The Rights and Responsibilities of Gay Social Parents and the Potential Implications for Children's Well-Being

Abstract

As more gay couples become parents, there is a greater likelihood that some of these parents will face unique legal consequences if their relationships dissolve. In these cases, judges must determine whether social parents possess legal parental rights and responsibilities. A mixed-methods approach was adopted to assess judges’ rulings and justifications in 43 parental status cases involving gay disputants. The results verified a typology of five overarching legal themes, or rationales, that judges relied on in their decisions. The data also reveal that nearly half of the rulings in the sample were against conferring parental rights or responsibilities to social parents. These trends in judicial rulings call attention to potential adverse consequences for children's well-being, as prior research has linked disruptions in parent-child relationships to negative psychosocial outcomes. Implications for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (GLBT) research, policy, and the family legal system are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• children's well-being
• gay fathers
• lesbian mothers
• judicial decision making
• parental rights and responsibilities
• social parents