Neither stigma nor social support — but rather age, economic status, number of children, and religiosity — are the key predictors of LGB parents’ desire to expand their families.
This is according to a study — “Predictors for desire, intention, and likelihood for more children among LGB parents through assisted reproduction” by Geva Shenkman-Lachberg, Kfir Ifrah and Yuval Shaia — that was published in the Journal of Reproductive and Infant Psychology.
The research team explored the desire, intention, and assessment of the likelihood of having additional children among LGB individuals who are already parents. It particularly examined three measures of parental aspirations — desire, intention, and estimated probability — in the context of parenthood achieved through fertility treatments.
The study included 234 LGB parents with an average age of 40.23, surveyed between November 2022 and February 2024. Participants completed questionnaires addressing a wide range of factors that may influence the motivation to have additional children. The variables examined included sociodemographic characteristics (parent’s age, gender, education level, economic status, religiosity, marital status, number of children, and place of residence); factors related to perceptions of the parental role (investment in parenting, satisfaction with parenting, sense of parental competence, and parental integration); social variables (social support, experiences of discrimination, and stigma); as well as a cultural variable — pronatalism, which reflects sociocultural values that encourage childbirth and parenthood.
As one of the first studies to examine motivations for having additional children among LGB parents, the researchers based their hypotheses on previous findings from studies conducted among LGB individuals who were not yet parents. These earlier studies found that, alongside sociodemographic variables, social factors also had a significant impact. For example, non-parent LGB individuals who experienced lower levels of social support and higher levels of stigma and discrimination reported lower desire and intention to become parents. Accordingly, the researchers hypothesized that similar patterns would emerge among LGB parents — that exposure to stigma and discrimination or a lack of social support would be associated with decreased motivation to expand their families.
The study found:
- only sociodemographic factors — including the parent’s age, number of current children, economic status, and level of religiosity — predict the desire and intention to have more children among lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) parents
- in contrast to the findings of previous studies, experiences of discrimination, stigma, and social support were not found to have a significant impact on parental aspirations
“While previous studies have highlighted the impact of stigma, discrimination, and lack of social support on parenthood aspirations among sexual minorities, it seems that these factors carry less weight among LGB parents. It may be that after they have succeeded in becoming parents — effectively breaking the glass ceiling — they are accepted into the social consensus, and it is the sociodemographic factors that remain significant. In this sense, the emerging picture closely resembles the one we are familiar with among heterosexual parents,” Shenkman-Lachberg said.
This study, one of the first to address the motivations for having additional children among LGB parents who have used assisted reproductive technologies, makes a significant contribution to understanding gay parenthood.
