Lesbian Adoption

Emerging research on lesbian adoption explores and discusses the social, legal, and political issues and implications, but because gay family adoption is such recent legally supported phenomena, there is minimal information. Anecdotal information suggests that lesbians have been adopting children for decades as single parents; however, it is only recently that adoption agencies have been made accessible to lesbian and gay parents.

There are unique challenges for lesbians who wish to adopt; however, there are also supportive practices emerging within those agencies that value the inclusion of a wide range of family compositions to support the needs of the many children waiting to be adopted. Lesbians who adopt disrupt the heterosexual family narrative and widen the space for re-conceptualizing more diverse family constellations.