This is an evolution that our society is currently going through and it is undeniable. Homoparental families are increasingly accepted. The adoption of the PACS (civil solidarity pact) in 1999, then marriage for all in 2013, have changed the lines, changed mentalities. Article 143 of the Civil Code also specifies that “marriage is contracted by two people of the different sex or of the same sex. Between 30.000 and 50.000 children are being raised by two parents of the same sex. But homoparental families have many faces. The child may be from a previous heterosexual union. It may have been adopted. It may also have been conceived by what is called “co-parenting”, in other words, a man and a woman decide to have a child together without living as a couple.

“Exercise of parental rights by two people of the same sex living as a couple”, this is how the Larousse defines homoparentality. It was the Association of Gay and Lesbian Parents and Future Parents which, in 1997, was the first to name “homoparentalité” the new form of family that was emerging. A way of making visible what was at the time very little put forward.

He brings up the child as if it were his own. The biological parent’s companion is referred to as the social parent, or intended parent.

His status ? He does not have it. The State does not recognize any rights for him. “In fact, the parent can neither enroll the child in school, nor even authorize a surgical intervention”, we can read on the CAF site, Caf.fr. Have their parental rights recognized? It is not mission impossible. There are even two possible options:

• adoption.
• the delegation-sharing of parental authority.

In 2013, marriage was open to all half-open the door to adoption. Article 346 of the Civil Code thus specifies that “no one may be adopted by more than one person except by two spouses. A few thousand people of the same sex have been able to adopt their partner’s child. When it is “full”, adoption breaks the bond of filiation with the family of origin and creates a new bond with the adoptive family. Conversely, “simple adoption creates a link with the new adoptive family without the links with the original family being broken”, explains the Service-public.fr site.

The delegation-sharing of parental authority, for its part, must be requested from the family court judge. In any event, “in the event of separation from the biological parent, or in the event of the latter’s death, the intended parent, thanks to article 37/14 of the Civil Code, may obtain visitation and / or accommodation rights ”, explains CAF.

In 2018, Ifop gave a voice to LGBT people, as part of a survey carried out for the Association des Familles Homoparentales (ADFH).

For this, she interviewed 994 homosexual, bisexual and transgender people. “The aspiration to build a family is not the prerogative of heterosexual couples”, we can read in the results of the study. Indeed, “the majority of LGBT people living in France declare that they wish to have children during their lifetime (52%). “And for many,” this desire for parenthood is not a distant prospect: more than one in three LGBT people (35%) intend to have children in the next three years, a higher proportion to that observed by INED among all French people (30%). “

To achieve this, a majority of homosexuals (58%) would focus on medically assisted procreation techniques, far ahead of adoption (31%) or co-parenting (11%). Lesbians, for their part, particularly favor assisted reproduction (73%) compared to other options.

The National Assembly again voted on June 8, 2021 to open the assisted reproduction system to all women, that is to say to single women and homosexual couples. The flagship measure of the bioethics bill should be adopted definitively on June 29. Until now, Medically Assisted Reproduction was reserved exclusively for heterosexual couples. Extended to lesbian couples and single women, it will be reimbursed by Social Security. Surrogacy remains prohibited.

As for the question of whether children raised in a homoparental family are as fulfilled as the others, many studies clearly answer “yes”.

Conversely, the National Academy of Medicine issued “a certain number of reservations” when the PMA was extended to all women. “The deliberate conception of a child deprived of a father constitutes a major anthropological rupture which is not without risks for the psychological development and the blossoming of the child”, one can read on Academie-medecine.fr. However, the research is clear: there is no major difference in terms of psychological well-being, or academic success, between children from homoparental families and others.

The most important ? Probably the love the child receives.