Gay adoptive families: between stressors and losses. 2 contrasted cases

Gay adoptive families are more and more present in the European context (currently the full joint adoption by same sex couples is granted in 9 European countries and 4 countries permit the step-child adoption). Despite the numerous studies on lesbian and gay parent- headed families, the current literature that has focused specifically on gay adoptive parent families remains rather limited. This research has the aim of increase the scientific knowledge on this new family form with the purpose to shed light on typical stressors experienced by parents and by children.The specificity of these families consists, among others, to be at the crossroads of two levels of complexity: being adoptive families and being LG families.Like all LG families, gay adoptive families have to face different stressors such as the lack of support by families of origin and social context, the need to hide their parenting project, the fear to not be considered parents "like the others" and the worry that their children are discriminated because of parents’ homosexuality.In addition to these stressors linked to the family structure, there is the challenge to adopt a child already marked by difficult life experiences and abandonment.The specificity of these families is the product of the difficulties encountered from the couples to became parents and of the experience of loss experienced by the child. The result of this whole meeting, is often found in parents’ strategies to face stressors and in the weight that the loss takes on for the child and in the relational dynamics of the family.Through two contrasting cases we will reflect on the possible adaptive strategies of parents and on the importance of integrating the child history in a new family story in which past, present and future come together and don’t know fractures.