts who researches gay and lesbian parenting.

Gays and lesbians rarely become parents by accident, compared with an almost 50 percent accidental pregnancy rate among heterosexuals, Goldberg said. "That translates to greater commitment on average and more involvement."

Adopting the neediest

Gay adoption recently caused controversy in Illinois, where Catholic Charities adoption services decided in November to cease offering services because the state refused funding unless the groups agreed not to discriminate against gays and lesbians. Rather than comply, Catholic Charities closed up shop.

Catholic opposition aside, research suggests that gay and lesbian parents are actually a powerful resource for kids in need of adoption.

According to a 2007 report by the Williams Institute and the Urban Institute, 65,000 kids were living with adoptive gay parents between 2000 and 2002, with another 14,000 in foster homes headed by gays and lesbians. (There are currently more than 100,000 kids in foster care in the U.S.)

An October 2011 report by Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute found that, of gay and lesbian adoptions at more than 300 agencies, 10 percent of the kids placed were older than 6 — typically a very difficult age to adopt out.

About 25 percent were older than 3. Sixty percent of gay and lesbian couples adopted across races, which is important given that minority children in the foster system tend to linger. More than half of the kids adopted by gays and lesbians had special needs.

The report didn't compare the adoption preferences of gay couples directly with those of heterosexual couples, said author David Brodzinsky, research director at the Institute and co-editor of "Adoption By Lesbians and Gay Men: A New Dimension of Family Diversity" (Oxford University Press, 2011).

But research suggests that gays and lesbians are more likely than heterosexuals to adopt older, special-needs and minority children, he said.

Part of that could be their own preferences, and part could be because of discrimination by adoption agencies that puts more difficult children with what caseworkers see as "less desirable" parents.

No matter how you slice it, Brodzinsky told LiveScience, gays and lesbians are highly interested in adoption as a group.

The 2007 report by the Urban Institute also found that more than half of gay men and 41 percent of lesbians in the U.S. would like to adopt.

That adds up to an estimated 2 million gay people who are interested in adoption. It's a huge reservoir of potential parents who could get kids out of the instability of the foster system, Brodzinsky said.

"When you think about the 114,000 children who are freed for adoption who continue to live in foster care and who are not being readily adopted, the goal is to increase the pool of available, interested and well-trained individuals to parent these children," Brodzinsky said.

In addition, Brodzinsky said, there's evidence to suggest that gays and lesbians are especially accepting of open adoptions, where the child retains some contact with his or her birth parents.

And the statistics bear out that birth parents often have no problem with their kids being raised by same-sex couples, he added.

"Interestingly, we find that a small percentage, but enough to be noteworthy, [of birth mothers] make a conscious decision to place with gay men, so they can be the only mother in their child's life," Brodzinsky said.

Good parenting

Research has shown that the kids of same-sex couples — both adopted and biological kids — fare no worse than the kids of straight couples on mental health, social functioning, school performance and a variety of other life-success measures.

In a 2010 review of virtually every study on gay parenting, New York University sociologist Judith Stacey and University of Southern California sociologist Tim Biblarz found no differences between children raised in homes with two heterosexual parents and children raised with lesbian parents.

"There's no doubt whatsoever from the research that children with two lesbian parents are growing up to be just as well-adjusted and successful" as children with a male and a female parent," Stacey told LiveScience.

There is very little research on the children of gay men, so Stacey and Biblarz couldn't draw conclusions on those families.

But Stacey suspects that gay men "will be the best parents on average," she said.

That's a speculation, she said, but if lesbian parents have to really plan to have a child, it's even harder for gay men. Those who decide to do it are thus likely to be extremely committed, Stacey said. Gay men may also experience fewer parenting conflicts, she added.

Most lesbians use donor sperm to have a child, so one mother is biological and the other is not, which could create conflict because one mother may feel closer to the kid.

"With gay men, you don't have that factor," she said. "Neither of them gets pregnant, neither of them breast-feeds, so you don't have that asymmetry built into the relationship."

The bottom line, Stacey said, is that people who say children need both a father and a mother in the home are misrepresenting the research, most of which compares children of single parents to children of married couples.

Two good parents are better than one good parent, Stacey said, but one good parent is better than two bad parents. And gender seems to make no difference. While you do find broad differences between how men and women parent on average, she said, there is much more diversity within the genders than between them.

"Two heterosexual parents of the same educational background, class, race and religion are more like each other in the way they parent than one is like all other women and one is like all other men," she said.

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Telenovelas, Erections, and Raising Sexually Healthy Teens

via HuffPost Gay Voices, by Stephen T. Russell, Ph.D

When Enrique first joined our family, we agreed to one hour of television per night. He was 13 and had been used to non-stop TV, so this was a big change.

He didn't resist, but I realize now that to him, one hour was a shocking restriction. Spanish was still his dominant language, and he chose his then-favorite nightly telenovela, Sin senos no hay paraíso.

I disguised my horror when he provided the translation (he said "boobies," which my partner and I immediately corrected with anatomically correct English).

We were just becoming a family, and we needed time to simply be together, so I committed to watching Sin senos with him each night. (I never, ever watch television.)

We sat on the sofa and watched; in a few days or weeks we had a habit of sitting with my arm around him, and during the commercials he would update me with translations of the plot.

For my part I would tease, question, and even scold him about the glamorized portrayals of sex and violence. And over time, Sin senos opened up the possibility of talking about not only sexism and violence but gender, relationships, and, of course, sex.

Much like driving in the car, watching television is an ideal time for parents and teens to talk about complicated topics.

In both settings there is often great prompting material (lyrics from popular songs, or news and world events).

The key is that such discussions can happen without eye contact: focused on the highway or some television commercial, one can muster the nerve to confront the edges of embarrassment or shame.

One night, leaning into me, with my arm around his shoulder, he turned his head into my chest in apparent embarrassment and held out a fist. He blurted, "Why does it always go like this?" and from his fist poked out his index finger.

I asked him what he meant. He repeated his question and gesture: "Why does it always go like this?"

I asked if he was talking about his penis (he nodded), and I explained what an erection is. I sighed, even chuckled a little, and told him that it was absolutely completely, totally normal, that at age 13 nearly every boy in the world experiences what he was experiencing.

"Really?" he asked? Unequivocally yes, I answered. He said, "But it happens a lot," to which I replied, "And that's totally normal." And he said, "I mean a lot." And I said, "Really? It's normal."

And he said, "I mean... a lot." And I said, "I promise you, at your age, 20 times a day is still completely normal."

I laughed a bit, but he kept his head in my chest, not looking at me. He was clearly worried and embarrassed. I asked whether he was OK, and what he thought about it.

My memory of his gesture with his finger, and of that initial dialogue, is so crystal clear -- and yet I can't remember the words he used when he told me that his uncle had told him that he was sick, that it was a sign that he was gay, that it meant that he was a sinner.

I could hardly bear to hear him say it. Whatever he told me, with his face in my chest, conveyed desperate, questioning shame.

Over the following commercial breaks and later that evening, we talked about what it means to be a boy at 13.

I told him that he wasn't the only boy at school to have unwelcome erections at inopportune times; that it was not only totally normal but healthy; that it was the same for heterosexual boys and gay boys and therefore had nothing to do with being gay; that he was not sick; and that his uncle had not told the truth.

What I do remember is how his body felt like it melted in tired relief.

I'm supposed to be an expert on adolescent sexuality -- but I never fully understood that every single day, boys and girls everywhere are taught unthinkable shame and guilt.

But there are other visions for youth and sexuality; for example, the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS) affirms that sexuality is a fundamental part of being human, and its new strategic plan puts sexual health and well-being as the leading vision for creating a sexually healthy America. Shouldn't that be our vision for young people?


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A look at gay adoption

via So So Gay, By Claire Connor

It has become almost impossible to get from cover to cover in an LGBT magazine without being confronted by advertisements that claim to assist the community in creating a family.

Countless services declare their ability to make the process not only seamless, but also, in their glossy spreads, glamorous. Photographs of cute, giggling babies veil the serious side to starting a family.There are a great many children in care who need to be adopted.

And what are these advertisements offering? Rarely adoption. These agencies want to make money. Purchase a womb in the form of a surrogate, purchase some sperm, purchase a turkey baster (or rather, ‘insemination kit’); purchase pretty much anything one needs to create a baby. What gets forgotten, however, is the option of starting a family with a child that already exists. There is a danger of people who read these magazines getting the impression that adoption no longer happens.

The gay press undoubtedly has a responsibility to recognise the fact that, due to their need for revenue, they are in danger of becoming responsible for a trend in expensive surrogacy and co-parenting arrangements when there are a great many children in care who need to be adopted. It is a particularly important issue to address, when the process is now simpler than ever for gay people.

In 2002, the Adoption and Children Act passed into law and it became legal for unmarried couples, including gay couples, to apply for joint adoption. The law came into effect in 2005. Since 2007, other laws have been in place which make it unlawful for any providers of goods and services to discriminate on the grounds of sexual orientation. These continue to be protected under the Equality Act 2010.

Although gay men and lesbians will face a number of the same issues when thinking about starting a family, the obvious biological advantage that women hold means they are far more likely to go down the ‘natural’ route. Sadly, adoption is not always the first choice.

Gay men are more likely to consider adopting a child. Peter, 50, and David, 46, met in a London nightclub in 1997. Peter was living in Scotland at the time, but had been considering moving to London. Meeting David was the push he needed. After a few years together, the couple started to seriously think about starting a family. ‘Heterosexual contemporaries were starting to have kids so you start to feel that it is that time in your life’, Peter says. Over three years ago, the couple adopted biological brothers Carlos and PJ when they were six and two and a half years old respectively.

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Adoptions by Gay Couples Rise, Despite Barriers

via The New York Times by Sabrina Tavernise

Growing numbers of gay couples across the country are adopting, according to census data, despite an uneven legal landscape that can leave their children without the rights and protections extended to children of heterosexual parents.

Same-sex couples are explicitly prohibited from adopting in only two states — Utah and Mississippi — but they face significant legal hurdles in about half of all other states, particularly because they cannot legally marry in those states.

Despite this legal patchwork, the percentage of same-sex parents with adopted children has risen sharply. About 19 percent of same-sex couples raising children reported having an adopted child in the house in 2009, up from just 8 percent in 2000, according to Gary Gates, a demographer at the Williams Institute on Sexual Orientation Law at the University of California, Los Angeles.

“The trend line is absolutely straight up,” said Adam Pertman, executive director of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, a nonprofit organization working to change adoption policy and practice. “It’s now a reality on the ground.”

That reality has been shaped by what advocates for gay families say are two distinct trends: the need for homes for children currently waiting for adoption — now about 115,000 in the United States — and the increased acceptance of gays and lesbians in American society.

The American family does not look the same as it did 30 years ago, they argue, and the law has just been slow to catch up.

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Neil Patrick Harris, Mickey Mouse, Babies, Apple Pie, and the Power of "Normal"

via PopEater, by John Mitchell

Over the weekend, Neil Patrick Harris and his partner of six years, actor David Burtka, announced that they will welcome twins into their family this fall. "So, get this: David and I are expecting twins this fall. We're super excited/nervous/thrilled. Hoping the press can respect our privacy..." Harris tweeted shortly after E! Online broke the news.

When the twins arrive, Harris and Burtka will become the highest-profile gay parents in the country. For the gay community, this is a very good thing. Harris has defied the odds since coming out of the closet; his career has never been better, and by all accounts he is arguably among the more universally-beloved actors working today. People love NPH. He and Burtka exude a normalcy uncommon in media representations of gay men, and with their committed relationship and career successes, they continue to tear down the stereotypes that haunt the gay community and keep GLBT persons from enjoying the same rights and freedoms as their straight allies.

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The rise of the gay dad

via the Guardian.co.uk, by Rebecca Seal

Read a number of personal stories of gay men who have adopted children, or are in the process - really fabulous.

It took nearly three and a half years for us to adopt. The day we first met our boys was a shell shock. I remember naively asking about what happens if it doesn't go well and they're not the right ones – do we choose again? And the adoption staff said: "No, no, no – we've found the boys, you've all agreed that this might be a good match, it's happening, there's no going back. These are the ones." We went to the foster home with real trepidation – and because it was a foster home I had this vision of it being a run-down old house and lots of kids and a maternal lady in a pinafore. It was actually an immaculate house. We went up to this glass door and although we'd seen pictures of the boys we had no idea what they were really like, and there they were jumping up at the door, like puppies. They were two stunning little boys, just fantastic. It's a really artificial set-up of course, manufactured by the social workers, who say you'll have a cup of tea and you'll get to talk to them, but you mustn't pick them up, give them space, don't get too close. But it was a great three-quarters of an hour. And afterwards in the car, I said to my partner: "Let's not make too big a thing of this" and he looked at me and said: "You're joking? This is huge." We just knew as soon as we went in that it was going to work.

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Gay Families Find the Bronx Is a Place to Call Home

[we've been meaning to post this item for a week - here it is!]

Julian Rodriguez, left, and his partner, Joel Jusino, at a relative’s home with
Mr. Rodriguez’s daughters Leanne, 9, left, and Julie, 11.

For Julian Rodriguez, it was never a question: He has lived in the borough since he was 3. “I feel more comfortable because the demographic is more what I’m used to, with my neighbors playing dominoes and the Spanish music,” said Mr. Rodriguez, who has two daughters from a previous marriage. “I feel like I’m at home with my culture.”

There may be as many reasons for same-sex couples to settle in the Bronx as there are same-sex couples there — almost 3,000, according to a demographic snapshot by the Williams Institute on Sexual Orientation Law and Public Policy at the University of California, Los Angeles. Forty-nine percent of those couples have children. Many said they chose the Bronx for similar reasons as their straight neighbors: affordability, space, racial affinity, familiarity.

Read the whole article on the New York Times.

S.F.'s same-sex couples asked to adopt foster kids

Gino VanGundy lived in more than 20 foster homes in 14 years as a child. Placement after placement, VanGundy wished someone would keep and love him forever.

"I wouldn't have cared if my adoptive parents were a married man and woman, two gay guys or a single woman," said VanGundy, now 36. "If you have just one person who believes in you, you are going to make it."

With this intimate knowledge of foster children's needs, VanGundy and his partner, Chris Moffet-VanGundy, are adopting a 16-year-old foster girl whose birth parents are dead, giving her and her yellow Labrador, Reynolds, a permanent home -- and two dads who promise to keep and love her forever.

Today, the San Francisco Department of Human Services is starting a campaign [Adoption SF] to recruit more people like the VanGundys to adopt foster kids, especially teens, who are among the hardest to place. The agency sees gays and lesbians as an underutilized pool of potential parents.

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