Chapter 5: Parenting in Legal Limbo: Parenting Identity Among Gay and Lesbian Parents in Ireland

Planned LGBTQ+ parent families now form part of the demographic landscape across many Western countries. Early studies compared outcomes for children in same-sex and different-sex parent families, with the aim of establishing whether gay and lesbian parents can be good parents and should be granted legal parentage and access to assisted reproduction techniques (Bos & Gartrell, 2023; Imrie & Golombok, 2020). Substantial research supports the view that children and parents can flourish in same-sex parented families; children’s outcomes relate more to the quality of the parenting and family relationships than to the family composition, including sexuality and gender of the parents (Golombok, 2020). However, some family structures remain less well studied, owing to their relative novelty (e.g., children born to gay fathers through surrogacy; Golombok et al., 2018).