Question:

What does Psychology and Psiquiatry say regarding adoption from homosexual couples?

Answer:

To whom it may concern:

I am responding to you with a suggestive article published by Zenit (June 3, 2003):

MADRID, June 3, 2003 (ZENIT.org-VERITAS) – Rafael Simancas, president-elect of the Community of Madrid, has affirmed last Friday that one of the first actions he will carry out during his mandate will be to revise the Law on Domestic Partnerships to allow the fostering of children by homosexual couples ‘according to the criteria of the technicians.’

However, numerous psychiatrists, psychologists and health professionals consulted by the Veritas agency have shown their opposition to the prosperity of the initiative of the Socialist leader.

The purpose of adoption is not so much to give a child to parents who cannot have one as to give suitable parents to a child who lacks them’, alleged psychologist Luis Riesgo’.

Approving the adoption of children by homosexual couples would imply going against the seventh principle of the Universal Declaration of the Rights of the Child, which stipulates that ‘The best interests of the child should be the guiding principle of those who have the responsibility for his or her upbringing and guidance’,” the psychologist qualifies.

The pediatrician, member of the Spanish Association of Pediatrics and of the ‘European Society for Pediatric Research’, Ana Martín Ancel, agrees with Riesgo in affirming that ‘adoption exists to accompany a child who has been deprived of his or her family, and aims to provide him or her with the most adequate environment possible for his or her development’.

‘A child is a gift, not a right for anyone’s utility’, she sentences in an article published last March in the monthly magazine ‘Páginas para el mes’.

Mónica Fontana, professor of Orientation and Family Therapy at the San Pablo CEU University of Madrid and specialist in clinical psychology and family therapy abounds in the idea of the need for a father and a mother, since ‘it is better for the adoptive child that his filial placement be as similar as possible to that of his biological family’.

Adoption, ‘without being the only answer to the child’s situation of helplessness, has been recognized over time as the best solution, because it imitates in the most precise way the way in which the child came into the world and the reality, he/she would have lived if he/she had not been given up for adoption by his/her parents’, he/she underlines.

In this sense, the family is indispensable for the development of any human being. This relationship that begins with the family will be necessary for the child not only for his development, but to become himself,’ he continues.

‘In the case of homosexual couples there is an impediment to be able to satisfy this need of every human being. If the relationship between two women or between two men is natural – as it is argued – why is there a biological impossibility to procreate?’ questions Fontana.

‘At the age of two, a child consciously ignores whether he or she is male or female. This identity will be learned from those around him in his childhood. That is why the child has the right to be formed in a family to satisfy one of the most important types of knowledge in the existence of any human being: who am I? And, therefore, who are you?’ he adds.

Fontana further argues that ‘it has been proven that homosexual unions are more promiscuous and break up four times more often than heterosexual ones. Imagine again the consequences on children, so in need of security and stability, of a second abandonment’.

Finally, socialization problems will necessarily arise in the child. Whether they want it or not, homosexual unions will always be in the minority and children adopted by them, no matter how much they are told, will never be able to feel equal to the others. What answer can be given to a child who asks why his friends have a father and a mother? Or, what is a mother?’, he adds.

The Spanish Association of Pediatrics has also expressed itself repeatedly on this issue. And it has been forceful: ‘A nuclear family with two fathers or two mothers is, from the pedagogical and pediatric point of view, clearly detrimental to the harmonious development of the child’s personality and social adaptation’.

In an article published in the ABC newspaper on October 18, 1994, the psychopedagogue Bernabé Tierno stated that ‘homosexuals must be accepted as they are and have as much dignity as the first. But they must realize that this experiment is far outside the norm and is risky. It is quite easy for that child, raised by homosexuals or lesbians, to feel conditioned by the environment (the child is a sponge until the age of seven or eight; he learns everything). And on the other hand, different in a world where heterosexuality predominates. You must think that people who will mediatize his life will decide for him’, he adds.

What do the studies on the subject say? Unfortunately, we do not currently have studies, from an empirical point of view, whose results can be generalized and accepted by all,’ Fontana assures.

A little over a year ago, the American Academy of Pediatrics published a statement in its journal Pediatrics supporting the right of gays and lesbians to adopt their partner’s children, arguing that ‘children born to or adopted by a member of a same-sex couple deserve the security of two legally recognized parents’.

However, according to the specialist, ‘to invalidate the results of these studies, it is enough to review the errors in the methodology used’.

In the analyses carried out after the year 2000, she reports, ‘it has been proven that sexual attraction towards persons of the same sex at adolescence is 60% higher in children adopted by homosexual or lesbian parents’.

Fr. Miguel A. Fuentes

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