Collection Development "Gay Parenting": Building Rainbow Families

While gay parenthood has existed from time immemorial, it has only emerged as a viable means of family building within the past 20 years. Celebrities like Melissa Etheridge, who had children with ex-partner Julie Cypher and sperm donor David Crosby, and Rosie O'Donnell, who adopted, have ushered gay parenting into the popular consciousness and helped it earn relative acceptance.

Nonetheless, no amount of exposure in People magazine can eliminate the significant legal hurdles facing gay men and lesbians looking to have families. That's the long way of saying that gay adoption—probably the most popular method of family building among gay men and an increasingly popular choice for lesbians—is not explicitly legal in the 50 states. Only about a dozen states permit single gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgendered (GLBT) adoption and joint adoption, defined as an unmarried couple's petitioning the court to adopt a child who has been put up for adoption by the birth parent(s) or by the state.

Most states do allow single GLBT adoptions but haven't taken a formal stand on joint adoptions, a situation that makes it hard for gay couples to share legal rights regarding their children. (Florida, for the record, is the only state that has outlawed gay adoption, period.) Where joint GLBT adoptions are illegal, gay couples in which one party already has legal rights of a child seek second-parent adoption.

With so much red tape on the home front, numerous gay couples resort to international adoption, which can be faster. Still, the future parents in question must remain closeted throughout the entire process because no country will knowingly place a child in a gay household. In other words, only single-parent adoption is available; the other person can file for second-parent adoption after the child is safely in America. Foster parenting also offers gay couples a chance at parenthood, but the state retains legal guardianship.

This first collection development article on gay parenting will necessarily tackle its legal issues along with its emotional and economic components. But first, a little sociological background.

Most Americans don't have any sense of the value and prevalence of gay parenting in this country. Recent research statistics compiled in “Adoption and Foster Care by Gay and Lesbian Parents in the United States”—a March 2007 report issued jointly by the Williams Institute of the UCLA School of Law and the Urban Institute of Washington, DC—delivers us to enlightenment, thankfully. According to the study, more than one in three lesbians has given birth and one in six gay men has fathered or adopted a child. Moreover, more than half of gay men and 41 percent of lesbians want to have a child.

Additionally, more than 16,000 adopted children are living with a lesbian or gay parent. Significantly, same-sex couples raising adopted children are older, more educated, and have more economic resources than other adoptive parents. This is fortunate for the foster-care system because an estimated 14,000 foster children are living with lesbian or gay parents, which means that same-sex parents are raising three percent of foster children in America.

As well as providing loving homes for children in need, gay and lesbian parents have a monumental economic impact on society. For instance, a national ban on gay foster parenting could cost the federal government from $87 million to $130 million, which might cost individual states anywhere from $100,000 to $27 million (the figures vary according to state size and the number of children in foster care). Statistics like these demonstrate that there is a vital market for books on gay parenting.

Just as parenting has become a category of study, bolstered by the popular work of Benjamin Spock and his ilk, so, too, has gay parenting developed its own body of literature. While no single publisher distinguishes itself in this area, Seal Press has issued groundbreaking books by therapists D. Merilee Clunis and G. Dorsey Green (Lesbian Couples); Haworth Press, known for its excellence in psychology, has published Deborah F. Glazer and Jack Drescher (Gay and Lesbian Parenting); and Nolo Press remains the leader for law books for the lay reader.

New books on the subject are released each year, of course, but much of the traditional material remains current, as evidenced by the following bibliography. The changes in content reflect the modification of laws, along with shifting emphases in developmental psychology and medicine. As the major repositories for gay and lesbian parenting books, public and university libraries in the aggregate would do well to hold onto titles that have demonstrated persistent relevance and value, even as they add new titles reflecting current research.

While some weeding may be necessary depending on the libraries' holdings, many of the new titles complement and supplement, rather than supplant, older ones. Librarians should check older titles for the currency of their legal information and parenting philosophies, which shift over the years for obvious reasons. Still, it is highly likely that much material will be retained.

Books written for children growing up in gay households deserve a place in school libraries. Gay parenting books are also illuminating for general audiences, particularly for friends and family of gay couples who might benefit from additional insight into and sensitivity toward the particular challenges raised by gay parenting. Starred [] titles are essential for all collections.