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This chapter considers existing narrative accounts and family research, together with the author's own experience (socially located as a White, upper-middle class gay man) of adopting an infant girl with his partner in 2004. In providing and reviewing such first-person narrative experience and observations, the chapter seeks to return to a focus on the family life experiences of gay men who choose to become fathers. The first section reviews internal and external obstacles that gay men may face as they make the decision to become parents. The second section describes the vicissitudes of adjustment to parenthood under the hegemonic shadow of American culture's master narrative that equates parenthood with heterosexuality. The third section addresses changes in gay fathers' relationship to their gay male social context and their own evolving gay identity.

This chapter focuses on gay fathers fighting for the custody of their children in the courts. It begins by looking at early gay father cases dealing with visitation rights and child custody, at a time when it was still relatively unusual for fathers to be awarded custody following a divorce. It then considers the weight that courts have given to the refusal by parents to choose between being open about their same-sex sexual orientation and maintaining their relationships with their children. It also highlights the legal difficulties faced by openly gay fathers battling to win custody of their children and concludes by profiling more recent visitation rights cases pitting gay dads against their former wives.

This book explores the perspectives of gay men who became parents through adoption, with particular emphasis on how they experience and perceive the transition to adoptive parenthood. Using data obtained from interviews with thirty-five gay male adoptive couples, it examines how gay fathers wrestle with and navigate heteronormative and sometimes conflicting discourses regarding parenthood, family, and gender. By focusing on the experiences of gay fathers in today's society, the book highlights the centrality of heteronormativity in the institutions governing and the discourses surrounding families. This introduction discusses changes in family life and social relationships that have occurred in the United States over the past six decades, along with historical changes in gay identity politics and attitudes about homosexuality and the implications of these social changes for gay parenthood. It also provides an overview of the chapters contained in the book as well as the methodology used in the study and the research participants.

This chapter focuses on gay fathers fighting for the custody of their children in the courts. It begins by looking at early gay father cases dealing with visitation rights and child custody, at a time when it was still relatively unusual for fathers to be awarded custody following a divorce. It then considers the weight that courts have given to the refusal by parents to choose between being open about their same-sex sexual orientation and maintaining their relationships with their children. It also highlights the legal difficulties faced by openly gay fathers battling to win custody of their children and concludes by profiling more recent visitation rights cases pitting gay dads against their former wives.

This chapter examines gay men's changing relationships with their immediate social networks—namely, their family members and friends—during the transition to parenthood. It considers how gay fathers perceive the support (or nonsupport) of families and friends for their adoption plans and parenting efforts. It cites reasons, including those related to homophobia and adoption, that account for families' lack of support for gay men's parenthood aspirations and shows that gay friends are less supportive than straight friends in this regard. The chapter provides evidence of the complex ways that parenthood significantly alters the quality and nature of gay men's social networks.

This chapter examines how gay men perceive their parenting trajectories and choices, with particular emphasis on the historical, social, and geographical backdrop of their decision making. It considers how gay men construct their parenthood desires amid the controversy surrounding gay parenthood, and especially how they confront and wrestle with the importance of biological and genetic relations and heterosexuality to dominant notions of family, and, in turn, with stereotypes regarding the incompatibility of homosexuality and parenthood. It also explores how gay fathers decide to pursue adoption over surrogacy as well as the process by which they decide what type of adoption to pursue. Finally, the chapter discusses how financial privilege affects the extent to which gay fathers can circumvent heteronormativity.

This chapter examines public representations of gay parenthood, with particular emphasis on how gay adoptive fathers manage their multiple, often visible, differences in the context of societal scrutiny and ignorance. It considers the extent to which gay men feel that parenthood makes their sexuality more “visible,” as well as the extent to which those who adopt transracially experience a heightened sense of visibility. It also explores the responses of gay fathers to the increasing visibility of their sexual orientation and family status and shows that gay men often reflect on their public identities as gay fathers. Finally, it discusses presumptions of heterosexuality in relation to assumptions about biological parenthood, along with their implications for gay men's status as adoptive families.

This chapter examines the formal and informal barriers that gay men encounter as they seek to build their families through adoption. It considers how broader social and legal inequities, such as state laws regarding gay adoption, influence the path to parenthood of gay men, as well as the ways that gay men negotiate and respond to such inequities. It also explores gay fathers' ideas about and valuing of marriage and the degree to which they view marriage once they become parents. Finally, it discusses the impact of geographic and economic privilege on gay men's ability to resist or circumvent heteronormativity in the adoption process. It shows that gay men are vulnerable to heterosexism and sexism at many stages and levels of the adoption process, from the legal system to adoption agencies and birth parents.

This chapter examines how gay men configure their roles and identities as parents in the context of broad cultural discourses regarding gender, parenthood, and family. It considers how gay fathers make decisions about the division of work and family responsibilities and how they feel about those arrangements, with particular emphasis on the experiences of those whose work arrangements do not conform to cultural expectations for masculinity (that is, working part-time or staying at home). It also explores how gay fathers reevaluate their work roles in light of fatherhood as well as the extent to which they feel less committed to work upon becoming a parent. It shows that gay men must navigate and reconcile dominant ideologies surrounding masculinity—which emphasize breadwinning and are fundamentally interconnected with and foundational to heteronormativity—with their own realities as parents who are performing both paid and unpaid labor.

This book has investigated the politics of gay parenthood as it is often experienced in relatively mundane ways by gay men as well as the structural and ideological obstacles that these men encounter in their desire to become parents. It has shown how gay fathers who become parents wrestle with heteronormativity that they encounter in the form of other people's assumptions about heterosexuality. This concluding chapter explores how gay adoptive fathers' presence in society and their interactions with family, friends, and community members may alter ideologies about family in both theoretical and practical terms. It also considers the implications of the book's findings for the work of scholars in fields such as gender and sexuality studies, family studies, social work, and legal studies. Finally, it suggests directions for future research to better understand how gay men conceive their parenting identities and roles amid the rapidly changing but pervasively heteronormative sociopolitical environment.

What drives the desire to be part of the commercial surrogacy arrangement in India? This chapter seeks to answer this question by looking at an important aspect of transnational commercial surrogacy: informed consent from the commissioning couple and the surrogate mother. A ‘declaration of intent’ by both participants is a mandatory document within the surrogacy contract. What does intention mean? It is not merely a willingness to participate and agree with the modalities of the commercial surrogacy contract, but also to ‘choose’ to be part of it. Within this ‘choice’ and the use of the nomenclature of the ‘intended parent’ and the ‘fertile’ surrogate are the processes of screening eligibility to be part of the arrangement. Thus, in the examination of the notion of ‘intention’, the ‘contract’, couple/individual and the surrogate mother ‘speak’ of their choice of surrogacy. In this way motherhood and fatherhood are explored in relation to ideas regarding kinship, genes, and nurturance.

This chapter examines the empirical evidence regarding the consequences of assisted reproduction and adoption for maternal health, family functioning, and child well-being. The social and regulatory contexts for parents' choices between adoption and ARTs are considered, and the risks associated with ARTs for mothers and children discussed. The empirical evidence regarding child well-being is examined for families in which parents conceived using IVF/ICSI, gamete and embryo donation, and surrogacy. The chapter then describes the risk and protective factors of adoption and summarizes the empirical evidence on child outcomes in adoptive families. Although ARTs involve an element of risk for maternal and child health, the majority of families created by ARTs have been found to function well. As for adoption, a minority of children have been found to experience psychological difficulties, yet the majority have been found to be well-adjusted. Claims in favour of bionormativity are not supported by the empirical research discussed in this chapter.