Abstract
The strapline “life finds a way,” from the classic movie Jurassic Park, referred to how the all-female dinosaurs in a theme park had been able to reproduce, despite the laws of nature. Similarly, the participants in the present study described how their lesbian mothers had shown that “life finds a way,” when having children and forming a family, prior to the legal recognition of same-sex parents in Sweden. The study draws on interviews with eight young Swedish adults, aged 17–30 (average age 25). They had been raised by lesbian couples but were born prior to the legal recognition of same-sex parenthood. Prior to a legal change in 2003, a same-sex couple could not share legal parenthood. Further, female couples were excluded from Swedish assisted reproduction programs until 2005. The interviews have been analyzed thematically, and the article presents the results in four themes. The first theme, circumvent, oppose, or adapt to legal obstacles, shows the participants’ reflections on how their parents navigated legal obstacles in order to have children and to live together as a family. The second theme, legal obstacles do not affect everyday life, depicts a common experience of how a lack of legal recognition seldom mattered to the participants during their childhood. Rather, they explained how their parents had been able to form parenthood and close relations without legal recognition. In contrast, the third theme describes occasions when legal parenthood matters. This theme highlights occasions when the lack of legal parenthood was problematic or devastating for the participants, such as when parents divorced, or one parent died. The final theme, the meaning of legal parents in adulthood, explores the participants’ reflections on the meaning and impact of legal ties (or lack of legal ties) between themselves as young adults and their parents. The findings are discussed in relation to previous research on children and young adults with same-sex parents.
Highlights
This article focuses on Swedish young adults whose lesbian mothers made huge efforts to be able to have and raise children, because of legal and social constraints, including lack of access to assisted reproduction
We describe how family law on samesex parenting has changed during the past decades in Sweden
At the time of the participants’ conception, female samesex couples had no right to assisted reproductive treatment in Swedish health care, nor had they the right to adopt
Summary
This article focuses on Swedish young adults whose lesbian mothers made huge efforts to be able to have and raise children, because of legal and social constraints, including lack of access to assisted reproduction. The participants in this study were born before many of these changes came into force Their parents had to seek paths to parenthood outside public health care and gained no legal recognition of the non-biological mother’s parenthood. These families’ experiences of and perspectives on parenthood and origin are important to capture in order to understand the constraints that heteronormative attitudes and exclusionary legislation may create. Their narratives shed light on how people find ways to form a family and practice parenting despite obstacles. Same-sex parents in most Eastern European countries today experience similar lack of recognition and may experience problems similar to those described in the present study (Štambuk et al, 2019)
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