Gay fathers' motivations for and feelings about surrogacy as a path to parenthood.

Study Question: Why do gay men choose to start their families through surrogacy?

Summary Answer: Most fathers chose surrogacy because they considered adoption to be a less desirable and/or accessible path to parenthood.

What Is Known Already: Little is known of gay fathers' motivations to use surrogacy as a path to parenthood over and above other forms of family building, such as adoption, and no studies have examined fathers' satisfaction with the surrogacy process.

Study Design Size, Duration: This study used a cross-sectional design as part of a larger investigation of parent-child relationships and child adjustment in 40 gay father surrogacy families.

Parenting and the Adjustment of Children Born to Gay Fathers Through Surrogacy.

Findings are presented on a study of 40 gay father families created through surrogacy and a comparison group of 55 lesbian mother families created through donor insemination with a child aged 3-9 years. Standardized interview, observational and questionnaire measures of stigmatization, quality of parent-child relationships, and children's adjustment were administered to parents, children, and teachers. Children in both family types showed high levels of adjustment with lower levels of children's internalizing problems reported by gay fathers.

Adolescents Conceived through Donor Insemination in Mother-Headed Families: A Qualitative Study of Motivations and Experiences of Contacting and Meeting Same-donor Offspring.

This study interviewed adolescents conceived using sperm donation to examine their experiences of contacting and meeting 'same-donor offspring' (i.e. donor-conceived offspring raised in different families who share the same donor), their motivations for this contact, and how they make meaning of these relationships.

Gay father surrogacy families: relationships with surrogates and egg donors and parental disclosure of children's origins.

Objective: To study the nature and quality of relationships between gay father families and their surrogates and egg donors and parental disclosure of children's origins.

Design: Cross-sectional study.

Setting: Family homes.

Integrating donor conception into identity development: adolescents in fatherless families.

Objective: To study the processes by which donor-conceived children incorporate donor conception into their subjective sense of identity.

Design: Cross-sectional.

Setting: Family homes.