"What if this Child were Gay?": Heteronormativity and Homoparentality on the Stage

Abstract

The present article brings up the cut of a research that has as its theme the adoption by homosexual couples in Fortaleza.  It is understood that there is a multiplicity of family possibilities, and among them are families formed by same-sex couples who seek to become fathers and mothers through adoption.  Thus, some ideas about the experience of homosexual mothers and fathers are presented, which are families that escape the hegemonic models, but its have a affect by the heteronormativity that prevails in society.  Interviews were made with eight couples from Fortaleza, in a cartographic research, through which the processes experienced by the persons interviewed were monitored. The narratives shared by the couples who participated in the research indicate to different choices when it comes to dialoguing or not with the adopted children about the homosexuality of the parents who adopted them.  They also raise fears that the adopted child be homosexual and the foster parents could be blamed for it.  It reflects on the plurality of strategies used by these families and on the importance of thinking about the possible relations between the sexual orientation of the parents and children and adolescents who grow up in families that contrast from the hegemonic models without this relation be necessarily seen as negative or problematic.