A Crucial but Strenuous Process: Female Same-Sex Couples’ Reflections on Second-Parent Adoption

Abstract

When a female same-sex couple has a child together through assisted reproduction, it is important that both partners be granted status as the child's legal parents. Second-parent adoption, where the non-birth mother adopts the child, is currently an option in several Western nations. The article presents findings from interviews with 96 Swedish mothers, all of whom have gone through second-parent adoptions in same-sex relations. The interviewees describe the adoption as crucial for their family. If the parents divorce or if one of them dies, it is deemed important to have legal parenthood established. A second-parent adoption process in Sweden can take several months to finish. In several interviews, the social workers assessing the family for the adoption are depicted as unprofessional and as asking irrelevant or intrusive questions. Others depict social workers as kind and competent. Other methods of granting legal parenthood to non-birth mothers are suggested for Swedish legislation.

KEYWORDS:

• heteronormativity
• legal parenthood
• lesbian mother
• non-birth mother
• second-parent adoption
• social worker