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“It Was the Cadillac of Adoption Agencies”: Intersections of Social Class, Race, and Sexuality in Gay Men's Adoption Narratives

Understanding how gay men construct and negotiate family bonds through adoptive fatherhood draws attention to how those marginalized from traditional family pathways navigate an institution embedded with heteronormative, racialized, and biolegal prescriptions. The current study predominantly draws on in-depth interviews with 12 adoptive gay fathers to detail how these men traverse the potential challenges in the transition to adoption. This article explores how a select group of privileged gay men navigate a system structured by race and class hierarchies, unpacking the social and symbolic meanings participants attribute to themselves and their prospective children during this transition. Although gay men's pathway to parenthood is impeded by their sexual identities, their social location as white economically privileged men has as much to do with their adoption experience as their gay identity. Using an integrated theoretical lens, I argue that the ways by which these men are able to imagine and navigate their reproductive choices cannot be understood in isolation from any of their intersecting identities. Future research must begin to explore how persons of more marginalized class and racial identities manage and interpret this transition.