European attitudes on adoption by gay and lesbian couples

Judit Takacs, Institute of Sociology, CSS, HAS
Ivett Szalma, Swiss Centre of Expertise in the Social Sciences

This paper focuses on European attitudes on joint adoption by same-sex couples with the intention to highlight individual and country-level factors that can determine the level of social acceptance or rejection of this specific kind of adoption. This study contributes to the literature on social acceptance of lesbian women, gay men and their adoption practices in Europe and directs attention to several previously under-researched aspects of social attitudes on same-sex parenting rights. The empirical base of the study is the 4th Family, Work and Gender Roles module of the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP), which was extended in 2012 with two new variables: A same-sex female couple can bring up a child as well as a male-female couple; A same-sex male couple can bring up a child as well as a male-female couple. Besides testing the effects of basic socio-demographic factors, we will focus on hypotheses in connection to traditional family formation preferences and gender equality related values. Additionally, a hypothesis about potentially higher levels of social acceptance towards lesbian couples in comparison to gay couples will also be tested. Since both individual and country-level factors are taken into account, we use multilevel regression models involving data from the examined countries.