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Summary: The goal of this thesis is to monitor legal rights available to homosexual couples in order to establish a family. In the first part, I am trying to clarify what kind of social unit is currently considered to be called a family. Further in the first part I am analysing the most common means of getting an offspring available for homosexual couples. I also analyse the way those means are regulated in Czech Republic, prospectively I am presenting influence of the Strasbourg court on the evolution of subject legal frame in Europe. The main mean of gay couples to obtain a descendant, for the purpose of this thesis, is the artificial insemination method, which is analyzed in detail in the second part. I am both concerned about the historical evolution of it and its social picture and acceptation. Further I narrow my focus to application of this method for lesbian couples and I present studies to show how families with two mothers are working. Presented studies are held in both psychological and sociological point of view and they show, if and how the child is affected with growing up with homosexually oriented parents. In the third part I analyze artificial insemination from the legal point of view. First I introduce legal regulation in liberal European countries which I consequently compare with the...

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Planned parenthood within the lesbian and gay communities attracts considerable attention internationally among researchers, the media, and law and policy-makers. This Australian study situates the phenomenon�also known as the �gayby boom��within the contemporary Australian socio-legal setting and the more international historical and political contexts of Gay and Women�s Liberation. It investigates how beliefs about nature, kinship, the sexed and reproductive body and political ideologies of family intersect in lesbians and gay men�s decision-making and stories of living their lives as parents. Two fields of intellectual enquiry are generative: the interest in families of choice and family practices within sociology and the post-modern anthropological critique of Western kinship in the era of assisted reproduction. This is a qualitative study informed by a critical humanist approach. It is based on in-depth and key informant interviews conducted with 20 lesbians and 15 gay men (parents, �donor/dads� and prospective parents) as well as 7 people engaged in legal, health or therapeutic support to prospective and current parents. Also incorporated into the analysis are a range of other primary sources, including a substantial media debate, submissions to an assisted reproduction law reform process and primary documents supplied by participants such as parenting agreements and letters. The study argues for the need to look beyond unitary concepts such as families of choice when theorising lesbian and gay parenthood. It is important to consider the historical, political and biographical conditions that make some notions of relatedness and decisions about having children seem more feasible, and indeed, natural than others. It explores how various notions of biological relatedness remain important in the formation of parent/child relationships, and the extent to which lesbians and gay men rely on strategic appeals to choice and biology in enacting families. Continuing constraints on who is eligible for clinically assisted reproductive technology in Australia lead to imaginative and harmonious, yet also fraught reproductive relationships.

Planned parenthood within the lesbian and gay communities attracts considerable attention internationally among researchers, the media, and law and policy-makers. This Australian study situates the phenomenon�also known as the �gayby boom��within the contemporary Australian socio-legal setting and the more international historical and political contexts of Gay and Women�s Liberation. It investigates how beliefs about nature, kinship, the sexed and reproductive body and political ideologies of family intersect in lesbians and gay men�s decision-making and stories of living their lives as parents. Two fields of intellectual enquiry are generative: the interest in families of choice and family practices within sociology and the post-modern anthropological critique of Western kinship in the era of assisted reproduction. This is a qualitative study informed by a critical humanist approach. It is based on in-depth and key informant interviews conducted with 20 lesbians and 15 gay men (parents, �donor/dads� and prospective parents) as well as 7 people engaged in legal, health or therapeutic support to prospective and current parents. Also incorporated into the analysis are a range of other primary sources, including a substantial media debate, submissions to an assisted reproduction law reform process and primary documents supplied by participants such as parenting agreements and letters. The study argues for the need to look beyond unitary concepts such as families of choice when theorising lesbian and gay parenthood. It is important to consider the historical, political and biographical conditions that make some notions of relatedness and decisions about having children seem more feasible, and indeed, natural than others. It explores how various notions of biological relatedness remain important in the formation of parent/child relationships, and the extent to which lesbians and gay men rely on strategic appeals to choice and biology in enacting families. Continuing constraints on who is eligible for clinically assisted reproductive technology in Australia lead to imaginative and harmonious, yet also fraught reproductive relationships.

Thesis (MA)-- Stellenbosch University, 2013. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The concept of what constitutes a “normal” family has changed within recent years. This is because various family forms have been found viable. The current study is exploratory and focuses on the planned lesbian family. It aims to describe lesbian mothers’ lived psychological experience of planned motherhood. Utilising a feminist phenomenological approach, the narratives of 10 lesbian couples were obtained. Their emotional experiences are discussed under four headings, namely; the decision to become mothers; the actual process of becoming mothers; motherhood experience; and the anticipation of and actual responses to lesbian motherhood, lesbian families and children of lesbian mothers. Significant findings reveal the decision making involved in becoming mothers; the influence the type of donor has on the couple and their child; the joys and challenges of raising children; the fair division of childcare and household chores; the importance of partner support; the level of bonding with social and adoptive mothers; society’s lack of parental validation; the issue of homophobia and the preparation of their children against homophobia. Lesbian mothers seem to experience motherhood in very similar ways to heterosexual mothers, except that they do not seem as lonely and isolated. The aim of this study was not only to explore the experiences of lesbian mothers, but also to give them a voice within the psychological literature and to strive towards the acceptance of diverse families within mainstream psychology and the broader South African community. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Die konsep van wat ’n “normale“ familie behels het in die afgelope jare verander. Die rede is dat verskeie gesinsvorme as lewensvatbaar bevind is. Die gesinsvorm onder bestudering is die beplande lesbiese gesin. Hierdie was ’n verkennende studie wat gefokus het op die beskrywing van lesbiese ouers se sielkundige ervaring van beplande lesbiese moederskap. Daar is gebruik gemaak van ’n feministies-fenomenologiese benadering om die verhale van 10 lesbiese paartjies te verkry. Hulle ervarings word onder vier adelings bespreek, naamlik; die besluit om moeders te word; die werklike proses om moeders te word; moederskap ervarings; en die verwagte en werklike reaksies tot lesbiese moederskap van lesbiese families en kinders van lesbiese moeders. Noemenswaardige bevindings onthul die besluitneming betrokke om moeders te word; die invloed wat die tipe skenker op die paartjie en hulle kind het; die vreugde en vereistes van kinders grootmaak; die regverdige verdeling van kindersorg en huishoudelike take; die belangrikheid van lewensmaat ondersteuning; die krag van kinders se band met sosiale en aangenome moeders; die samelewing se tekort aan ouerlike bekragtiging; die kwessie van homofobie en die voorbereiding van hulle kinders hierteen. Dit wil voorkom of lesbiese moeders moeders in baie opsigte dieselfde ervaar as heteroseksuele moeders, behalwe dat hulle nie so alleen en geïsoleerd voorkom nie. Die studie se voorneme was nie net om die ervarings van lesbiese moeders te verken nie, maar ook om aan hulle ’n stem te bied binne die sielkundige literatuur en om te streef na die aanvaarding van uiteenlopende gesinsvorme binne hoofstroom sielkunde asook die breër Suid-Afrikaanse gemeenskap.

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My thesis should provide a comprehensive sum up of the life of homoparental families in the Czech Republic. I would like to closely see and monitor functioning of those LGBTI families and to research obstacles that these families must overcome to fully function in the society. In terms of equal and discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity I will examine in more details the processes, tools and institutions that provide the same conditions to all families without exception. I am primarily interested in barriers to the full functioning of these families, their access to assisted reproduction, surrogacy for gay families, and the legalization of non-biologic parent relationships to a child in a common household, their rights and duties. From a public policy point of view, I will find out whether these processes are in the accordance to equal and not discrimination treatment for all. By legalization of the partnership between homosexuals in the Czech Republic it has caused the logical development of this status and issues connecting to this law. Today, is often discussed the nature of this relationship and the possibility of its "transformation" into a full family structure ended up by marriage. This development raises a number of theoretical and practical issues. In my work,...