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Justice System Professionals and Adoption by Same-Sex Couples

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Parenting and Couple Relationships Among LGBTQ+ People in Diverse Contexts

Abstract

This chapter aims to discuss how professionals working in the Brazilian Justice System understand the possibility of being a family through the adoption by same-sex couples. Forty-one professionals (six judges, three prosecutors, 14 psychologists, and 18 social workers) from ten cities in three Brazilian states were interviewed. In the speeches, some movements can be highlighted: (a) the social imaginary of possible harm to the child due to the lack of reference of the opposite sex; (b) the risk/protection factors evaluated in the triple meeting, being homosexual, parents, and by adoption; (c) that parental roles and functions may be more flexible and not based on a gender ideology and parental competence should be associated with bond quality, not sexuality. We highlight the importance of promoting a discussion that goes beyond the issue of choice in adoption, emphasizing self-care and the transmission of safety to children.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Parental Power removal in the Brazilian legislation is a measure aimed to safeguard and guarantee the integral and healthy development of the child or adolescent through their removal from family life and the loss of custody by their parents.

  2. 2.

    This term is employed herein due to its recurrence in national and international scientific production. However, we clarify that its use in this chapter has no objective of reducing parenthood to the sexual orientation of the couples.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES) for the scholarship granted to the first author over the course of her master’s program (2015–2017).

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© 2021 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG

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Cecílio, M.S., Scorsolini-Comin, F. (2021). Justice System Professionals and Adoption by Same-Sex Couples. In: Morais, N.A.d., Scorsolini-Comin, F., Cerqueira-Santos, E. (eds) Parenting and Couple Relationships Among LGBTQ+ People in Diverse Contexts. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84189-8_14

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