Gay father families via surrogacy: Does experienced social stigma impact on children's well-being?

Alongside the recent legal and technical advancements in assisted reproductive technologies an increasing number of gay men are having children through surrogacy. Nevertheless, in the Italian societal context, gay fathers are exposed to a great amount of stigma due to their “multiminority status” (Armesto, 2002) by being gay men and being fathers. As a result, important questions about the combined effect of these factors on children’s well-being need to be addressed. To our knowledge, the present study is the first to examine how children develop in gay father families by surrogacy, taking into account the role of social stigma attached to this emerging family form. Data were obtained by 56 Italian gay fathers (Mage = 44.3, SDage = 5.5), with middle to high socioeconomic status and level of education. All children (Mage = 2.38, SDage = 2) were conceived via gestational surrogacy sought in America or in Canada. Participants were asked to respond to Coparenting Scale-Revised (McHale, 1999), Dyadic Adjustment Scale – Short Form (Hunsley et al., 2001), Flexibility and Cohesion Evaluation Scale-IV (Olson, 2011), Social Stigma Questionnaire (Baiocco et al., 2016), and Strenghts and Difficulties Questionnaire (Goodman, 1997) administered through an anonymous survey online. Findings from hierarchical multiple regression analysis suggested that higher levels of experienced social stigma predicted more children’s difficulties in families with lower levels of family integrity (β = -.26, p = .05, Adj R2 = .32), dyadic adjustment (β = -.29, p = .01, Adj R2 = .31), and family satisfaction (β = -.21, p = .06, Adj R2 = .33). The parental status (β = .16, p = n.s., Adj R2 = .03) did not predict psychological problems in children. The present study increases theoretical understanding of the mechanisms through which parenting influences child development, particularly in relation to parental gender and sexual orientation, and biological connectedness between the parents and the child.