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Lesbian & Gay Parenting
Legal Reviews
American Civil Liberties Union Lesbian and Gay Rights Project. (2002). Too high a price: The case against restricting gay parenting. New York: American Civil Liberties Union.
Too High a Price: The Case Against Restricting Gay Parenting is a 118-page paperback book that provides a comprehensive analysis of legal and policy issues regarding gay parenting, detailing the many restrictions and biases against gay parents that ultimately disrupt families and hurt children. The book, written to support the ACLU's case challenging Florida's anti-gay adoption ban, examines in depth the social science evidence, the legal arguments, and the public policy considerations regarding lesbian and gay parents. Includes summaries of 22 social science studies on gay parenting released between 1981 and 1998, statements from several mainstream national child advocacy and psychological organizations, and profiles of several gay parents and their children. (Reprinted with permission of the American Civil Liberties Union. Copyright © 2005. All rights reserved.)
Appell, A. R. (2003). Recent developments in lesbian and gay adoption law. Adoption Quarterly, 7(1), 73-84.
Discusses the recent developments in lesbian and gay adoption law. While several states have resolved questions relating to lesbian and gay adoption in the past few years, a couple of states have seen challenges to what appeared to be the status quo. The author starts with the cases in which courts of appeals have ruled on the permissibility of adoption by same-sex couples or single lesbians and turns next to the unresolved challenges. Nationwide, there appears to have been little political or legal resolution regarding the desirability of expansive notions of family. Yet the issue is on both judicial and legislative radar, playing out most frequently in the context of the relationship between marriage and adoption. Legislatures may have the ultimate say and can give relatively definitive answers to these questions: California, Connecticut, and Vermont affirmatively permit same-sex couples to sanction their families; while Florida, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Utah have answered to the contrary. In the meantime, constitutional challenges similar to the one in Florida may be brought in Mississippi, Oklahoma and, perhaps, Utah, while same-sex adoption remains uncertain in states without determinate judicial or legislative rules regarding co-parent adoption. (PsycINFO Database Record. Copyright © 2004 by the American Psychological Association. All rights reserved.)
Falk, P. J. (1989). Lesbian mothers: Psychosocial assumptions in family law. American Psychologist, 44, 941-947.
Discrimination persists in courts' consideration of lesbian mothers' petitions for custody of their children. Courts often have assumed that lesbian women are emotionally unstable or unable to assume a maternal role. They also often have assumed that their children are likely to be emotionally harmed, subject to molestation, impaired in gender role development, or themselves homosexual. None of these assumptions are supported by extant research and theory. (PsycINFO Database Record. Copyright © 2002 by the American Psychological Association. All rights reserved.) Return to top
Falk, P. J. (1994). The gap between psychosocial assumptions and empirical research in lesbian- mother child custody cases. In A. E. Gottfried & A. W. Gottfried (Eds.), Redefining families: Implications for children's development (pp. 131-156). New York: Plenum.
(From the chapter) a rapidly growing and highly consistent body of empirical work has failed to identify significant differences between lesbian mothers and their heterosexual counterparts or the children raised by these groups / researchers have been unable to establish empirically that detriment results to children from being raised by lesbian mothers / thus, it appears that there is a considerable gap between many of the assumptions on which legal decision makers have traditionally based their [child custody] decisions and the corresponding empirical and theoretical literature on lesbian mothers and their children / the major implication for legal decision makers is that they should focus less or not at all on the sexual orientation of a potential custodian and more on other factors commonly associated with the best-interests-of-the-child standard, such as the quality of the parent-child relationship. (PsycINFO Database Record. Copyright © 2002 by the American Psychological Association. All rights reserved.)
Hitchens, D. J., & Kirkpatrick, M. J. (1985). Lesbian mothers/gay fathers. In D. H. Schetky & E. P. Benedek (Eds.), Emerging issues in child psychiatry and the law (pp. 115-125). New York: Brunner-Mazel.
No abstract available.
Patterson, C. J., Fulcher, M., & Wainright, J. (2002). Children of lesbian and gay parents: Research, law, and policy. In B. L. Bottoms, M. B. Kovera, & B. D. McAuliff (Eds.), Children, social science and the law (pp. 176-199). New York: Cambridge University Press.
(From the chapter) Provides an overview of the legal and policy terrain for children of lesbian and gay parents in the US today, with an eye to the diversity of issues and families involved. This is followed by a discussion of the research literature on children of lesbian and gay parents, and by recommendations for changes in law and policy that would benefit children in lesbian- and gay-parented families. (PsycINFO Database Record. Copyright © 2003 by the American Psychological Association. All rights reserved.)
Patterson, C. J., & Redding, R. E. (1996). Lesbian and gay families with children: Implications of social science research for policy. Journal of Social Issues, 52(3), 29-50.
In this paper, we provide an overview of variability across jurisdictions in family law relevant to lesbian and gay parents and their children, showing that some courts have been negatively disposed to these families. We summarize recent research findings suggesting that lesbian and gay parents are as likely as are heterosexual parents to provide home environments that support positive outcomes among children. Research findings suggest that unless and until the weight of evidence can be shown to have shifted, parental sexual orientation should be considered irrelevant to disputes involving child custody, visitation, foster care, and adoption. (PsycINFO Database Record. Copyright © 2002 by the American Psychological Association. All rights reserved.)
Wardle, L. D. (1997). The potential impact of homosexual parenting on children. University of Illinois Law Review, 833-919.
No abstract available.
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