Coming out Experiences of Lesbian Adoptees: Learning from Their Lived Experiences

Abstract

 

Background and Purpose: Research exists on adoption and coming out as unique experiences of adoptees and sexual minorities, yet no research explores how being adopted impacts the coming out process.  Research on coming out recognizes the need for studies that include demographic variables that may impact the process.  Gender, ethnicity, age, religion, race, and socio-economic status are noted as potentially important factors in coming out.  Adoptive status receives no mention as a social identity/demographic variable that may influence the coming out process.

This paper and its findings features the voices of adoptees who have come out as lesbian.  Participants indicate that adoptive identity did impact coming out experiences.  Based on lived experiences, women who are adoptees shared helpful supports and resources when coming out as lesbian.

 

Methods: Fourteen in-depth interviews were conducted with women (ages 18-53) who were adopted and had come out as lesbian.  Interviewees identified as White (50%), Asian (21%), Hispanic (14%), and Black or Multiracial (14%). Fifty percent of the women were adopted internationally and 50% domestically.   Interviewees were derived from a sample of 122 adopted lesbians that had participated in an online survey about their experiences as adoptees and lesbians.  Participants were recruited via flyers in college campus LGBTQ centers, emails to adoption and LGBTQ organizations, and through postings on Facebook groups dedicated to LGBTQ or adoption concerns.  Interview questions explored experiences with being adopted, coming out as lesbian, coming out as adopted, and the intersection of the two identities.  Interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim, then coded thematically using NVIVO software.  Phenomenological analysis was conducted that attended to the intersectionality of adoptive and lesbian identity.

 

Findings: Data analysis indicates that adoptive identity contributed to increased anxiety and fear for women when coming out as lesbian.  Participants expressed concerns that they would lose their adoptive families when they came out and that this felt unbearable given that they had already been separated involuntarily from their birth family.  Participants worried that adoptive bonds would not be as strong as biological and would not withstand the coming out process.  For participants in contact with birth family, biological connection did not ease their fears of being rejected when coming out.  Findings suggest that being adopted presented challenges and complexity to the coming out process.  Some participants indicated however that their adoptive identity was useful in that it provided a template of being different that was helpful when coming out as lesbian.

Type of adoption (domestic/international/same race/transracial) did not contribute to differences in concerns expressed that coming out might disrupt adoptive and/or birth families.  Age did account for some differences in participants coming out experiences; younger women came out initially to family, while older women came out first to friends or therapists.

 

Conclusion and Implications: Findings highlight the salience of adoptive identity in the coming out process.  By recognizing the implications of being adopted on the coming out process, social workers can better support adoptees and adoptive families in what participants indicated is a life long journey.