According to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law, 6,477 gay and lesbian couples adopted kids in 2000 and the number tripled to about 21,740 by 2009. In 2000, about 8,310 adopted children were living with same-sex couples and in 2009, the number rose to 32,571. Have you adopted your designer baby yet? What are you waiting for?
Apparently the trick is to do what 50 percent of all gay and lesbian couples do and adopt a kid from foster care. That way they have their healthcare and college already paid for—ch-ching! But we digress…
From The L.A. Times:
According to the Adoption Institute, at least 60% of U.S. adoption agencies surveyed accept applications from non-heterosexual parents. Nearly 40% of agencies have knowingly placed children with gay families. About half the agencies surveyed reported a desire for staff training to work with such clients.
That’s right. Adoption agencies love working with gay families because we’re so rad.
How about we take this to the next level?
Our newsletter is like a refreshing cocktail (or mocktail) of LGBTQ+ entertainment and pop culture, served up with a side of eye-candy.
We already know that kids from straight and gay families turn out no differently from one another. In fact, homo-raised kids might actually even turn out better.
We can’t wait until gays and lesbians end up adopting at a rate similar to straights so we can get some more stats on the success of gay-raised kids and finally trash that whole nonsensical “every child deserves a mother and father” line down the dustbin of history.
Image via LizaWasHere
Kurt
It is a tremendously loving and virtuous act for gay couples to adopt a child in need of a home, particularly those in foster care and “hard to place” children. God bless every couple who has stepped forward.
ChrisC
Question: Maybe I’m a moron and just not reading this right, but it says that 6,400 kids were adopted in 2000, and 21,700 in 2009, that would put the number to about 28,000, but it says that the total amount of kids living with same-sex couples was at 32,000 in 2009, does that mean that only a few hundred kids a year were adopted between 2001 – 2008? Or am I just reading this wrong?
jude
wtf is up with the snarky ‘designer baby’ comment? Totally rude and unnecessary.
Kurt
@ChrisC: Some of those kids adopted in 2000 are all grown up now and life away from home.
xander
‘Designer Baby’? We want two, so we’re adopting Dolce and Gabbano.
(jk)
The wonderful lesbian couple a few doors down recently actually adopted ~16 month old twins (surrogacy wasn’t on the table). Years of runarounds from agencies led no where, and finally word of mouth worked.
It’s amazing how many barriers exist for L/G couples or individuals who wish to be parents.
Eli Clyne
According to Stats Canada 3% of gay couples have children and are in the workforce. 35% of straight couples are in the workforce and have children living at home. Canadian Auto Workers won day care benefits in the last 10 years and kept them even thought the last contract introduced two tier wages, $16 for new employees instead of $30 for everyone else. They cut back on tuition refund for employees but kept it for adult children of employees. There was no increase of low dental benefits while keeping it for adult children of up to 25 years old. With 97% of gay couples not having children any benefit that accrues to the children of workers instead of directly to the worker, like hourly wages, is not in our interest. Yes babies, puppies and baby seals are cute and should be taken care of. I just don’t want co-opted lesbian and gay union reps thinking they have to forgo benefits for a rare constituent, gay couple with kids.
DB
Eli Clyne,
Actually US Census data indicate that 25% of gay couples are raising children under age 18 at home. That 3% statistic is completely bogus.
Eli Clyne
Gay male couples with kids aged 24 or under in Canada. http://www42.statcan.gc.ca/smr08/2010/smr08_144_2010-eng.htm
Kenny
I wonder when queerty will nominate itself for douchebag of the week. With articles worded like this one & headlines like the suicide story, Queerty should be an easy winner. Hopefully extensive psychotherapy is included as a prize.
Eli Clyne
Williams Institute estimate for the numbers of gay people in the U.S., 9 million. Number of same sex couples with children 650 thousand. Percentage with kids 25%. 25% of 1,300,000,lets be generous and give each half of couple, one kid, equals 325,000. What percentage of 9 million is 325,000. 3.61% of gay people have kids.
ChrisC
@Eli Clyne: Wow, you’re really dumb. According to the 2000 US census, 33% of Lesbian couples and 22% of Gay couples have children. Not 3%. Go take your bigotry elsewhere.
Eli Clyne
@ChrisC: How does what you wrote contradict what I wrote? You wrote about gay couples. I compared the number of gay people to the number of couples with kids. Numbers that become propaganda when left to idiots like you to interpret.
rdrkt
@Eli Clyne: Your statistic is less useful than his. What percentage of the greater population single or not do you think have kids? I doubt it’s very high. It’s much more useful to look at couples, otherwise you risk comparing apples and oranges.
Eli Clyne
That is what I’m trying to show, not many gay people have kids, and you pointed out the major flaw. The census doesn’t measure single gays with kids. I agree with you though, I doubt it is very high. “My statistic” which came from the Williams Institute numbers is less useful how? Is it because it doesn’t show that we are all a bunch of Camerons and Mitchells wanting to get a baby.
Fodolodo
@Eli Clyne: For the record, the Williams Institute gives a number of 111,033 same-sex couples raising children, which is 17% of same-sex couples (see here (pdf), p. 3), and 3,850,835 self-identified gay and lesbian persons (see here (pdf), p. 6). (The nine million number is for all LGBT people. Many, probably most though I haven’t seen data, bisexual and transgender people are in different-sex relationships.) That gives about 5.77% total. As others have pointed out, though, this is an undercount because it doesn’t count the children of single lesbians and gays. It is also an undercount because the US Census count of same-sex couples is too low: it corrects for different-sex couples mislabeling their sex, but not for same-sex couples who don’t disclose the real nature of their relationship.
Incidentally, I’m not sure why any of these statistics matter. For one, it’s not clear why we should be looking at the proportion of gays specifically (or same-sex couples?) who are raising children when analyzing subsidies for child-raising, as opposed to the proportion of all people (or all couples.) For another, the logic doesn’t actually work. It’s true that the fewer people who have children, the fewer people benefit from subsidies for child-raising. But it’s also true that the fewer people who have children, the less the cost to everyone else of those subsidies. The question is whether the price is worth paying, i.e. whether we should be in the business of subsidizing child-raising, not the proportion of child-raising couples in a population.
Eli Clyne
Fine, 5.77. It matters to me when the gay union rep. or the pride committee doesn’t speak up about benefits being increased for children of employees while at the same time cutting benefits for employees. The Canadian Auto Workers and Ford have brought in daycare subsidies for up to 10 year olds. They managed to maintain them while introducing a two tier wage system for workers. Employees now have to pay premiums on health benefits that had previously been covered. Education refunds were reduced for employees, but kept for adult children of employees. Adult children who are now covered up to 24.
I’m not anti children. I just believe gay union reps and pride committees have a responsibility to represent gay union members. The 94.23% without children. I’m not against subsidizing child rearing, I’m a good Canadian. I just don’t want to do it at the work level. I should take less dollars per hour so that bitch who yells “I hate faggots” can have more money to raise her spawn, I don’t think so. That is why, when I see statistics pointing out the gays with children, I like to remind people that they are a small minority.