Birth Family Contact Experiences Among Lesbian, Gay, and Heterosexual Adoptive Parents With School‐Age Children

• Author: Rachel H. Farr,Harold D. Grotevant,Yelena Ravvina
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/fare.12295
• Date: 01 February 2018
• Published date: 01 February 2018

R H. F University of Kentucky

Y R  H D. G University of Massachusetts Amherst

Birth Family Contact Experiences Among Lesbian,

Gay, and Heterosexual Adoptive Parents With

School-Age Children

Objective: To examine how lesbian, gay, and

heterosexual adoptive parents navigate open-

ness dynamics with children’s birth family

across a 5-year period, when children are

preschool- to school-age.

Background: Few studies regarding birth fam-

ily contact have included longitudinal data as

well as a sample of adoptive parents of varying

sexual orientations. Thus, this study used a mul-

tiprong theoretical approach grounded in emo-

tional distance regulation, families of choice,

and gender theory.

Method: A mixed-methods approach with

longitudinal quantitative survey and quali-

tative interview data from 106 lesbian, gay,

and heterosexual adoptive parent families was

employed to examine the type of contact, its

frequency, who was involved, perceptions of

this contact, and the extent to which formal

agreements exist between adoptive and birth

families regarding contact.

Results: Findings revealedvariations in the sta-

tus and perceptions of contact across adoptive

families. We also discovered that many lesbian

and gay adoptive parents reported that birth

Department of Psychology, University of Kentucky,

012-B Kastle Hall, 171 Funkhouser Drive, Lexington, KY

40506-0044 (rachel.farr@uky.edu).

Key Words: Adoption, birth family contact, lesbian and gay,

mixed-methods, openness arrangements, sexual orientation.

parents had intentionally selected a same-sex

adoptive couple, and birth parents appeared to

have distinct reasons for this choice.

Conclusion: Although some differences in birth

family contact distinguished lesbian, gay, and

heterosexual adoptive parent families, these

families generally appeared more similar than

different.

Implications: Implications—particularly a

need for demonstrated competencies in adop-

tion openness—are discussed for adoption

professionals in policy, practice, and legal

realms.

The rate of lesbian and gay (LG) adults adopt-

ing children in the United States doubled across

the rst decade of the millennium (Gates, 2011),

and LG adoptive parents have also become

more visible in the United States (Pertman &

Howard, 2011). Although there is growing liter-

ature about adoptive LG parents and their chil-

dren (e.g., Farr, Forssell, & Patterson, 2010;

Pertman & Howard, 2011), little is known about

their family dynamics.

Open adoption, dened as any contact or

information sharing between birth and adop-

tive families, has been controversial historically

but is increasingly common (Grotevant, 2012).

Adoption agencies typically offer an option for

open adoption (Siegel & Smith, 2012), and birth

parents (often mothers) may select the adoptive

132 Family Relations 67 (February 2018): 132–146

DOI:10.1111/fare.12295