- Thank you so much for coming to the lecture tonight.
I'm Hanna Cartman and I'm one of the resident faculty here.
I'm one of the resident faculty here, is that better?
Yeah.
And I'm conscious that the vigil just ended
and we're coming into this space.
And I wanted to offer an introduction to the evening
and to our lecture.
And also to acknowledge up front that
nothing that I can say will be adequate in this setting
given this context.
This morning at about 3:00am,
I was awake with a hungry infant, an exhausted wife,
and overcome with grief.
I got on social media to find other members
of my queer community
and realized they, too, were awake.
They, too, were thinking about Orlando.
They, too, were thinking about Latin night,
about a sanctuary violated during and among Pride events
across the country.
A breathtaking and deliberate destruction
of a community in celebration.
I thought, maybe I should be numb to it at this point.
Let's not forget that violence ends the lives of people
in the queer community on a daily basis.
Frequently and disproportionately those that are targeted,
those lives that are lost like those in Orlando,
are the lives of people of color,
people who identify as transgender or gender non-conforming,
and people of color who identify as transgender
or gender non-conforming.
And so, we are all left with our grief.
Grief for Orlando,
grief for Charleston,
grief for Oak Creek,
grief for all of the cities
and towns impacted by gun violence and mass shootings.
And grief for each and every person and family.
Grief for Mike Brown,
grief for Trayvon Martin,
grief for Sandra Bland,
grief for Tamir Rice,
Reecey Walker,
Keanna Blakely,
and on,
and on.
And all of this layered up on a history of violence
in this country
from slavery to death marches
and executions of indigenous communities
to church bombings,
to internment,
to mass shootings.
What horrific litany.
This grief is not new grief.
This is not the first or even the largest act
of identity-based violence
against a marginalized community in our country.
And yet, alongside so much grief,
the potential for change.
But in my particular grief,
my 3:00am grief,
I had to parent an infant,
whom I love more than words can describe.
And in your grief,
you will have to study and to learn
to be present for the clients that you serve,
to teach, to create knowledge,
and to exist in a world while you also mourn in it.
Many of us came to social work
because we were tired of grieving.
We wanted to do something,
to push back against this tidal wave of violence,
the hate speech,
the discriminatory legislation,
racial profiling,
systematic oppression in our education,
healthcare, criminal, and economic systems.
And we can't push back that tidal wave by watching
or critiquing,
or waiting for someone else to do something that matters.
We have to own the problem as ours to fix.
Some of us came here to learn how to do something.
Some of us came here to learn how to do even more
than we were already doing.
And so in our grief,
we must turn inward and figure out what it is
that each of us can do.
Me.
You.
Our community together.
Beverly Daniel Tatum, one of my mentors,
taught me that everyone has their own sphere of influence.
That sphere might be with your friends,
your family, your clients, your social network,
your academic peers,
in your agencies,
in your communities,
or with your economic or political influence.
Tonight and in the following days,
in your grief,
in your disbelief,
in your numbness,
I encourage each of us to think
about our own spheres of influence and what each of us
and what each of us might do
to turn this tide
and to amplify the voices of those who need to be heard.
I've read that we as a community are encouraging ourselves
to dedicate our study and work to Orlando.
So yes,
let's learn together,
and then, let's talk together about what we can do
with that knowledge.
A few minutes ago,
I stood with my wife and my child,
my queer family.
My child, who at 28 days old,
attended their first vigil,
to recognize a loss in our community.
But the life of my family
has already been made better
by someone else who used their sphere of influence
and their research to do something that mattered.
And I feel grateful to introduce her tonight.
Abbie Goldberg received her B.A. in Psychology
from Wesleyan University
and an M.A. in Psychology and Ph.D. in clinical psychology
from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
She is currently an Associate Professor
of Clinical Psychology at Clark University
as well as the director of Clinical Training.
Dr. Goldberg's interests focus on how a variety
of social locations, gender, sexual orientation,
and social class and contexts,
work, family, community,
shape processes of development and mental health.
Her research focuses on parenthood,
relationship quality,
and well-being in diverse families,
adoptive parent families,
lesbian and gay parent families,
in an effort to increase our understanding
of family diversity.
She is currently conducting a longitudinal study
of adoptive parenthood in a diverse group of couples.
In addition, her current work includes a study
of postpartum well-being in women
with diverse sexual histories
and a study on the experience of transgender
and gender non-conforming students.
Dr. Goldberg teaches courses on gender and families,
diversity and contemporary families,
research methods with diverse families,
human sexuality and ethics in clinical psychology.
The work of Abbie Goldberg has been used
to influence debates about same-sex marriage,
second parent adoption,
anti-discrimination laws
and how to deploy research to make a difference
for oppressed communities.
Today, for my family,
me,
I benefit from her work.
So thank you, Abbie, for joining us tonight.
(applause)
- That was a lovely introduction.
I appreciate all of you being here
at such a difficult time.
So I think it's somewhat apropos,
I am talking about people of marginalized identities,
and so hopefully we can have a productive conversation
when I'm complete.
So, I wanna just sit here in appreciation
for being here at Smith.
I have a lot of really wonderful ties to Smith.
My daughter goes to the campus school.
We have wonderful babysitters from Smith College.
And I actually lived on Washington Ave
when I was in graduate school at U Mass Amherst,
which is very, very close to Smith College.
And I used to study in the science library.
So, a lot of really,
a lot of positive associations with Smith,
and I'm delighted to have to only drive here
from Easthampton,
which normally I have to go a lot further to give a talk.
So I wanna start this talk
by actually giving a little bit
of relevant background and context
for what I'm gonna be talking about today.
So, often I will look at a scholar's body of research
and I'll look at publications that they've produced
early in their career
and their more current publications or work,
and I'll wonder, how did they get from here to there?
How did they get from studying infant eye-tracking
to studying racial attitudes in college students.
Or, childhood anxiety
and to studying gender differences in depression.
So, I'll really wonder,
what's the story here?
How did we get from here to there?
So I'm gonna give you a little bit of my story
and sort of explain to you a little bit
of how I got to thinking about and doing research
on lesbian, gay, and heterosexual adoptive families.
So.
I started my work at U Mass Amherst.
I came to U Mass Amherst specifically to work with
a woman named Maureen Perry-Jenkins,
a scholar of family studies in the psychology department
who is doing absolutely amazing work,
really revolutionary work on marginalized.
and under-served families,
which was an area of research for me.
So Maureen was conducting a study of working class,
heterosexual couples who were making
their first transition to parenthood,
so all these couples had
less than a Bachelor's degree in education,
and many of them were working low-wage jobs.
And this was really revolutionary
because most of the research on the transition to parenthood
had been conducted on middle-class families.
So families with a lot of financial
and educational resources.
So her work was really looking at
what are unique challenges faced by working class couples
when they become parents for the first time.
So, for the study,
we recruited through prenatal education classes
all through the Pioneer Valley,
we went to Mercy,
we went to Bay State,
and we told them about the study
and we told them the inclusion criteria
and we asked them if they wanted to participate.
So the criteria were that both partners
had to have less than a college degree education,
they had to be working full time,
they had to be planning to return to work full time
after the birth of their first child,
and,
they had to be heterosexual.
So,
this was just the stipulation of the grant, right?
You can't study everything,
and so all these couples had to be heterosexual.
So what happened is on several occasions,
I was doing my little spiel,
telling people about the study at these prenatal ed classes,
and I had lesbian couples
who were interested in participating.
And I had to tell them no,
which was really, really difficult.
And so I started thinking a lot about that,
about whose stories are heard
and whose stories go unheard.
About which voices were missing.
And so I started digging into the research.
And I found that in contrast to hundreds and hundreds
of studies that looked at the transition to parenthood
for heterosexual couples,
I could find only a single study that examines
some aspects of the transition to parenthood
for female same-sex couples,
which I'll refer to as lesbian couples.
So.
That study was conducted by Nanette Gartrell,
here with her adorable dogs.
She is a friend and a colleague of mine.
And she was very excited that I used this picture of her.
And so this giant gaping hole in the research
was just sort of staring at me.
And right around the same time,
I was living in the Pioneer Valley,
I was actually a volunteer at Pride Zone,
which was a queer youth center in the Maplewood Shops,
and running groups there for children
of lesbian and gay, bisexual and queer parents.
And so my advocacy efforts,
this huge gap in the research,
kind of came together and really inspired me to do
what was the first longitudinal study
of female same-sex couples pursuing parenthood.
So.
Terrible acronym.
(chuckles) I was determined to eventually do a study
with a better one,
so this study was called,
The Transition to Parenthood for Lesbian Couples Project.
T.P.L.C.P., See? I can't even remember it.
And so much to the chagrin of my dissertation committee,
I proposed a longitudinal study.
So, they were very fearful that I would never leave,
and they really discouraged me from doing this.
But I did eventually get out of there.
So I followed female couples
across the transition to parenthood.
I interviewed lesbian couples,
biological and non-biological mothers,
before and after they became parents.
So I interviewed women separately,
they also completed a number of questionnaires,
and I recruited them from prenatal ed classes,
OB's, LGBT organizations,
and so on.
So it was a mixed-method study,
got both interview data as well as questionnaire data.
And the sample was mostly white.
So this was a mostly white, fairly well-educated sample.
About 75% of them had at least a Bachelor's degree.
They were making about 40 to 50 thousand dollars
on average per year.
And non-biological mothers made more money
than biological mothers.
So, I'm not gonna go
into the findings of the study in depth,
but what I can tell you are just some basic findings
'cause they form the basis of the work that came next.
So, in terms of donors,
60% of these women used an anonymous sperm donor,
so sperm from a sperm bank.
40% used a known donor,
so an acquaintance or friend donated sperm to them.
In 41% of the cases,
women decided who would carry the child
based on who had the greater desire or interest.
So one partner had a stronger desire to be pregnant,
carry the child,
be biologically related to the child,
nurse, and so on.
So it was a very easy decision.
One partner wanted to be pregnant,
the other one said, "No, thank you."
In 14% of the cases,
fertility reasons were the primary reasons.
So, the non-biological mother had tried to conceive
but been unsuccessful.
And so the biological mother became the biological mother
by default.
And in the remaining 45% of cases,
the decision was made based on age,
so the younger partner was chosen to go
because they thought she would have more success,
or in some cases,
if they wanted to have more than one child,
the older partner was chosen
thinking that the younger partner
would have subsequent children.
Or, in some cases, health issues,
so one partner had a history of cancer,
or chronic health conditions,
making it more appropriate for the other partner
to carry the child.
And then sometimes career considerations were a factor.
So, one partner made less money,
significantly less money,
or simply wanted to take time off from a job or career
and one partner did not.
So a big focus of this research,
I was very interested in these women's experiences
of stigma as they built their families.
And so, we found that about 25% of the women
reported experiencing stigma from healthcare providers.
And the most typical sort of form that this took
was that non-biological mothers felt really excluded
or kind of minimized in the birthing sphere.
So in some cases they were told
that they couldn't be present
during the insemination process.
Or they were asked to sit in a chair outside the room
during some of the prenatal visits.
They were persistently asked who's playing the father role,
where was the husband,
where was the father.
In some cases, in child birth education classes,
women politely requested that the facilitator
use the term "partner"
as opposed to "husband and wife."
And in some cases, were told, "no."
Or their wishes just went kind of unrecognized.
(clears throat)
So you can take a quick second
to look at this little cartoon.
This is kind of the classic
transition to parenthood scenario.
People often have no idea the stress
and challenges that accompany the transition to parenthood.
And so a big focus of this work
was to really examine how women's lives and well-being
changed across the transition.
This is consistent with a lot of transition to parenthood
research which typically looks at relationship quality
and mental health across the transition.
So we found that very similar
to biological heterosexual parent families,
women reported declining relationship quality
and mental health.
So this is very normative.
All couples experience declining relationship quality
and mental health.
Increased anxiety,
increased symptoms of depression,
fatigue,
conflict with your partner,
feelings of feeling less close to your partner.
If you're a parent,
this probably sounds familiar.
You have less time together.
You're renegotiating family and work roles.
You're getting less sleep.
You can't remember things from moment to moment,
so this is not really that surprising.
But not everybody suffered equally.
So we found that couples
that shared housework more equally
and were more satisfied with the division of housework
as well as paid work,
experienced greater relationship quality and mental health.
Likewise, parents who perceived their infants
as less difficult, as easier,
also experienced better outcomes.
And finally, parents who reported experiencing
or receiving more practical forms of support,
like babysitting and financial support
from family and friends,
also experienced better outcomes.
Looking at the division of labor,
we found something fairly interesting.
So housework was actually divided fairly equally
across the transition.
So biological and non-biological lesbian mothers
shared housework equally
before and after they became parents.
Not surprisingly, bio-moms did more childcare,
that makes sense, right?
They're breastfeeding,
they often had more generous and extensive leaves,
and so on.
And non-bio moms were doing more paid work.
But when we look at these women
compared to heterosexual couples in prior studies,
we see that non-bio moms are doing far more childcare
than heterosexual fathers.
And we know this because we used the same measure
of the division of labor as many previous studies.
We're able to compare ratings across studies.
So basically, we see that heteronormative gendered scripts
for parenting roles do not totally function
in the same way.
They don't dictate the division of labor.
Couples are sharing housework more equally.
But the biological differential,
the fact that one partner carried the child
and one partner did not,
does have implications for the division of labor.
So.
I was left with all these different questions
and these are a couple of the questions
that I started thinking about.
So,
what does the transition to parenthood look like
for female couples in which neither partner
has a biological link to their child,
i.e. in adoptive couples?
What does the transition to parenthood look like
for gay male couples?
At this point, there had not been a single study
to examine the transition to parenthood
for gay men.
And finally, what does the transition
to adoptive parenthood look like?
So, I was actually shocked to find
that there was one study out of Israel
that looked at the transition to adoptive parenthood.
Again, and this is contrast to hundreds and hundreds
of studies looking at biological parenthood.
So.
I launched the Transition to Adoptive Parenthood Project,
which had a great acronym we could refer to all the time
in our lab, T.A.P.P.
And this study went actually far beyond
a transition to parenthood study,
we've actually followed up our couples now for 10 years,
going on 11 in over seven phases.
So.
The sample consists of 185 couples,
about 45 gay male couples,
60 lesbian,
and 80 heterosexual couples.
And we recruited them from all over the U.S.,
from adoption agencies as well as from LGBT organizations.
This was an extremely hard sample to get,
which is why it took us from 2005 to 2010
and it was really hard because we're looking
at a very specific group of people
and we have to get them before they adopted.
So that's really challenging.
So I joked with my students a lot
that it took us six years to get the sample
and I'm never gonna recruit another sample
and so eventually we'll have the transition
to grandparenthood study. (laughter)
We'll just keep following them forever and ever.
And some of our participants are like,
"We're with you. We'll stay in the study."
So we've assessed these couples now at seven time points.
So we started pre-adoption
and then we've continued to follow them up
three months after,
one year, two years,
three years, fives years,
and most recently, eight years.
So we're not interviewing couples as well as their children,
which is a lot of fun.
Interviewing eight to nine years olds
is really, really fun.
So we didn't interview them at every time point
but we gave questionnaires at every time point.
So, again this is a mostly well-educated sample.
About 70% have at least a bachelor's degree.
They're fairly affluent but there's huge ranges in income,
from $20,000 to $700,000.
An average income is about $95,000 per family,
with lesbian couples on the low end,
and gay male couples on the higher end.
The parents are mostly white
and the children are mostly of color,
including biracial and multiracial children.
They come from all over the United States.
75% of them are from the east coast or west coast.
About a quarter are from mid-west or south.
And the majority of them have done
private domestic adoptions
so this is adoption through an adoption agency
where they pay money and they typically
are on the receiving end of an infant or even a newborn.
22% pursued public adoption,
which is basically foster-care adoption
or child welfare adoption.
And then 20% pursued international adoption.
(clears throat)
So one big focus of the study has been the
has been the kinds of challenges that couples face
when they actually try to adopt.
So not surprisingly,
and something that I'm not gonna go into too much depth,
is that really, of course, these couples face a lot
of legal challenges in adopting.
And so in our sample of same-sex couples,
we found that a quarter of them,
when they initially adopted,
only one parents was able to legally adopt the child.
So in some cases,
states and jurisdictions passed laws
that eventually allowed both parents to become
legal adoptive parents,
but at least initially,
that child had only one legal adoptive parent.
Regarding agency-level barriers,
we found that many couples faced
outright discrimination from agencies,
particularly religiously-oriented agencies
or affiliated agencies like Catholic Charities,
who simply said, "We just won't work with you."
Now this was a problem
because many of the religiously affiliated agencies,
like Catholic Charities,
are the cheaper agencies
and they're the most local agencies.
So some couples had to incur
incredible time and financial losses.
We had couples who were flying
to meet with their adoption agencies,
who were spending so much money on an adoption agency
that they had to get a third mortgage,
move from a house to an apartment, and so on.
We found that many couples felt unusually scrutinized
by their agencies.
So they were asked what they felt were kind of
rude, insensitive, or overly-intrusive questions
of a kind of vaguely heterosexist nature.
They were very
concerned that heterosexual couples probably
were not asked these same questions
so they were scrutinized or asked a lot of questions
about their sleeping arrangements,
or about their preferences for a same-sex child,
for example.
Long lines of questioning.
Very commonly,
couples reported a lot of uncertainty about
whether they were being discriminated against.
They weren't sure.
So, when they had their telephone calls go unanswered,
when they waited for months to hear about a child placement,
when they were ignored at adoption agency trainings,
they didn't know.
Is it because of we're a same-sex couple, or not?
And they were afraid of saying anything
because quite frankly, they were afraid of making waves,
or being black-balled by their agency
and being further deprioritized by them.
Some of them wondered whether adoption professionals
were engaging in this practice of, as one man said,
"trying to give us the most damaged kids
"they know no one will take."
So, engaging in this practice of trying to match
the least desirable children
with the least desirable applicants,
i.e. same-sex couples.
So, we found that couples were very resourceful.
To avoid bias and discrimination,
they did a lot of research.
They did online research,
they went to visit agencies in person,
they asked agencies for referrals
of other same-sex couples that had used their services
to find out if in fact they were so fabulous
as they were saying they were.
They really used the power that they had
to make informed choices
about who they would work with.
But of course, couples with more educational
and financial resources had more power.
They could be more selective.
So what we saw was that couples with fewer resources
often ended up working with the least affirming agencies
'cause they couldn't really afford to be more picky,
be more choosy.
And many of them often ultimately did find agencies
that they felt were respectful and affirming,
that cultivated an attitude of acceptance and inclusion.
And this was really marked by some very specific,
tangible things that they did.
So they stated their openness to same-sex couples
in their agency materials,
on their websites, they said,
"We will work with same-sex couples."
Their visuals and their offices and websites
included same-sex couples
who had successfully adopted through their services.
Their written materials were explicitly sensitive
to the fact that not every family was a husband and wife,
a man and a woman,
so they said, "Please, designate yourselves
"as Parent One, Parent Two," for example.
They offered support groups that were inclusive of
or sometimes specific geared at LGBTQ adopters.
And they offered trainings specifically
for the unique challenges that same-sex couples might face,
for example, with respect to legal challenges.
So at the same time that the adoption process
can be really uniquely stressful
for same-sex couples,
they also bring certain important and unique strengths
to adopting.
So.
Same-sex couples are more likely to choose adoption,
to select it as their first choice route to parenthood.
Okay.
Heterosexual couples are more likely
to come to adoption after difficulties
in conceiving.
After infertility.
So in our sample,
50% of the lesbian couples had tried to conceive,
compared to 88% of heterosexual couples.
And furthermore, lesbian couples moved more quickly
to adoption when their insemination efforts
did not work.
So, they weren't as likely to try
for long periods of time
and they were less likely to use expensive
and extensive fertility treatments
like in vitro fertilization.
We also found that among our white couples,
same-sex couples were far more likely
to be open to adopting a child of color
as compared to heterosexual couples.
So 90% versus 68%.
And they didn't just talk the talk,
they walked the walk.
So we found that 75% almost,
compared to 50%,
were ultimately placed with children of color.
So why are they open?
So both heterosexual and same-sex couples,
when talking about why there were open
to adopting a child of color,
tend to talk about,
"We live in a really diverse area," or,
"we have really racially diverse friends and family,
"so we feel more equipped or prepared
"to adopt a child of color."
But same-sex couples also had
some sort of unique things to say.
So they were unique in highlighting
their own stigmatized status
as a reason for being open.
So they didn't feel as stigmatized minorities themselves
that it was really fare to discriminate
against a child based on the color of their skin.
So they said, "how could we close ourselves off
"to any particular child,
"when we ourselves have been discriminated against?"
They also drew on their experiences
of stigma related to their sexual orientation
as a kind of resource in terms of thinking
about raising a child of color.
So, they talked about,
"I might not know what it's like
"to be a child of color,
"but I've had experiences of stigma in my life
"that I can draw upon in raising this child."
So.
Another real strength that same-sex couples bring
to adoption is a particular appreciation
for openness in adoption.
So having contact with their child's birth family members,
and for those of you who don't know,
openness is really the norm in domestic adoptions today.
And so most families,
most adoptive families have contact
with their children's birth family members,
birth parents.
That might be just before the adoption,
it might be before and after,
it may be weekly,
it may be monthly,
it may be yearly,
it may be every five years,
it may be letters, phone calls,
in-person visits,
it's huge variability.
But some contact is the norm.
And so we found that in explaining
why they were feeling to open
to having contact with birth family members,
we found that same-sex couples were really drawn
to this philosophy of openness and honesty and integrity.
It resonated with them
because they felt that they sort of felt
the same way about their sexual orientation.
So they felt like they just don't want any secrets,
that having everything out in the open was healthy
for everybody.
Whereas heterosexual couples were more likely to say
that they came to open adoption
because they had to.
That it was the practical sort of necessity.
That's the way the adoption was moving,
and it was very hard to find closed adoptions anymore.
So they ultimately arrived at it
because that's basically what the agencies they pursued
were doing.
We also found that same-sex couples
more easily conceived of and imagined
their children...
I'm sorry, conceived of birth family
as extended family members.
So they were more likely to say,
"Of course, we embrace this birth family
"as extended family of ours.
"We're open to having them present
"at the child's birthday and holidays."
And they often related this to norms
within the LGBT or Queer community,
where ties, family ties,
are really more based on affective,
emotional ties and relationships
than biological ties.
So family is who you define it as family,
not who you were born to.
So one woman, for example, said,
"We have a really strong chosen family
"and intentional community,
"and so the idea of different structures of family
"is really familiar and precious to us.
"Open adoption is like extending our family."
Now, something we've found
across all the years we've been doing this study,
and it pretty remarkable,
is that gay dads have really good relationships
with birth family members,
and particularly birth mothers.
So, they attribute their positive relationships
to birth moms to the fact that, as they say,
"There's only one woman."
There's no jealousy,
there's no tension, there's no competition,
there's no difficult feelings surrounding
who is the mother,
who is the real mother figure.
So gay fathers seem to enjoy an ease with birth mothers
that's really facilitated by the fact
that there is only one woman in the picture.
Okay.
So again, the vast majority of studies
on the transition to parenthood have been conducted
on heterosexual biological parents.
Again, it's a time of stress,
and we see these declines in relationship quality
and mental health.
And so, I had to look at this.
And we do see these declines in relationship quality
in this sample as well.
Now this is really important.
Lesbian, gay, and heterosexual couples
all experience these declines.
There's no greater rate for any one particular family type.
So family structure does not
predict declines in relationship quality.
What does predict it?
So parents who are more depressed and anxious
prior to the adoption
are more likely to report increases in conflict
and decreased feelings of love for their partner.
Not a big surprise.
Those who engage in maladaptive coping,
so withdrawing or avoiding a problem when confronted it,
more likely to experience poor relationship quality.
And we found this interesting finding
where parents reported a lot of dissatisfaction
with the adoption process,
ultimately experienced declines in quality
across the first three years after they became parents.
That's kind of interesting,
and we think that stress
is probably the intermediary there
that if you have a really bad adoption experience,
that contributes to more stress,
which in turn, threatens the relationship.
Dissolution of relationships is rare.
People are always asking,
"So how many people break up?"
So, are you ready?
How many? Anyone wanna take a guess?
What percentage of the sample breaks up?
Five years after the adoption,
what percentage?
10? Someone said.
Nobody wants to guess.
(laughter)
Five, 10, five, 10.
Very good, right in the middle.
Eight percent.
So eight percent of the sample dissolved the relationships
as of five years post-adoptive placement.
And what you'll see in this graph,
is that lesbian couples are the most likely
to dissolve their relationships
and gay male couples are the least likely
to dissolve their relationships.
So why might this be?
So in our sample,
lesbian couples are the most likely to adopt older children,
which has the potential to place more stress
on the relationship
because older children bring with them
often difficult life histories.
An older age at adoption is often an index
for a more difficult life history,
history of abuse or neglect,
multiple foster care placements,
difficulties attaching.
Lesbian couples also make
the least amount of money in our sample
and gay male couples make the most.
Now.
Just as interesting
is the fact that this compares to 15 to 18%
in heterosexual biological parent families.
So they're actually half as likely to have broken up
compared to national data on biological parent families.
Now why might that be?
One very significant factor
is that all these children were very planned.
And half of the children of biological parent families
are unplanned.
So, we know that unplanned pregnancies
are a risk factor for relationship dissolution,
this is obviously a factor.
Also, they have higher levels of education,
and are fairly affluent
and obviously those are protective factors
when it comes to relationship quality.
Okay.
Predictors of dissolution.
When we actually look who is most likely
to dissolve their relationship,
this is what we find:
Those people who reported feeling less prepared
for the adoption three months after they were placed.
So we asked them, "How prepared did you feel?"
And those who said, "Not very prepared,"
were the most likely to break up.
So, it's difficult to ascertain
exactly what that's about.
Did the adoption sort of happen seemingly suddenly?
Or did they just not know what to do with the child
once they were placed with it?
And also adopting an older or non-infant child,
again for the reasons that I just spoke of
can be additionally stressful.
So regarding mental health,
again we see these declines in mental health
across the entire sample.
There were no differences by parents' sexual orientation.
In terms of predictors,
parents who pre-adoptions reported lower levels
of social support, lower levels of support
from friends, family, co-workers,
and among lesbian and gay participants,
those who perceived their neighborhoods
as less gay affirming,
all experienced declines in mental health.
And the next finding I'm gonna say
is one that has been used in a lot amicus briefs
and policy briefs to argue for the effects,
to argue about the negative effects
of certain social policies on LGBT parent families.
So we found that among lesbian and gay parents,
those who reported high levels of internalized homophobia,
who felt the least good about their sexual identity,
experienced the worst declines in mental health.
But, this effect was pronounced among those
living in states with the most anti-gay climates.
So basically,
if you don't feel good about your sexuality
and you live in a state that denigrates your sexuality
by virtue of its anti-gay adoption laws,
you experience plummeting mental health,
which clearly, the laws trickle down
into community attitudes,
which is how we understand that.
So this is a very powerful finding
and it can be used to really argue
for more affirming policies for LGBT parent families.
In terms of the division of labor,
we found that same-sex couples
did indeed share more equally across the transition.
So they shared childcare.
They shared housework
and they shared paid work
more equally than heterosexual couples.
Now what's interesting is that in the qualitative data,
we found that gay men,
who actually reported the greatest commitment
to their careers pre-parenthood
frequently said that they really de-emphasized their careers
and were really putting their jobs
as a backseat to parenthood
when we talked to them post-parenthood.
Heterosexual men, on the other hand,
often increased their commitment to work.
So they said that they were more committed
to providing for their family.
And of course this speaks to the differing meanings
of parental roles,
different meanings about masculinity
within gay male and heterosexual context.
So everybody, of course, wants to know,
"What about the kids?" Right?
Concerns about the rights of lesbian and gay parents
to become parents often center on their children.
How will they turn out?
Will they be teased?
Will they show disturbances in adjustment, right?
So as we've been able to follow our sample,
we've been able to look at children's outcomes
in these particular families.
And we found that there's no cause for alarm.
So, children's adjustment, not surprisingly to me,
didn't really differ by family type.
But what did differ, or what did predict child functioning,
was very interesting.
So, what predicted whether children
would have more difficulties?
Parents who were depressed
had kids with more difficulties.
That doesn't surprise anyone I'm sure.
Parents who are more depressed,
depression interferes with your ability to parent
and interferes with parental warmth,
which in turn is more likely to lead
to behavioral and emotional problems in children.
Conflict between parents.
When parents are fighting,
this leads children to either
internalize or externalize their difficulties.
And an older age at adoption.
So again, children who are adopted at an older age
were more likely to have history of abuse,
neglect, prenatal drug exposure,
all things that could increase the likelihood
of emotional or behavioral problems.
So.
Concerns have also centered on the gender development
of children in these families.
So the concern being
that kids of same-sex parents can't possibly show
normal gender identity or normal gender development,
particularly those poor boys with lesbian moms,
who can't possibly know what it's like to be a real boy
and those poor girls with two dads
who won't possibly be exposed to any other female figures.
They won't know how to be a girl.
So, you can see what I think about that.
So, generally, what we find is kind of interesting.
We do find that children with lesbian and gay parents
do show less stereotyped play.
So they're less gender stereotyped,
they're more gender expansive.
They're more likely to play with a range of toys.
So boys are not just likely to play with trucks,
they're more open to playing with dolls, for example.
But, this is well within normal limits,
and it's really important to emphasize
that scholars of development and education
really emphasize that less rigid play
is really beneficial to learning and development.
It's actually not so good for you
to only be willing to play
with toys that are stereotyped for your gender,
to sort of disregard any toys
that are not stereotyped for your gender.
So this could really be looked at
as actually a very positive finding.
So why this pattern?
Well, it's clearly not due to any real absence
of same gender role models for these children.
So we asked parents about the kinds of adults
that are involved in their children's lives,
and trust me, nobody's growing up in a gender vacuum.
They talk about birth parents,
aunts, uncles, grandparents, close friends,
teachers,
lots and lots of adults who have a role
in their children's development.
So it's possible that lesbian and gay parents
may provide more opportunities for a broader range
of activities, right?
So, a lesbian mother may be more likely
than a heterosexual mother to offer her son
the opportunity to participate
in a hip-hop class, for example.
It's also possible that lesbian and gay parents
respond less negatively when their child
engages in cross-gender play.
So, they respond enthusiastically
whether their son is playing with a truck
or a tea set, right?
As opposed to responding clearly more enthusiastically
when their son is playing with a truck,
which is sort of differential reinforcement.
So again, less rigid play can really be viewed as adaptive.
So the last domain I'm gonna talk about
before I get into some interesting applications
of this work and how it's been used
both positively and negatively,
are parent school experiences.
So we found that most of the parents in this study
really had good experiences with schools
as of the time that their children were in kindergarten.
So they felt that schools were affirming of them.
They typically attributed this to where they lived,
progressive geographic area,
or the type of school that their children attended,
i.e. a private school in many cases.
So the third of parents who described challenges
with their children's school
described them in a couple of domains.
So one was a teacher lack of experience
with lesbian or gay parents,
so they said they were often
the first lesbian or gay parents at that kid's school
and they had to do a lot of education.
Now very commonly they talked about
curriculum marginalization
of lesbian and gay parent families.
So curricula was described as explicitly
or implicitly heterosexist,
for example, only heterosexual two-parent families
were depicted in stories
or used as examples in the classroom.
Or, in some cases, very explicit heterosexist
examples were given.
So, a child was only allowed to make one candle
for Mother's Day, for example.
So, in response to this curricular benign neglect,
when it came to diverse families,
some parents really took it upon themselves
to bring in books, reading materials,
lesson plans, to help teachers
to teach more holistically
about diverse families.
And some didn't.
Some felt really afraid of potentially alienating teachers
and causing them to further marginalize their families.
Now those that did said that they received
positive to neutral responses.
Here was a woman who described a more neutral response.
She said that her children's school,
"eventually bought the books that we recommended,
"but those books should have already been there.
"It is one thing for a school to roll along
"and then once there's gay people who they know about
"they're willing to accommodate them
"but it is quite another to be welcoming ahead of time.
"I think that is a problem.
"Our kids are not the only kids at that school
"who have queer people in their lives who they love."
And then other parents.
For some parents, other parents were the problem.
They felt ignored, marginalized, disrespected, ignored.
This was particularly the case with our lesbian moms
who described themselves as having
more nontraditional gender presentations.
Those who said that they were more butch
or masculine presenting,
that they felt out of place, ignored.
Here's a couple of quotes.
One woman said, "It is not my orientation,
"but it is my gender expression that's the problem
"that's causing issues.
"Parents are just less likely to interact with me
"than my wife, who's more gender conforming."
Another woman said, "I felt really left out.
"Rachel feels welcomed by parents.
"They've all friended her on Facebook.
"I don't have any of that.
"Sometimes when I'm there to drop off or pick up,
"they hardly talk to me.
"They know that we're together,
"but I think they're uncomfortable
"with the fact that I'm not like a traditional female."
So.
Despite the fact that lesbian and gay parents
were more likely to perceive other parents as unwelcoming,
they demonstrated really high levels of involvement
in their children's schools.
So they were involved in the PTA,
they were members of the Diversity Committee,
they attended school events and activities,
and in fact, lesbian mothers, gay fathers,
and heterosexual mothers demonstrated
almost identical levels of self-reported parent involvement.
Heterosexual fathers, sadly, were far below them.
So, lesbian and gay parents often emphasized
involvement as a given.
They said, "We have to be involved.
"We have to go above and beyond."
One gay dad said, "We talk with the teachers every day,
"so they we're involved.
"We will know what's going on."
Another gay dad said,
"We realized we're gonna have to push ourselves,
"even though our personality is to hold back.
"At the open house, we chose to sit in front
"and not the back.
"That was a conscious decision.
"We can't afford to sit in back.
"We're gonna have to do a little more,
"push a little more, but we're not gonna be obnoxious."
So they were generally aware of the need to work
harder than other families
to make sure that their families
weren't rendered invisible or marginalized.
Now, this is an interesting and unexpected finding,
that gay male parents were particularly likely
to be highly involved in leadership positions
in their children's schools.
My graduate students and I have had lots of conversations
about why this might be.
It's kind of an interesting finding.
But they also felt isolated and marginalized
in these positions because who were they volunteering with
or running committees with?
They were running committees with heterosexual moms
who are different from them in both their sexual orientation
and their gender.
So, they typically felt like this one man said
really an anomaly.
Another man said, "I'm like an ostrich,
"I just don't fit in.
"They look at me like I'm crazy."
Okay.
So, here are just a couple of other topics
we've explored in our research.
I'm just gonna put them up.
We've done papers on all of them,
if you're interested I'll put up the website at the end.
So parents' preferences related to child gender, race, age.
Reasons for choosing one type of adoption versus another.
So I'm gonna talk about some applications
quickly of this work.
Expert testimony has drawn on this research
in various cases.
I've also worked with organizations
like the Human Rights Campaign to develop a rating system
that can be used by agencies to kind of evaluate
how gay affirming they are.
And they can sort of do it again and again
to get a better score,
which is a motivator.
I've talked with schools including psychologists
and principals about ways to make
their schools more affirming.
Here's just a couple of tips.
It's good for schools to know
what a child calls each parent.
So "momma and mommy" for example
and not to use those terms interchangeably
or call both parents by the same name.
Not to use heteronormative language,
so using terms like "parents," for example,
as opposed to "mothers and fathers."
And using different examples of different kinds of families
in the classroom.
Just even casually to illustrate a point can go a long way
in just deconstructing the sort of heterosexual as normal.
And I've also spoken to therapists, social workers,
psychologists, and I'm always looking for creative ways
of translating this research into practice.
So the response to my work has not always been positive.
There are some delightful blogs out there
that are devoted to my work. (laughter)
This is one of my favorites.
And this one dubbed me a homosexual propagandist
which is my absolute favorite title yet.
I'm gonna have a badge made with that.
Sometimes my findings have been misrepresented and misused.
This one says:
There's all kinds of religious organizations
that have read my work.
Some anti-gay activists have interpreted my findings
related to the gender development of children,
which I mentioned as evidence of pathology
and a reason to say, "Yes, kids need a mother and a father."
So, I didn't admit anything,
but this is the language that they used.
I didn't administer a femininity scale.
So sometimes I've been attacked personally.
This is, by the way, an attack on another misrepresentation
of my work.
I actually never said anywhere that gay parents
were the best parents.
But a journalist used that catchy title
in an article in which I was quoted
and so many, many people have said,
"Goldberg thinks that gay parents are the best parents."
And of course, if you know anything about my work,
I would never say that any type of parent
is better than any other type of parent,
that's the whole point of my work,
is to say that sexual orientation is not relevant.
So.
So I wanna thank my funders.
I've been incredibly fortunate to have funding from many
many, many different sources,
both federal and non-federal.
And I say this particularly
for graduate students in the audience
who might be thinking,
"How the hell do you get this work funded?"
When I started this work,
I was kindly told by a faculty member at U Mass Amherst,
who will remain nameless,
that I was a very bright student
and that I should really pick a better topic
because I would never get funding,
and I'd probably never find a job.
So, I always think about that particular faculty member
because I was successful in getting funding
and so I think there really is a lot of room out there
for work on marginalized individuals and sexualities
and gender identities and it really just takes
commitment and perseverance.
I would be nowhere without my wonderful co-authors,
many of whom are listed here,
and my doctoral students,
who've conducted many, many of the interviews
with these couples over the years
and they're amazing and I'm very grateful to them.
And this is my website.
And I have divided my publications into categories,
so you can actually go right there and search
and download them in PDF form, if you're interested.
I also have some books.
And then before I get to my last slide,
I just wanna quietly dedicate this talk to KJ Morris,
who was a member of this community.
I did save that to the end so I wouldn't break up.
And then this is my cat. (laughter)
Ending on a more positive note.
So thank you very much.
(applause)
So I think, Hannah, should I facilitate questions?
Okay, I guess we have time for some questions.
Yeah.
Oh, no, that broke up.
Okay, no that's an important difference.
(laughter)
Right, so I personally haven't,
but there is literature out there
on sort of trajectories of relationship quality over time
comparing lesbian, gay, and heterosexual couples.
That work is really hard, it's hard to compare.
It's hard to compare anything from 20 years ago to today.
Those studies that do compare heterosexual couples
to lesbian couples to gay male couples,
they're problematic because heterosexual couples
could get married and lesbian/gay couples couldn't.
So even comparing, like these couples
are of varying relationship durations.
Does that make sense?
And they have kids.
So, I've never looked at like
the couples compared to a sample...
Like, who would be the comparison group?
Couples that have been together for how long
without children?
'Cause these couples have been together
for varying lengths of time.
Do you see my point?
It's like comparing apples and oranges.
I think generally speaking,
gay male couples without children breakup more frequently.
That's safe to say.
And definitely in our sample,
we have gay men who say,
"We're together because of our child."
They do say that.
So it's possible that they are just
more likely to together even if they're having difficulties
but that's not something that we've teased out yet.
Yeah.
I mean I think a lot of the findings regarding gay men
that I sort of pointed out,
the fact that they're really
connected to their birth mothers,
that's a really interesting finding that we didn't expect.
Another thing that we heard over and over and over again
was that when you put together a profile for birth parents,
we heard this from agencies,
that gay men and lesbians were the least likely to be chosen
by birth families.
We did not see that.
Gay men have the lowest waiting times,
so they waited for the least amount of time,
which again, speaks to the point that I brought up.
But it was funny because adoption agencies specifically
were wrong.
They just guessed this and they were sort of
perpetuating this idea that ultimately was not true.
I was like, no, they're not actually waiting longer,
they're waiting the least amount of time,
less than your heterosexual couples.
But they didn't track that.
So, we were able to give them that feedback
which was kind of interesting.
Yeah.
I can't remember anyone saying anything like that,
like something explicitly homophobic,
like, "This book went home and our school went crazy."
Some of them did talk about donating materials
and then other parents complaining.
Generally speaking, the parents were very active.
So they were sort of like,
"Okay, so let's have a conversation as parents.
"Invite those parents who are complaining in
"and let's all talk about it."
So, that takes a certain amount of effort and energy.
But they didn't shy away from that kind of conflict.
We did have some parents, though, who never spoke up at all,
and those parents tended to live in rural areas
and have their children in religious schools,
and there were not a lot of options.
Or there were so many other battles that they were fighting
that that was like the least of it.
They were like, "Our kid has sensory processing problems,
"and is multiracial and is having some difficulties
"with their birth mother and they need an IAP,"
I mean there were just so many things.
And they just said, "we can't prioritize that one thing."
So, that's a good question.
Yeah.
Yeah, so I have maintained contact with the agencies
that supported this research
and they've been pretty incredible in terms of
a.) requesting the information,
really using the data in ways
that I think are really productive,
asking for feedback.
I think their part of the title change in terms of
the changes that we're seeing in the country,
they're becoming much more savvy about,
"Oh, same sex couples are actually...
"We need them.
"We can make money if we market to them."
So recognizing that they're actually a consumer source
and so on that level, being more sensitive
even if it's just for financial gain...
So, definitely they responded positively.
I can't think of anyone who's responded negatively.
I've also got doing a ton of workshops to agencies
and they will follow up with me.
They're actually the most likely to follow up with me
and say, "So we're doing this thing,
"would you take a look at it?"
And I'm always happy to do so.
The ones that are not asking for my help
are probably the ones that need it.
So, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, totally.
That's a great question.
So, this just has come up again.
So a lot of the families in our study
are in open adoptions
and a bunch of families have mentioned to me
over the years, "You know?
"Our birth mother would totally talk to you.
"Our birth father would totally talk to you.
"Our birth grandparents would totally..."
and I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And then I started thinking,
yeah, I should talk to them.
So, at the next phase,
phase eight,
I am going to ask if we can talk to the birth family members
because that's how the whole kid inclusion came about
is people kept saying, "So when are you gonna
"talk to our kids?"
And I was like, talking to a five year old's
really hard on the phone,
but when they get to be eight or nine,
then I can talk to them.
And that's what we do now
and we also offer an option for Skyping
and the kids love it.
The kids are not used to actually
talking on the phone these days. (laughter)
So they are like, "Phone?
"I don't wanna do that."
But Skyping is actually much more natural for them.
So that's been really fun.
So that's an example of a piece of advice I did take
and then one that it's just taking me a really long time.
And then just the other day I got an email saying,
"Our birth mother would love to talk to you."
And I was thinking, maybe,
it's hard to do it mid-phase...
But that's a great question.
Yeah.
We've definitely looked at that.
We have some specific publications
looking only at each of those groups
because their experiences are so different.
So, as an example, openness,
a lot harder in international adoptions
although we've had families that have tracked down
either their child's foster families
or their child's birth families
with the help of private investigators in other countries.
And then some foster families have had openness,
even though that wasn't part of the initial arrangement.
The families who adopt through childcare, child welfare,
experience...
a unique set of challenges
around openness in particular
because they wanna be open
but often those children are removed from the home
for very good reasons.
So, there's abuse and there's neglect
and so maintaining openness can be really difficult
and isn't always the best thing for that child.
So there are so many differences.
Attachment looks really different
in those different types of families.
Yeah.
And racial dynamics, obviously.
In international adoptions,
there's the racial and cultural piece,
which is really important.
Yeah.
Oh.
I don't know if I understand the question.
(laughs)
Oh, I see what you're saying,
so other areas.
Right.
Oh yeah, I see what you're saying.
This is sort of like an ongoing continuous thing.
I do have a couple of other studies.
I'm studying bisexual women partnered with men
who are pregnant and looking at their
transition to parenthood.
And trasgendered, gender nonconforming college students
and their experiences at college.
So, those two areas actually to me,
they might seem really different,
but actually, they're totally in line
with my overarching interest which is...
Right, totally.
So, yes, they're invisible populations.
They're populations that nobody sees.
So bisexual women partnered with men,
when they present to a doctor's office,
people think they're heterosexual
and never ask anything about their sexual identity
which has impacts on their transition to parenthood,
their community supports and so on.
Specifically gender non-binary college students,
which is what I'm interested in,
are often really lost.
Even in colleges that consider themselves
very trans-affirming
often don't really consider the experiences
of students that endorse non-binary gender identities.
So, really both of those studies come out of observations
of invisible populations
and the trans study is really based on
a year of conversations with my students
and focus groups and an excitement around
delving into that as a community.
So it's a project that is very student-driven
and it's fantastic and exciting.
Yeah.
Right.
That's a great question.
So we did look at wait time
in relation to all these different outcomes,
like the length of time that they waited for a child
and we didn't actually see anything,
like it didn't affect their mental health
or their relationship quality.
But what I will say is that all adoptive parents
have to go through a certain number of classes, etc,
so they have some time.
It's not like they say "I want to adopt,"
and the next day they can get a child.
They do have to complete a certain amount of course work
and have somebody visit their home and do all that.
But I can think qualitatively of examples of people
who felt like they were...
It's sort of like when people start trying to have a child
biologically before they're ready,
and then they get pregnant and they're like,
"Oh, okay. I guess that's happening more quickly
"than we thought."
That same thing happens with adoptive parents,
where they think it'll take a really long time
and then it might take a very short amount of time.
And so we have had families that felt like
there was a child that came into their home
with very little notice
or in some cases,
they were presented with siblings
when they expected one child,
and that was something that was unexpected
and created a total,
it was a much more difficult transition for them.
We've also had quite a number of families
where they adopted a child,
they're going along with their daily life,
and then all of a sudden,
they get a call from their agency saying,
"Your child's birth mother just gave birth.
"The child's here.
"Do you want the child?"
So they have to make a split-second decision
about whether they're going to adopt that other child.
Sometimes that decision has to be made in a matter of hours.
Right, so yeah, it's less common with a first...
It definitely can happen,
but yes, even with the first child,
sometimes they have to make decisions quickly
based on a very limited amount of information.
So, yes of course they want a child,
but then they're told,
"This child has prenatal drug exposure,
"and we don't know how much."
So they have to make a decision
based on very limited information,
or it appears that this child may have had this risk factor.
Do they wanna take the risk or do they not?
So yeah, so it can be, yes.
And that can create a lot more challenges.
But different couples deal with it in different ways.
Yeah.
Right, so we actually do look at that.
And one of the things I thought about presenting,
but I just cut it for time,
was that we look at the kinds of socialization efforts
that they're engaged in,
so how much sort of active...
How much, for example, actively prepare their child
for racial bias, that's one,
or heterosexist bias, or adoptive bias,
and we find that lesbian and gay parents
do actually engage in higher levels of preparation
for bias.
But we relate that to, again, their own exposure to stigma.
They're also engaging in more preparation
for other types of bias.
So,
that is interesting.
I would say there's more variability
in heterosexual couples.
There's some couples that say,
"Race doesn't matter.
"We're colorblind."
I don't hear that as much from our same sex couples.
That's not a common sentiment
but it is something that we hear from some
of our heterosexual couples.
Yeah.
Right, so the measure of internalized homophobia
or internalized homo-negativity,
or bi-negativity, it's a scale.
And so it's a questionnaire about how comfortable you are,
how confident you are in your identity.
I can certainly send you the measure if you're interested.
It's a very commonly used measure
that was created by Greg Herek at UC Davis.
Sure, yeah.
Oh yeah.
Yeah, that's a very good question.
So I was impressed that I was invited
to the Headmistresses Association of America meeting
as their plenary speaker.
I didn't know who they were until I looked it up.
So that's basically a bunch of private schools,
they're really wealthy private schools
around the Northeast,
and they were really interested in what can we do better.
When people are asking that question,
I think usually they really want feedback.
They're not just like, "Tell us we're awesome."
They're like, "Tell us what we can do better?"
And sometimes I was saying the most basic things
and they were like, "That is the greatest idea ever."
Well, all I said was don't just use examples
of moms and dads.
And they were like, "Okay, we're doing this."
(laughter)
So on one level, everybody's starting at a different level,
so there are definitely schools that I've talked to.
One time I gave a talk at a conference
of school psychologists.
They were a little bit more nuanced,
they wanted more help dealing with different
socioeconomic groups
and how to deal with heterosexual parents
who didn't want these gay parents in the school.
They were asking more critical...
Very specific questions.
They'd done all the stuff of like,
modifying their forms,
and they didn't say heterosexual mother
and heterosexual father anymore.
So I think everybody's at a different place.
And it's fun to talk to groups
who are in different places
but sometimes when I start talking to a group,
I realize I have to take either a giant step back,
or a giant step forward,
'cause it's hard to sometimes gauge where they're at,
their level of comfort, knowledge, sensitivity,
and so on.
Thank you.
(applause)