Queer Parenting: Adoption
Hello everyone. Got back from a fantastic week with my parents and, most importantly, free babysitting. And this week, I want to continue my discussion on queer parenting by talking about adoption.
But first, I was in New York recently and popped by the New York Public Library (the Schwarzman building) and they had an event of random stuff they have in their library collection. They have an amazing collection of newsletters from LGBTQIA+ organizations, including The Mattachine Society. I took a couple of pictures below; one of the newsletter and one of cards given out by the society around “If you are arrested”. One day I would love to spend time exploring these newsletters in more depth and do research on LGBTQIA+ nonprofit newsletters from the 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s, but for now I hope you find these as interesting as I did.
This week, I wanted to talk about adoption. Adoption is not uniquely an LGBTQIA+ topic; 2-4% of families in the United States adopt. Approximately 20.9% of LGBTQIA+ families with kids created families through adoption. LGBTQIA+ parents are also six times more likely than cisgender/heterosexual parents to foster children.
Adoption is an issue near and dear to my heart because my husband and I adopted our son, Simon (You can read about our adoption process in this twitter thread). Every adoption is different, with different levels of openness, or how much of a relationship the child has with the birth parents and birth family. For ourselves, we not only have to manage our relationship with Simon’s birth mother, but also deal with how much information we want people to have when we have to answer the many questions they have. When you are a same-sex couple, you get lots of questions from people when you meet them, and often have to judge what you want to be public and what you don’t feel like discussing. When I first met with Simon’s pre-school teacher, one of the first things I said was “Yes we’re gay, yes he’s adopted, yes we’re Jewish so there is no Santa Clause and no Jesus. What questions do you have?”. While I like the direct route because I am a New Yorker, this doesn’t work for everyone. One thing I always recommend to organizations working with LGBTQIA+ parents is… don’t ask questions unless you need to know. Allow the parents to not have to explain their situation every time because it get’s exhausting.
LGBTQIA+ parents who adopt experience discrimination. This can come from judges who use the legal system to make adoption harder and more expensive or from agencies. LGBTQIA+ parents sometimes receive higher scrutiny of their parenting skills by agencies. Same-sex male couples, in particular, may have issues getting high quality information from agencies compared to same-sex female and opposite-sex couples. Indeed, some states allow foster care and adoption agencies to discriminate against LGBTQIA+ parents.
How can we help parents who adopt? To start, understand that LGBTQIA+ adoptive or prospective parents may have had to deal with discrimination from other organizations, so showing that your agency is a safe space is important. LGBTQIA+ parents may have to advocate for themselves more than other parents. Human Rights Campaign has resources for how agencies can be more supportive. It is important to send a welcoming message to LGBTQIA+ families in every part of the recruitment materials. Organizations can also have classes or specific paperwork for LGBTQIA+ parents to help them prepare for the unique issues that LGBTQIA+ parents face as well as laws in your specific state that might impact queer parenting. Some resources for queer parents include:
Next week I will talk about surrogacy and the ways we can support LGBTQIA+ parents who use this route towards parenthood. There are many new subscribers so I would love to hear from you about any questions you have or any ways this newsletter can be useful for you. I hope you all have a great week.