“I Cannot Wait to Build that One Day”: Lesbian and Bisexual College-Age Women’s Views on Marriage and Family

Abstract

After the US Supreme Court ruled in favor of marriage equality in 2015, the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community has gained visibility. One cohort that is affected by this decision is lesbian and bisexual college-age women. The present study, through six face-to-face semi-structured interviews with self-identifying lesbian and bisexual college-age women, sought to understand how these women view marriage and family. Three themes emerged are: (a) Heteronormative socialization, (b) Personal endorsement of marriage, and (c) LGBT Parenting. The results of this study suggest that college-age women still carry the effects of growing up and entering adulthood in a largely heteronormative society, endorse marriage as an institution, and find profound personal meaning in the prospect of forming a family. Even in the face of protracted legal battles that are eventually won, the humanity of individual and personal motivation remains the most salient factor in forming bonds and building families.

Keywords

lesbian women bisexual women marriage equality family heteronormativity

Heteronormativity and Marriage

In recent years the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community has gained visibility in the social sphere (Gamson, 2013; Michelson, 2019). A recent study of high school students found that approximately 35% identified with a minority sexual orientation or gender identity (White, Moeller, Ivcevic, & Brackett, 2018), with one in four of those identifying as lesbian or bisexual women. As the LGBT community gains visibility and rights, heteronormative legal and social structures are increasingly challenged. Concepts and constructs of masculinity (Agozino & Agu, 2021; Barry, 2020), athleticism (Lenzi, 2017), occupational fit (Dicke, Safavian, & Eccles, 2019), sexual behavior (Lindley et al., 2020), and gender roles (Aboim, 2020) are in a period of rampant evolution and refinement in the United States. McBride and Parry (2016) offers a comprehensive analysis of gender roles in the United States, specifically for women. A salient example of this, a central part of a traditional female social role, is marriage and family (Bartley et al., 2005; Cotter et al., 2011; Kimberly & Williams, 2017; McBride & Parry, 2016).

Extant literature has elucidated the common concerns of lesbian women who are seeking to form families. Hayman and colleagues, in a series of studies (Hayman, Wilkes, Halcomb, & Jackson, 2013; Hayman, Wilkes, Halcomb, & Jackson, 2015; Hayman, Wilkes, Jackson, & Halcomb, 2013; Hayman & Wilkes, 2017) highlighted the pervasive experiences of homophobia and discrimination faced by female same-sex partners as they seek to build families. This includes both legal and social prohibitions and/or castigation of same-sex marriage, same-sex couples visiting ill partners in the hospital, same-sex couples receiving deceased partners’ death benefits, same-sex parents adopting children, same-sex couples cohabitating, and others. Female partners, therefore, frequently cite that raising children in a heteronormative and heterosexist social milieu is a paramount concern when contemplating parenthood (Hayman & Wilkes, 2017). The salience of this heteronormativity is reified by the general absence of terminology to use when referring to a two-mother home (Diamond, 2017; Miller, 2012; Nordqvist, 2012).

The homophobia and heteronormativity within which female same-sex partners must form and raise their families, teamed with a dearth of role models to which to turn, forces these women to start the family formation process from scratch, forming what Hayman et al. (Hayman, Wilkes, Jackson, et al., 2013; Hayman & Wilkes, 2017) call de novo families. Partners must cooperatively and intentionally negotiate their family roles, labels to use within the relationship both publicly and privately, their surname(s), and whether and how to bring children into their family (Hayman, Wilkes, Jackson, et al., 2013; Hayman & Wilkes, 2017; Nordqvist, 2012). All of this negotiation was taking place within a social system wherein legal barriers frustrated female same-sex couples’ efforts to establish a legally recognized family unit (Miller, 2012; Wall, 2011).

Marriage Equality Movement

Same-sex relationships were, for much of the United States’ history, illegal. In 1993, a ruling in Hawaii (Baehr v. Miike, 1993) required that the state justify the restrictions of marriage to opposite-sex partners. This event is regarded at the start of the Marriage Equality Movement (Lambda Legal, n.d.; Perez, 2011). Three years later, the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) (Defense of Marriage Act, 1996) was signed into law by President Bill Clinton, federally defining marriage as between a man and a woman and permitting states to deny marriage licenses to same-sex couples. During this time, nearly 60% of states banned same-sex marriage (Padnani & Fang, 2015; Perez, 2011). The early 2000s were a period marked by numerous state-level legal challenges to these bans (Perez, 2011). In Spring 2004 and subsequent to a state Supreme Court ruling, Massachusetts began issuing same-sex marriage licenses, the first state to do so (Perez, 2011; Pew Research Center, 2015). Four years later, the California Supreme Court made a similar ruling (Padnani & Fang, 2015; Perez, 2011). However, later that year and in response to that ruling, voters in California approved an amendment to their constitution (“Proposition 8”) redefining marriage as between a man and a woman, nullifying the court ruling; Florida and Arizona voters did so as well (Padnani & Fang, 2015; Pew Research Center, 2015). The 2010s began to see these cases increase in number and ferocity, pushing the debate to the federal level. Two US Supreme Court cases (Hollingsworth v. Perry, 2013; United States v. Windsor, 2013) overturned California’s Proposition 8 and DOMA, respectively (although the court did not officially rule on the issue of the constitutionality of same-sex marriage bans). This pattern continued into 2014, with more states having their constitutional bans on same-sex marriages overturned (Pew Research Center, 2015). This catalyzed the first and only US Circuit Court of Appeals case on the constitutionality of same-sex marriage (Obergefell v. Hodges, 2015) wherein the Sixth Circuit ruled that states’ same-sex marriage bans were constitutional. This same case would be heard by the US Supreme Court the next year.

In 2015, the US Supreme Court officially ruled on Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), granting marriage equality to same-sex couples. The extant literature on female same-sex couples, including the aforementioned series of articles by Hayman and colleagues, was written prior to this landmark decision, during the tumultuous Marriage Equality Movement. Because Obergefell v. Hodges (2015) codified marriage equality and signaled the beginning of the visibility revolution for the LGBT community, with a more than doubling of the number of same-sex marriages after the ruling (Gates & Brown, 2015), it is not unreasonable to believe that the perspectives of lesbian and bisexual women toward marriage and family would be influenced by the new social order ushered in by the 2015 ruling. Additionally, there is one cohort of women who came into adulthood during the tumultuous time before, during, and after Obergefell v. Hodges (2015): college-age women.

Study Aims

The period of life between 18 and 24 years is a period known for many life transitions. This could include entering the workforce, going to college, changes in ideology, getting married, and/or starting a family (Ge, 2011; Lundberg, Pollak, & Stearns, 2016; Magolda, 2009; Newton & Stewart, 2010). The tumult of this period of transitions can be particularly salient for LGBT college students (Ellis, 2009; Kerr, Santurri, & Peters, 2013; Schaller, 2011). At present and for only this short period of time, the current cohort of college-age lesbian and bisexual women are also the cohort of women that came into adulthood during Obergefell v. Hodges (2015). They also represent a cross-section of women that experienced their childhood almost perfectly concurrently with the legislative life span of the Marriage Equality Movement (i.e., mid 90s–2015). This poses a unique opportunity for insight into the views of these women.

The aim of the present study is to take advantage of the aforementioned unique liminal timing by examining the views of college-age lesbian and bisexual women toward marriage and family. In some ways, the present study is a follow-up to the work by Hayman and colleagues (Hayman et al., 2015; Hayman, Wilkes, Halcomb, et al., 2013; Hayman, Wilkes, Jackson, et al., 2013; Hayman & Wilkes, 2017) but in the current social and political environment created by Obergefell v. Hodges (2015). The timing of this study invites a greater understanding of how the communities most directly affected by a landmark court case experience the resulting social order. This can then help inform programming, advocacy, and services supporting these and other communities facing similar sociological legal barriers and challenges.

Methods

Participants

This study focuses on college-aged lesbian and bisexual women, specifically investigating their thoughts and views on marriage and the family during a time of increased inclusion in these institutions. Inclusion criteria included self-identifying as women, self-identifying as either lesbian or bisexual, ages of 18–23 years (M = 20.66), and single. The latter criterion was included to maximize the study’s ability to identify themes among women who can now seek out same-sex relationships knowing that there are no more legal restrictions on whether that relationship can eventually include marriage. Participants were recruited through referral and snowball sampling (Hesse-Biber, 2016) during the Fall semester at a coastal university in the southeast United States. The director of the LGBT Resource Center of the university aided in participant recruitment via word-of-mouth and marketing. Over the course of the semester, a total of six participants were recruited and voluntarily agreed to participate. Two of the respondents identified as bisexual while the other four identified as lesbian. Two interviewees identified as Asian while four identified as white. All respondents’ names are disguised using pseudonyms. The study was determined to be “exempt” from human subjects review by the University of North Florida IRB (IRB #: 1387451-1).

Interviews

Semi-structured one-on-one interviews were conducted by the first author with each of the six participants. The interviews used interpretative phenomenological analysis in order to focus on the participants’ lived experiences and how they make personal sense of those experiences (Smith & Osborn, 2008). Interpretative phenomenological analysis allows for the exploration of participants’ personal lives and social world in detail, particularly with respect to how they make meaning from events, circumstances, and situations in their lives. The interviews ranged from 25 to 47 minutes in length with an average length of 35 minutes and were recorded and transcribed verbatim. Four of the interviews were conducted at the university’s library in a private study room. One interview was conducted at a popular off-campus bookstore. One interview was conducted at the participant’s university residence. The semi-structured questions are presented in Table 1.

Table 1.

Semi-structured interview questions.

Question
1. Tell me a little bit about yourself.
2. Tell me a little bit about your friend group.
3. Tell me about your coming out experience.
4. Describe to me the relationship between your parents.
5. In what ways has your family influenced your views on marriage?
6. To what extent is marriage something you want for yourself?
7. To what extent in your relationship you do find yourself following heteronormative roles?
8. How has being a woman with your sexual orientation affected your long-term relationship preferences?
9. Tell me your thoughts on having kids yourself.
10. To what extent do you believe the idea of being a parent is important in today’s society?
11. To what extent do you think it’s important for people in the LGBT community to have kids?
12. How do you feel about the idea that motherhood is a necessary part of the female experience?
13. How do you define family?
14. What do you think straight people can learn from people in the LGBT community about the meaning of family?
15. To what extent do you think it’s important for people in the LGBT community to get married and have a traditional family?
16. How did you feel when married equality became legal in the United States?
17. How do you feel about the limitations set on nonheterosexual couples in terms of the struggle with adoption?

Note: LGBT = lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender.

Analysis

Data were analyzed using Thematic Analysis as a way to identify, organize, and interpret patterns found within the participant cohort (Braun & Clarke, 2012). The thematic analysis approach offers a stepwise process by which to synthesize complex and rich qualitative data into a manageable form. Congruent with this process, all six interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim. The transcripts were then hand coded by the first author, with the second author serving as a validity check at the various levels of the coding process. First, the coder (the first author) used deductive descriptive coding to identify the salient topics present in each participant’s answer to each question (Bengtsson, 2016; Saldana, 2015). These codes were then categorized across participants. Similar categories were further collapsed into summative themes to arrive at the most efficient summary of the participants’ answers (Saldana, 2015). The second author then, to assess validity, conducted an inductive descriptive coding process using the final summative theme to recode each previously coded unit (Bengtsson, 2016; Saldana, 2015). Also, the final list of summative themes was reviewed for comprehensiveness and representativeness by a third independent reviewer.

Results

Three summative themes emerged from the coding: (a) Heteronormative socialization, (b) Personal endorsement of marriage, and (c) LGBT Parenting. The data show that these women were raised with traditional expectations of women’s roles. The data also show that these women endorse the institutions of marriage and the family. Finally, the opportunity and responsibility of child rearing is one these women welcome, although they acknowledge ongoing systemic barriers to their parenthood. These resulting summative themes and exemplary quotes are provided below.

Heteronormative Socialization

The respondents largely recalled being raised in fairly traditional households with many parental relationships described as following the breadwinner and housemaker family model. As a result of this traditional upbringing, these women described feeling expectations about marriage and family, with no room deviation. Avery, 23, identifies as lesbian and comes from what she describes as an “absurdly conservative home.” She detailed her family’s expectations before coming out as a lesbian:

Before I came out it was very much like, you’re going to find a nice white Christian boy, you’re going to have like four kids. You’re going to like do your thing, but then you’re going to like, be a mom. Like that’s kind of like your job. Like you can like have a career before you get married, but like once you start having kids like you stop, you stop and you settled down.

Avery’s account emphasizes the traditionalist views of her parents, clearly outlining their expectations of a woman’s role in a (heterosexual) relationship. The role of motherhood is seen as a goal that a woman must achieve and strive for, where it is the lone aspiration and does not compete with their career. Margret, 18, who identifies as lesbian, describes the pressure she felt being raised with the idea of motherhood being an essential part of womanhood.

I think it puts a lot of pressure on women, just because from my experience, I was raised like, I was surrounded by ideas of what womanhood should be like and that’s where all the pressure is from. Like that’s where all the pressure of having a kid comes from and like I think everyone, every girl is still raised like that today. Like, “Oh, you’re going to grow up, you’re going to have a family.” That’s, like, your one main goal. Have a family and get married.

Like Avery, Margret’s upbringing underlines how traditional socialization puts pressure on women to believe they have a specific timeline to follow to build a family. Margret also generalized her experience, saying that women are collectively raised with such expectations.

Julie-Ann, 22 years, who identifies as lesbian, was the only respondent out of six that was brought up in a single parent household. Although traditional roles were not immediately prevalent in her household, the pressure of traditional women’s roles was still prioritized:

I feel pressure. I feel pressure from my mom because my brother is kind of dumb [laughs] and he doesn’t, he’s not great at dating because he is kind of lame and she’s like, “You’re my only shot at having grandbabies.” So, she really, she has wanted grandchildren for so, so, so long and had a really good relationship with my grandparents growing up. So, she wanted to have that same dynamic and she talks to me all the time about like, “Are you talking to any boys? Like when are you going to get married?” And I was like, oh no, I feel pressure from my mom.

Julie-Ann, like other respondents, was inundated with heteronormative expectations of womanhood and women’s roles. What seemed to set Julie-Ann apart from other respondents is the “very close best friend dynamic” that she had with her mother. Nonetheless, Julie-Ann has not come out to her mother. This fuels the pressure to conform to these ideals in order to satisfy her mother’s desire to have a quality relationship, in which she bonds with her grandchildren.

Marie, 21, who identifies as bisexual, describes her thoughts on how she would feel conforming to ideals of womanhood for the benefit of others rather than for personal aspiration:

It just, it sounds, it sounds, like if I did [have children] just so I could complete whatever my mom thought the whole experience [of womanhood] should be. I feel like it would have been like some kind of chore. And that’s not fair.

Marie feels strongly about personal choice when it comes to the idea of motherhood. Marie shows that when motherhood is taught as an essential part of womanhood, it seems to make the idea of having children displeasing, even to those who want children for themselves. As cultural norms still largely prize heteronormative practices, these respondents’ experiences reveal reinforcement of heterosexual marriage expectations emerging from an early age.

Personal Endorsement of Marriage

Data revealed that college-aged lesbian and bisexual women largely endorse the idea of marriage for themselves and for their own personal reasons. The idea of marriage allows for a sense of agency or ability to make free choices and act independently. Marriage is an opportunity to create something of their own and make change in their lives to avoid some of the troubles of their own childhoods. This was evident in the words of Julie-Ann who once saw marriage as “patriarchal power structure” but is now looking forward to the experience:

I definitely want to be married, and I definitely want to have children and a family, because I had such a dysfunctional family dynamic growing up. I desperately crave that in my future, I need that stability. I need that meeting up for birthdays and Thanksgiving and Christmas and like without toxic relationships, no like, secret hatreds. I want a nice, reliable, healthy family dynamic because I didn’t have that growing up. Like I cannot wait to build that one day.

Julie-Ann describes marriage as a chance for her to have the kind of family she always wanted growing up. Julie-Ann describes wanting to break the cycle of unhealthy family dynamics and provide a better environment for the family she wishes to build in the future.

Marriage was also embraced as the idea of a reciprocal relationship, where partners share mutual feelings and ideas. Margret, 22, who identifies as lesbian but prefers the term “gay,” talked about the personal importance of marriage during a time in her life when the desire for marriage is mostly absent.

I don’t, I don’t really give it that much thought, but when I think about I’m like, well, marriage is something that’s really important; that I want to have in my future just because I think that like having that person, [laugh] [pause] I don’t know how to really explain it, but I never really think about it. But when I do, I think having someone that you can love like that and support you like that and you can like grow together and share the same ideas with them, but still they challenge you. I think having that someone is really important when you’re going into or transitioning from really like major parts in your life.

Margret discusses that, while the idea of marriage is not at the forefront of her mind, it is still a goal that is important for her to achieve one day. In this case, marriage was described as a reciprocal relationship where two individuals mutually support, love, and challenge one another in a way that helps them both grow and develop. Margret also mentions the importance of being able to share big moments of her life with the one she marries.

Sam, 22, who identifies as bisexual, discussed her somewhat more traditional stance on marriage, particularly how it precedes parenting:

I think it’s important to me because to me marriage and family go hand and hand. [pause] Like I wouldn’t want to have a kid without having a partner so, I don’t know maybe that’s the traditionalist in me but, I think that’s really important. You know to be like, you know you and your partner are a team and now you’re going to face the world, and it’ll be that way forever barring any unfortunate circumstances. So, I don’t know, marriage is pretty important to me I guess, so, it’s like one of my life goals.

Here, Sam emphasizes the personal importance of the idea of a two-parent household. Sam describes a marriage as a partnership and lifetime commitment of a couple working collectively. Sam describes marriage as something that she wishes to achieve in her life. Despite ongoing systemic barriers, these women embrace and look forward to marriage, each for their own personal reasons.

LGBT Parenting

Respondents in the sample largely endorsed the idea of wanting children and the opportunity and responsibility of parenting. Parenting was often described as an intentional and planned endeavor. Gabby, 18, who identifies as lesbian and describes herself as “butch” stated:

It’s weird, until I realized I was gay did not want kids. I was like “I don’t want kids, I don’t want to do anything with kids, I don’t like kids” and then like once I came out as gay and I saw like same sex parents I was like “Oh this makes sense! I don’t have to like take on like these traditional feminine roles that like I’ve like seen for my entire life.” And like I like the idea of having kids now like it seems like so much more purposeful now. Especially with same sex relationships. There’s so much thought that has to go into like having a kid that I feel like it’s very deliberate and like you’re bringing a child into this world or adopting a child deliberately. And like that’s something that’s really interesting and cool to me that like, I don’t see myself having like a biological kid I would rather adopt and like help someone like not like just bring another person into this world you know?

Traditional feminine roles, particularly motherhood, did not appeal to Gabby when framed within a heteronormative context. Motherhood was something that she did not want for herself until she realized that conforming to these heteronormative ideals was not a necessary part of motherhood. Gabby describes parenthood as being more purposeful for LGBT couples and acknowledges the intentionality of parenthood as a member of the LGBT community.

The barriers of parenting that LGBT couples face is also prevalent in the words of Avery, who works in the social work field:

I would love to have kids. I don’t know if that’s ever going to happen because in vitro is extremely expensive. Like to me have a child, like in vitro is so expensive. Um, I also...it... during the time that I was engaged, I don’t think, I don’t know if that’s the law anymore, but in the state of Florida I would have had to ask a sperm donor, hey, sperm donor, is it cool that your sperm is being used for lesbians? I know that like a straight couple wouldn’t have to get permission from the sperm donor, but LGBT couples would, which I think is gross and like you jizzed in a cup, like I don’t think you care. Um, but that, that was the reality for us. And so, I was like, I guess I’ll just adopt, but I’ve got a friend who does private adoptions and like a private adoption can run you like $50,000. And it’s usually if they’re private they’re religiously based. And you’re not going to get a kid because you’re gay.

Avery takes on a more practical view of having kids as a member of the LGBT community in the United States and specifically in Florida. Avery highlights the ongoing barriers to reproduction and adoption, including the discrimination that LGBT couples face in the adoption system.

Respondents discussed the importance of personal choice when it comes to parenting, highlighting the idea that LGBT parents provide a different kind of upbringing to their children. Julie-Ann talked about how she embraces the idea of parenting for herself:

I know that it's a personal decision, but in, in very general, broad terms, I think that gay couples can be parents in a very unique way because those structures are different. It’s not like it’s not always a heteronormative family structure in terms of gender roles kind of thing. Um, there’s just so much love there, like doing like in vitro fertilization to have a child like that’s just so much work to, to conceive a child that way. So much work to, to come out, so much work to get married and to be taken seriously in your career and be successful that when you finally get to the point where you build a family, you just have so much love to give to that child because of everything that led up to that, that I’ve, I’ve almost envy children who come from a gay family because I just know that they’ve had so much love in their lives. Um, so yeah, just in summary with that, like I just think that they can provide a different kind of family structure and a different kind of love to their children.

Julie-Ann emphasizes the deliberate nature of LGBT parenting, describing the long process that LGBT couples must consider when deciding to have a child. Julie-Ann also describes LGBT families as being able to provide children with a structure and love that is different from heterosexual couples. Avery, who babysat for a lesbian couple talks about how seeing such a dynamic allowed her to picture how she would raise a child herself.

I think I would try to make my kid as woke as possible and as you know, probably as tutti frutti liberal as possible. But I think just like breaking down that barrier of gender roles of what should happen or shouldn’t happen, um, as long as you’re safe, as long as you’re not hurting anybody… you’re good. Like I think that that’s all that should matter. So, I think that being a gay parent would… give me a better advantage on maybe being more empathetic and a little more fluid with how my kid, with like whatever they want to do.

With Avery, the breaking down of gender roles and same-sex dynamic parenting would grant the children born in these families to have a more open-minded upbringing that would in turn allow children to express themselves as they wish. In spite of the existence of the ongoing barriers that LGBT couples face in regard to parenthood and family building, these women acknowledge the obstacles and even seem to derive unique meaning from them as LGBT parents.

Discussion

The results of the study found that these young women described being raised in traditional households. This environment propagated the expectations and pressure of heteronormativity, a constituent force within an overall patriarchal system that prioritizes and reinforces masculine norms, power, and behavior within a rigid gender binary (Hopkins, Sorensen, & Taylor, 2013; Ward & Schneider, 2009). These women were taught from a young age what womanhood is and what that meant for their relationship goals. This finding is congruent with Gross’ (2005) assertion that children in the United States are still raised in a culture that consistently reinforces heteronormativity. Despite the increasing inclusion of the LGBT community in institutions like marriage and family, heteronormative socialization is still endorsed and often the default when raising female children. In fact, some theorists have suggested that marriage itself, as an institution, is a patriarchal attempt to divide household labor along gendered lines (Hopkins et al., 2013). This begs the question of whether Obergefell v. Hodges (2015) is simply an invitation to change trains going to the same destination.

These results of the analysis also suggest that the ideals of womanhood are communicated at a young age. This is again congruent with extant literature on gender roles and childhood (Murnen, Greenfield, Younger, & Boyd, 2016; Watts, Liamputtong, & Mcmichael, 2015; Zamperini, Testoni, Primo, Prandelli, & Monti, 2016). The participants reflected on childhood assumptions about when they will get married and have children, as well as how they would act in their role as a female in (heterosexual) relationships. This data detailed the norms that society cultivated and parents reinforced. These norms and traditional practices brought forth the idea of feminine motherhood but only in contrast to a masculine male father. Data found that when these women are forced to conform to the ideals of traditional femininity and womanhood, they can begin to struggle with their female identity and/or feminine role. This is all despite the general endorsement of the institution of marriage as a source of love, support, and stable family life (Harrison & Michelson, 2017). In essence, lesbian and bisexual women seem to be left to rediscover their interest and role in marriage only after eschewing it as an institution reserved for women adhering to the heteronormative ideals communicated in their childhood. This rediscovery is evident among participants raised in traditional heteronormative families. Respondents in this age cohort used their growing experiences with and exposure to same-sex relationships, beyond those described and decried during their heteronormative childhood, to help shape their views of marriage (Bernstein & Taylor, 2013; Harrison & Michelson, 2017). This requires a reimagining of what it means to solidify these relationships into lasting family-building foundations via the institution of marriage, reconciling the schema of marriage from their childhood with the new perspective offered by lived experience.

This study also found that these women endorsed and looked forward to the idea of child-rearing as parents in the LGBT community. This research highlighted that these women acknowledged the various boundaries of family building that include, cost, length of the process, and discrimination but still saw parenthood as an intentional and unique opportunity. The California Center for Population Research (Gates, Lee Badgett, Macomber, & Chambers, 2007) estimated that approximately two million lesbian and gay people have contemplated parenthood, specifically through adoption. However, speaking to the discrimination experienced by participants in this study, that same report noted that less than 1/5 of the adoption agencies seek to recruit potential adoptive parents within the LGBT community, leaving a supply of prospective parents underutilized. Only nine states, plus Washington DC, have legislation prohibiting adoption agencies from discriminating against LGBT prospective parents (Movement Advancement Project, 2019).

The variation in the legal rights for LGBT parents across states and local laws is unique to the LGBT community, as their cis-heterosexual counterparts do not encounter such inconsistency (Baumle & Compton, 2015). The legal context within each state affects the options for LGBT people and the broader cultural messages about LGBT families. As Baumle and Compton (2015) find, LGBT individuals construct a legal consciousness in which they are actively accepting, rejecting, or modifying ideas about existing laws in the process of building families and parenting (Baumle & Compton, 2015). We too find that lesbian and bisexual young adults are engaged in a similar interactive process in defining parenthood and family post the 2015 ruling.

The 2015 Supreme Court ruling provided LGBT people with more than just the legal right to marry, and it also provided legitimization, opportunity, and emotional benefits of marriage as an institution. The emotional benefits of marriage are equally important to the parenting and family building experience of LGBT people (Cahill & Tobias, 2007). Thus, the legalization of same-sex marriage symbolized family building to the LGBT community not seen before. In the wake of marriage equality, young adults, in particular, could contemplate their own future of family building and becoming first-time parents in a way that was no afforded to them previously.

As we find, lesbian and bisexual young adults endorse the notion of marriage and parenthood. Our findings show that lesbian and bisexual women are active participants in defining and establishing their own families while simultaneously resisting and conforming to heteronormative ideals. This is not surprising given the conflict LGBT people experience with (hetero)normative structures and how this affects their own family formation decisions, such as redefining, resisting, and/or conforming to existing norms. We expect that norms within and around LGBT family building will continue to change post-Obergefell as the number of LGBT-headed families increase and ever evolving legal constraints surrounding adoption and fostering affect LGBT parents.

Social Implications

Fundamentally, the results of the present analysis suggest that lesbian and bisexual women endorse family values related to marriage and parents, although their endorsement is informed by their heteronormative upbringing and the systemic barriers still encountered by the LGBT community. This gave rise within the current sample to a discussion of deeply personal motivations related to marriage and family. Shifting the social discourse toward encouraging young women, including lesbian and bisexual young women, to explore and discern their own personal desire for, motivation for, and image of these institutions can destigmatize non-heteronorsexual sexualities. This has the added benefit of allowing young women to decide for themselves whether these are institutions to which they aspire at all, as many other social movements also threaten the traditional heteronormative incarnation of marriage and family (e.g., gender equity; Bartley et al., 2005; McBride & Parry, 2016). Relatedly, it is noteworthy that, even in response to Interview Question 16 asking about Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), not a single participant expressed any strong emotions or reactions to the ruling itself, instead focusing on their desire and motivation to build a family. This seems to support the notion that systemic prejudice and discrimination serve as barriers along people’s natural paths toward fulfillment and, once those barriers are removed, people resume their focus on their personal goals and ideals rather naturally (Calvo & Trujillo, 2011; Harrison & Michelson, 2017).

This analysis also draws attention to the ongoing discrimination of the LGBT community with respect to adoption rights. Lesbian and bisexual women describe unique and personal motivations for parenting and yet are consistently met with barriers to providing loving homes to children who desire exactly that (Gates et al., 2007; Kimberly & Moore, 2015; Kimberly & Williams, 2017). Since 64% of the adult population in the United States live in a state with no legal prohibition of discrimination against the LGBT community during adoption proceedings (Movement Advancement Project, 2019), there may be a need for informed social services to support lesbian and bisexual women in navigating the reproductive and adoption landscape. Well-trained and LGBT-affirmative social workers can also link these women to other adjunctive services (e.g., mental health counseling and obstetric and gynecological physicians and nurses) that may become necessary as they move through a process that they experience as designed to retard their fulfillment of a uniquely and personally meaningful life role. One that, for many, it had been communicated as impossible outside of a heterosexual relationship.

It also seems prudent, given the participants’ frequent endorsement of the unique role of LGBT parents, to develop strengths-based parenting guides for sexual minority women. The women in the sample highlighted how their sexual identity, heteronormative upbringing, personal motivations for marriage, and system barriers along the way to parenthood all inform their anticipated parenting role. These themes are important to note and to share with other women with similar histories and lived experiences. In fact, there are several books already seeking to do this, including Lev (2004), Borkski (2015), and Pepper (2005). These resources can be transposed into curricula for sex educators, social workers, and counselors working with lesbian and bisexual women desiring to become parents. Their lived experience and journey to parenthood is unique, so too ought to be their care and support.

Research Implications

As a new generation of women reach adulthood during a period of marriage equality, it will become increasingly important for social scientists to clearly understand how sexual minority women experience dating, relationships, and family. The present analysis highlights the role of childhood and early life cultural norms inform these women’s experience of family. Society is in the final decades of generational incongruence with respect to marriage equality, wherein parents entered adulthood before the 2015 Supreme Court ruling and their children entered adulthood after the ruling. The window of time during which the field can examine the influence and effect of this generational incongruence is closing. At this moment, the generation of adult women now able to build same-sex families shares nothing with their generational neighbors as past generations experienced total bans and future generations will experience no such bans; this current generation experienced both, representing a liminal generation of women that will exist only once.

One perhaps fruitful line of inquiry will be to examine women’s perspective of two decades worth of events surrounding the Marriage Equality Movement, during which one generation of women were adults capable of voting and other participatory activities while the other generation of women were children who served as observers with limited opportunity for participation. Relatedly, future research can also investigate the experiences of other cohorts of young adults in light of Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), including straight women, straight men, and gay and bisexual men. There is sociological merit to understanding how both the privileged and the oppressed groups experience these landmark moments. Relatedly, it would be compelling to learn of the experiences of women in this cohort who were not single at the time of the ruling.

A second area of future research, informed by the results of the present analysis, is the deeply personal motivations for marriage and family that women in the sample discussed. Especially in this tumultuous period when same-sex relationships are legalized but, simultaneously, the LGBT community continues to face systemic discrimination, it is important for social scientists to more deeply understand the personal narratives of sexual minority women as they navigate relationships and family. This research could also inform healthcare best practice, particularly mental health care, supporting sexual minority women in coping with and overcoming the unique stressors related to forming families.

Finally, the current analysis also calls attention to the ongoing importance of understanding the barriers to parenthood experienced by sexual minority women. This research can be completed on many levels. On a micro level, it is important to explore the full life span of family forming for sexual minority women, thus elucidating the sticking points in the process that, in turn, become the priority intervention points. The micro level also includes a deeper investigation of how the repeated encountering of barriers to parenthood affects these women’s mental health. On the macro level, it is worth investigating the financial and human capital cost of systematically hindering parenthood for sexual minority women. Essentially, what does it cost society to keep loving homes devoid of children who need such homes?

Limitations

The present analysis should only be considered in the context of its limitations. First, all of the women in the sample were from the same region of the United States. The lived experience of sexual minorities varies greatly across the country. This sample was recruited from a coastal university in the Southern United States and, therefore, may represent a more conservative cultural context within which the participants grew up. This also means that all participants were at least partially college-educated. Second, because the study utilized a semi-structured interview format, the themes that eventually emerged from the data could be overly influenced by the questions themselves. Future research using an unstructured interview could validate the themes. Third, the sample was 67% white with no Black and no Hispanic participants. The lived experience of sexual minority women of color is unique from white sexual minority women because of the intersectionality of two historically marginalized identities. Future research should take care to recruit a more diverse sample. This includes sexual and gender minority individuals who seek to marry and form families that would have previously been excluded from this right (e.g., nonbinary individuals and transgender individuals). Despite these limitations, this analysis was able to achieve its goal of beginning to more fully understand the lived experience of lesbian and bisexual women with respect to children and marriage.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Robert J. Zeglin

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