Gay and Lesbian Adoptive Parents

Open Adoption & Family Services has welcomed gay and lesbian prospective adoptive parents into our infant adoption program since we opened our doors in 1985. OA&FS is on the cutting edge of offering progressive and inclusive open adoption services. In 2008, OA&FS was recognized by the Pride Foundation for strengthening and serving the lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, transgender and questioning (LGBTQ) community. Additionally, OA&FS was a significant contributor to All Children – All Families, an initiative launched by the Human Rights Campaign to develop Promising Practices in Adoption and Foster Care, a Comprehensive Guide to Policies and Practices that Welcome, Affirm and Support Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Foster and Adoptive Parents.

Approximately 30% of the adoptive placements at OA&FS are with same-sex families. The average wait for same-sex families working with OA&FS is approximately 14 months, compared to an all-client average wait of roughly 11 months. Typically, our pool of prospective adoptive parents is comprised of 30% same-sex families. These families come to OA&FS from throughout the United States. To date, we have successfully placed children with GLBTQ parents living in California, Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Washington D.C., and Oregon and Washington.

Dan Savage, syndicated columnist, author, and regular contributor to NPR’s This American Life, is an OA&FS adoptive father and active advocate of our agency. To get a firsthand account of adopting through OA&FS as a same sex family, check out his book The Kid: What Happened After My Boyfriend and I Decided to Go Get Pregnant. This book chronicles Dan and his partner Terry’s experience adopting through our agency.

Facts About Lesbian and Gay Parenting

Numerous well-respected authorities agree that children of same-sex parents are as healthy, happy and well-adjusted as their peers raised by heterosexual parents:

• The Child Welfare League of America (CWLA) affirms that lesbian, gay, and bisexual parents are as well suited to raise children as their heterosexual counterparts.
• The American Psychological Association, representing more than 155,000 psychologists, states that children of gay and lesbian parents are at no disadvantage psychologically or socially compared to children of heterosexual parents.
• The American Academy of Pediatrics, the nation’s leading pediatric authority with 57,000 members, says that children who grow up with gay and/or lesbian parents fare as well in emotional, cognitive, social and sexual functioning as children with straight parents.
• The National Association of Social Workers, with nearly 150,000 members, agrees that research on gay and lesbian parenting shows a total absence of pathological findings in their children.

What Research Tells Us

A 1995 National Health and Social Life Survey by E.O. Lauman found that up to nine million children in America have gay or lesbian parents (Committee on Psychosocial Aspects of Child and Family Health, 2002). 

• Evidence to date suggests home environments provided by lesbian and gay parents support and enable children's psychosocial growth, just as do those provided by heterosexual parents (Patterson, 1995)
• There are no systematic differences between gay or lesbian and non-gay or lesbian parents in emotional health, parenting skills, and attitudes toward parenting (Stacey & Biblarz, 2001)
• Evidence shows that children's optimal development is influenced more by the nature of the relationships and interactions within the family unit than by its particular structural form (Perrin, 2002)
• No studies have found risks to or disadvantages for children growing up in families with one or more gay parents, compared to children growing up with heterosexual parents (Perrin, 2002).