LGBT adoption is becoming more and more common. For LGBT couples who want to start a family, their decisions are either adoption or surrogacy. Surrogacy can be much more expensive than the adoption process. The additional benefit for deciding on adoption is that a couple is granting a child a home with loving and fully equipped parents when a birthmother might have symbiotically already made the choice that parenting is not a responsibility that she can afford to make with her present life circumstances. As societal changes have been made to the idea of family, the statistics for LGBT parenting are increasing to exemplary numbers. For the purpose of advocacy and overall representation, this article intends to educate on some of the great progressions of LGBT parenting.
Adoption Statistics for LGBT Parents
- The number of same-sex couples who have adopted children has more than tripled, from 6,500 couples in 2000 to 22,000 in 2010.
- Of the 594,000 same-sex households in the United States, 115,000 have children.
- More than 4% of all adopted children in the United States are raised by LGBT parents.
- LGBT couples adopt transracially more often than heterosexual couples.
- LGBT adoptions have increased exponentially over the last 10 years.
- The number of organizations focused on the rights of LGBT families has increased as well.
LGBT Parenting Studies
- The ability of good parenting is not influenced by sexual identity.
- Gay and lesbian parents raise children who have the same social abilities as children raised by a straight couple and sometimes possess higher emotional cognition.
- Same-sex couples who want to adopt a child and are usually older, more educated and more financially stable than other adoptive parents.
Children of LGBT parents
- Studies have shown that children are more influenced by their interactions with parents than by their parents’ sexual orientation.
- Children of LGBT parents are much more self-aware and communicate about their feelings more openly. They also tend to seek understanding and empathy more than children in nuclear families.
- There's strength in numbers and LGBT adoptions continue to increase all the time. Changing an old mentality of the traditionalist family, creates a healthy challenge for society to embrace an open and empathetic culture. Love is love.
