Ricerc@Sapienza

STUDY QUESTION: How do gay father families experience surrogacy in terms of their relationships with surrogates and egg donors, fathers' disclosure decisions and children's views on their surrogacy origins?

SUMMARY ANSWER: More families had a relationship with the surrogate than the egg donor, and almost all had started to disclose to their children, the majority of whom expressed limited interest in their surrogacy conception.

Evidence is lacking about the factors that are pivotal in enhancing the exploration of surrogacy origins in children of gay fathers during middle childhood. The present study examined the separate and combined influences of child attachment security and parental scaffolding (i.e., fathers’ attempts to accept, encourage, and emotionally support their children’s expression of thoughts and feelings) during discussions about conception on children’s exploration of their surrogacy origins in 30 Italian children born to gay fathers through gestational surrogacy.

Forty Italian gay father families formed by surrogacy were compared with 40 Italian lesbian mother families formed by donor insemination, all with a child aged 3 to 9 years. Standardized interview, observational, and questionnaire measures of parenting quality, parent– child relationships, stigmatization, and children’s adjustment were administered to parents, children, teachers, and a child psychiatrist. The only differences across family types indicated higher levels of stigmatization as reported by gay fathers.