Abbie E. Goldberg Photo: wordpress.clarku.edu/agoldberg/
The first study of gay men’s transition to fatherhood, by Abbie E. Goldberg, arrives this summer from one of the nation’s leading experts on parenting by the LGBT community
NEW YORK, NY – When gay couples become parents, they face a host of questions and issues that their straight counterparts may never have to consider. How important is it for each partner to have a biological tie to their child? How will they become parents: will they pursue surrogacy, or will they adopt? Will both partners legally be able to adopt their child? Will they have to hide their relationship to speed up the adoption process? Will one partner be the primary breadwinner? And how will their lives change, now that the presence of a child has made their relationship visible to the rest of the world?
In Gay Dads ($22.00 paper; ISBN: 978-0-8147-3224-3), Abbie Goldberg examines the ways in which gay fathers approach and negotiate parenthood when they adopt. Drawing on empirical data from her in-depth interviews with 70 gay men, Goldberg analyzes how gay dads interact with competing ideals of fatherhood and masculinity, alternately pioneering and accommodating heteronormative “parenthood culture.”
The first study of gay men’s transitions to fatherhood, this work will appeal to a wide range of readers, from those in the social sciences to social work to legal studies, as well as to gay-adoptive parent families themselves.
Abbie E. Goldberg is Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at Clark University (Worcester, MA), and senior research fellow at the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute (Newton, MA). She is the author of Lesbian and Gay Parents and their Children: Research on the Family Life Cycle (http://bit.ly/afTpjA) and co-editor of LGBT-Parent Families: Innovations in Research and Implications for Practice. More information on Dr. Goldberg is available at http://bit.ly/byQXqV.
70 people? Really? Not couples, people. She could only find 70? That’s rather sad. I’m willing to bet had she contacted the adoption agency my husband and I used she could have spoken to more than 70 couples. I realize this is just three short paragraphs to advertise a book, but it’s already make me cringe. I sincerely hope this study is significantly better than it presents here.