Parents of Gay Children and the Issu They Face | HealthyPlace

Contents:

• FOR GAY MEN, HAVG A BLOGIL CHILD N BE PLITED
• KIDS OF GAY PARENTS FARE WORSE, STUDY FDS, BUT REARCH DRAWS FIRE OM EXPERTS
• PARENTS OF GAY CHILDREN AND THE ISSU THEY FACE
• GAY UPL 'ULD HAVE THEIR OWN BLOGIL CHILDREN RRYG TRAS OM BOTH PARENTS'
• MORE GAY MEN CHOOSE SURROGACY TO HAVE CHILDREN
• THERE IS NO ‘GAY GENE.’ THERE IS NO ‘STRAIGHT GENE.’ SEXUALY IS JT PLEX, STUDY NFIRMS

FOR GAY MEN, HAVG A BLOGIL CHILD N BE PLITED

Others may be ncerned that sgle men or gay male upl would have a harr time adoptg jt bee they are men, but this may not be te. “For gay male sgl/upl, we have particularly easier the matchg procs, as there is no other mom 'replacg' the child’s birth mother and often get chosen quicker. The procs tak about two years and sts around $200, 000 per child - and prospective gay fathers don't meet eligibily creria for most health surance plans' fertily benefs, although this is begng to change.

KIDS OF GAY PARENTS FARE WORSE, STUDY FDS, BUT REARCH DRAWS FIRE OM EXPERTS

Brent Monsr, MD, recently helped lead a study to document tails of how gay men e assisted reproductive technology to build their fai, cludg qutns such as how many children they wish to have and how often their efforts succeed. Your paper giv historil ntext for how shiftg attus toward LGBTQ fai have changed the climate for gay men who want to bee fathers.

There has been a lot of foc the scientific lerature on whether children turn out OK if they have gay parents. Cisgenr gay men are almost never clud this rearch, so as physicians we don't know anythg about their characteristics as reproductive health patients, even basic rmatn such as their mographics, clil cisn-makg patterns or out. That gave a wdow to a natnal group of 119 cisgenr men, cludg five sgle men and 57 gay upl, who uniquely had fertily benefs.

PARENTS OF GAY CHILDREN AND THE ISSU THEY FACE

It's important to keep md that our data reflect the experienc of dividuals who n afford reproductive medil re bee their employer-sponsored fertily benefs ver , and that is still an unual suatn for gay men. This data served as the foundatn for a grant applitn we've jt had approved to nduct a much larger populatn study that will give accs to rmatn on about 2, 000 embryo transfers annually gay men. A lot of people see a fertily doctor bee they have an unrlyg medil issue, whereas gay male upl ually have two possible sperm sourc, a young egg donor and a gtatnal rrier who has already had succsful pregnanci.

I thk that, bee of the medil factors, birth rat for gay upl uld serve as a morn standard for evaluatg the succs of IVF labs. We regnize that this may be bee a lot of gay men requt tws or may ultimately want two children, and fertily doctors may be transferrg two embryos to try to save their patients money so they only have to go through the fertily treatment procs once. But we need to ask: Are we puttg gtatnal rriers at unnecsary risk om tw pregnanci, and puttg gay upl at unnecsary risk of havg babi the NICU?

Before I was an OB/GYN, I thought, "This is a health accs issue, and if gay men want tws we should rpect their tonomy. What do add to have physician-scientists like you, who are gay, answerg rearch qutns about this populatn of prospective parents?

GAY UPL 'ULD HAVE THEIR OWN BLOGIL CHILDREN RRYG TRAS OM BOTH PARENTS'

I'm currently a fellow, and I have patients g specifilly to see me, not bee I'm the most amazg doctor but bee I'm gay, and they want a gay doctor. This rearch brief offers analys om several data sourc to provi a mographic portra of lbian, gay, bisexual and transgenr (LGBT) parentg the Uned Stat.

Analys of the 2008/2010 General Social Survey (GSS) timate that 37% of lbian, gay, or bisexual (LGB) intified dividuals have had a child. I mean, our neighborhood is crawlg wh gay and lbian upl, yet only one other uple bis ourselv are raisg children.

MORE GAY MEN CHOOSE SURROGACY TO HAVE CHILDREN

Though the numbers of gay men, bi people, and (more so) lbians raisg children has climbed recent years, ntu to lag well behd the rat for straight upl. Corvo’s early regnn that he didn’t f wh standard-issue heterosexualy led him first to the prithood and then to a full embrace of his gay inty.

Dpe beg young enough to have imaged a “gay life” for themselv, their inty ow somethg to an olr, perhaps ls-upled ia of gay. And while they’ve got several gay and lbian iends and neighbors wh kids, neher has the least tert parentg. A 30-year-old sgle man, whom I’ll ll Charl, se his inty as a gay man as an vatn to thk crilly about how he’d like to bee a parent.

The son of Haian immigrants, Charl was lucky enough to be raised by parents who sensed their son’s gay inty when he was young, and they’ve been supportive of him om the start—perhaps bee of that, no possible route seems to him out of the qutn. Ten narrative studi volvg fay histori of 262 children of gay fathers and lbian mothers were evaluated statistilly rponse to Morrison's (2007) ncerns about Cameron's (2006) rearch that had volved three narrative studi.

THERE IS NO ‘GAY GENE.’ THERE IS NO ‘STRAIGHT GENE.’ SEXUALY IS JT PLEX, STUDY NFIRMS

Dpe numero attempts to bias the rults favour of the null hypothis and allowg for up to 20 (of 63, 32%) dg errors, Cameron's (2006) hypothis that gay and lbian parents would be more likely to have gay, lbian, bisexual or unsure (of sexual orientatn) sons and dghters was nfirmed. Percentag of children of gay and lbian parents who adopted non-heterosexual inti ranged between 16% and 57%, wh odds rats of 1.

Data om ethnographic sourc and om prev studi on gay and lbian parentg were re-examed and found to support the hypothis that social and parental fluenc may fluence the exprsn of non-heterosexual inti and/or behavur. (CBS News) A new study that fds children of a gay or lbian parent may be more likely to have social and emotnal problems has sparked ntroversy on both sis of the same-sex marriage bate.

But those earlier studi have advertently masked real diversy among gay and lbian parentg experienc Ameri. In a jot statement om the Fay Equaly Council, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), Freedom to Marry, and the Gay and Lbian Alliance agast Defamatn (GLAAD), advot lled the study a "flawed, misleadg, and scientifilly unsound paper that seeks to disparage lbian and gay parents. In a mentary Slate, William Saletan wr, "What the study shows, then, is that kids om broken hom head by gay people velop the same problems as kids om broken hom head by straight people.

Gay upl often leave the baby’s geic fatherhood up to chance by mixg their sperm, though some be an egg om one man’s sister and the other man’s sperm for a baby geilly related to both what is volved such reproductn is often illegal or tricky to get hold of.

As a rult, some newborns have got stuck as cizens of once all the hurdl have been cleared, homosexual upl may still not atta jot parental rights.

But anywhere else, gays and lbians wh youngsters navigate child-rearg wh only half the rights of their heterosexual neighbours. Image source, ThkstockIn the last two s, dozens of scientific papers have been published on the blogil origs of homosexualy - another announcement was ma last week.

Macklemore and Ryan Lewis's h song Same Love, which has bee an unofficial anthem of the pro-gay marriage mpaign the US, reflects how many gay people feel about their mocks those who "thk 's a cisn, and you n be cured wh some treatment and relign - man-ma rewirg of a predisposn". A mory of gay people disagree, matag that sexualy is a social nstct, and they have ma a nsc, proud choice to take same-sex partners. Sce the early 1990s, rearchers have shown that homosexualy is more mon brothers and relativ on the same maternal le, and a geic factor is taken to be the e.

Also relevant - although no way proof - is rearch intifyg physil differenc the bras of adult straight and gay people, and a dizzyg array of homosexual behavur animals. "How n a tra like male homosexualy, which has a geic ponent, persist over evolutnary time if the dividuals that rry the gen associated wh that tra are not reproducg?