Belgian heterosexuals’ attitudes towards different types of same-sex parenting

The legal situation of Belgian gay men and lesbians may be perceived as one of the best in Europe. Indeed, the Belgian Parliament has legalized marriage and parenting for same-sex couples, has enacted anti-discrimination laws, and has funded several action plans to combat homophobia. More particularly, the access to parenthood is legally possible for same-sex couples through adoption, artificial insemination and in vitro fecundation. In this supportive political context, lots of same-sex-headed families exist. However, same-sex parenting is still considered as a controversial topic by some heterosexual people.
Therefore, this paper aims at understanding heterosexuals’ attitudes towards the different types of same-sex parenting as well as the rationales underlying those attitudes. In Study 1, the degrees of support of 1168 heterosexual participants aged from 18 to 81 towards those types of parenting have been analysed through a self-report questionnaire. Results revealed that heterosexuals’ participants do not show the same degree of support towards the different types of same-sex parenting. In particular, adoption by lesbian and gay couples is the more accepted type of parenting, followed by artificial insemination. Then, adoption for single lesbians or gay men and surrogacy are the types of parenting that are the less supported. Then, though the content analysis of comments posted on social networks (Study 2), we highlighted the arguments in favour and against those specific types of parenting.
Those results highlight that citizens’ attitudes can go from supportive to unsupportive and this could lead to some kind of discrimination towards children raised in specific forms of same-sex-headed families. This contribution highlights work’s implication for public policy and social transformation by understanding the challenges that gay and lesbian couples and their children have to face.