NDLI: Demographic Characteristics of Lesbian Parents in the United States

Content Provider	Springer Nature Link
Author	Brewster, Karin L. Tillman, Kathryn Harker Jokinen Gordon, Hanna
Copyright Year	2013
Abstract	Most research on lesbian families draws on either nonrepresentative samples or on representative samples of female-partner households. In contrast, this article uses individual-level, nationally representative survey data to provide a demographic description of lesbian parents in the United States. Pooling data from the 2002 and 2006–2010 rounds of the National Survey of Family Growth yielded a sample of 15,784 women aged 20–44 years, about 1.3 % of whom are lesbians. Defining parents broadly to include legal and social parents, we find that about 23 % of lesbians are parents, compared to about 68 % of heterosexual and 56 % of bisexual women. Lesbians become parents through a more diverse set of pathways than other women, including adoption and parenting a spouse or partner’s child. Consistent with patterns in the broader population, but at odds with media portrayals, lesbian parents are more likely than lesbian nonparents to be women of color and foreign-born, and most appear to have become parents in prior heterosexual relationships. We found evidence, however, of a convergence in the pathways women follow to parenthood, with lesbians’ probability of biological parenthood increasing and their probability of adoptive or social parenthood decreasing between the two surveys. Recent changes in the legal and social context and improvements in medical technology provide grounds for speculating about this convergence. We recognize, however, that these speculations cannot be tested without population-based data collection efforts aimed at providing richer information on the diversity of family experiences in the contemporary United States.
Starting Page	503
Ending Page	526
Page Count	24
File Format	PDF
ISSN	01675923
Journal	Population Research and Policy Review
Volume Number	33
Issue Number	4
e-ISSN	15737829
Language	English
Publisher	Springer Netherlands
Publisher Date	2013-07-25
Publisher Place	Dordrecht
Access Restriction	One Nation One Subscription (ONOS)
Subject Keyword	Lesbians Lesbian parents Sexual identity Parenthood Gay families Demography Sociology Population Economics
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Demography Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law

Sl.	Authority	Responsibilities	Communication Details
1	Ministry of Education (GoI), Department of Higher Education	Sanctioning Authority	https://www.education.gov.in/ict-initiatives
2	Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur	Host Institute of the Project: The host institute of the project is responsible for providing infrastructure support and hosting the project	https://www.iitkgp.ac.in
3	National Digital Library of India Office, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur	The administrative and infrastructural headquarters of the project	Dr. B. Sutradhar bsutra@ndl.gov.in
4	Project PI / Joint PI	Principal Investigator and Joint Principal Investigators of the project	Dr. B. Sutradhar bsutra@ndl.gov.in Prof. Saswat Chakrabarti will be added soon
5	Website/Portal (Helpdesk)	Queries regarding NDLI and its services	support@ndl.gov.in
6	Contents and Copyright Issues	Queries related to content curation and copyright issues	content@ndl.gov.in
7	National Digital Library of India Club (NDLI Club)	Queries related to NDLI Club formation, support, user awareness program, seminar/symposium, collaboration, social media, promotion, and outreach	clubsupport@ndl.gov.in
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9	IDR Setup or Support	Queries related to establishment and support of Institutional Digital Repository (IDR) and IDR workshops	idr@ndl.gov.in

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