Experts available on gays and lesbians conceiving children via surrogacy or alternative insemination
Newswise — Gay and lesbian couples never become pregnant by accident. However, their methods of achieving pregnancy are many and varied. A growing number of lesbian couples are choosing alternative insemination of one partner; and a growing number of gay male couples are choosing gestational surrogacy (fertilizing an egg contributed by one woman and arranging with a different woman to carry the fetus until birth).
These options carry with them many challenges that test the individual, couple, familial, and societal understandings of the family's legal and psychological legitimacy. Issues involve:"¢ Which partner will contribute genetically to the creation of the baby?"¢ Where will the other half of the genetic material come from?"¢ What will be the relationship (if any) of the commercial sperm or egg donor to the child in the future?"¢ Does "psychological co-creation" of a baby lead to equivalent bonding with the child after birth for the two intended parents, even though only one of them contributed genetic material?"¢ After birth, which adult(s) will have legal custody? "¢ If the non-biological lesbian/gay co-parent is unable to adopt the child through a second-parent adoption, does this legal ambiguity affect the relationship between child and co-parent?"¢ What will the parents tell their families of origin? Their friends? Their co-workers? Their neighbors? Their pediatricians? Their children's school systems later? And what sorts of reactions do the parents and child typically encounter?"¢ What will the parents tell the child about her or his origins as the child grows up? And will the child have an opportunity to meet the non-parenting egg donor, surrogate, or sperm donor?Unlike most heterosexual couples who view surrogacy as a last resort, many same-sex couples embrace medically assisted reproductive technologies as their most desirable entry to parenthood. This new frontier is the leading edge of a revolution in parenting and in vitro fertilization (IVF) procedures that is broadening procreative horizons for the entire society. As in so many other areas of American life, the gay community is at the frontier in finding creative solutions to the more general problem of a couple's inability to conceive children and to challenges of raising children in nontraditional family configurations—when the typical married mom and dad family is not in the cards.
If you'd like to explore a story on this unusual and intriguing topic, you can contact two psychology professors who have written a peer-reviewed journal article discussing the issues facing same-sex couples using alternative insemination or surrogacy. It was published in The Journal of GLBT Family Studies (Vol. 3, No. 2/3, 2007, pp. 81-104). The article also was published simultaneously as a chapter in Gay and Lesbian Parenting: New Directions, edited by Fiona Tasker and Jerry Bigner (Haworth Press, 2007).
The authors are Valory Mitchell, PhD, senior research scholar, and Robert-Jay Green, PhD, founding executive director, of the Rockway Institute for LGBT Research and Public Policy at the California School of Professional Psychology (CSPP), which is a graduate division of Alliant International University in San Francisco. Both authors are psychology professors at CSPP/Alliant and are experts in same-sex couple research, lesbian/gay parenting research, and couple/family therapy with lesbian and gay populations.
You can contact Dr. Mitchell at [email protected] or Dr. Green at [email protected].
For a copy of the article or to arrange telephone or broadcast media interviews, contact Rick Moore at the Rockway Institute, [email protected], Tel. 415-314-8952
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