Chapter 2: Sexual Orientation, Parenthood Aspirations, and Involuntary Childlessness in Israel and the USA

Parenthood decisions are a fundamental part of development across cultures. However, there are those who desire parenthood, but are unable to become parents for many reasons. Sexual minority people may be more likely to experience this situation than heterosexual people. The USA and Israel provide unique contexts to examine issues of family formation and planning and their intersection with sexual orientation. This chapter provides an overview of research on sexual identity, parenthood aspirations, and involuntary childlessness research in Israel and the USA. Moreover, we present a study evaluating parenthood aspirations as a function of gender, sexual identity (heterosexual, lesbian/gay, and plurisexual identities), and country and examine the parenthood aspirations of those who have had experiences of involuntary childlessness. Two online surveys were distributed, one per country. The combined dataset was 1,951 cisgender people (482 heterosexual men, 540 heterosexual women, 463 sexual minority men, and 466 sexual minority women). Findings showed that heterosexual individuals and Israeli people reported greater parenthood aspirations than did sexual minority people and those in the USA, but that differences by sexual identity tended to be slightly larger in Israel. However, for those who had experiences of involuntary childlessness, sexual identity was no longer associated with parenthood aspirations, and instead only the differences between the USA and Israel remained. Thus, heterosexual and sexual minority people may be more alike than they are different in their experiences and outcomes of involuntary childlessness and infertility. Future work should continue to pursue these questions within and between these unique cultural contexts.