Daddy daddy : a critical auto ethnography of the first adoption by a same sex couple in Malta

Abstract

This study is a manifestation of my experience, a gay male, married to another gay male, and about parenting an adopted child with a disability. It’s a story about the first child adopted by a same sex couple in Malta. At first the goal was meaning making the experiences and relations encountered during the process of adopting my son. However, the nature of enquiry took me beyond reflections of past, present and future, evidencing how extensively autoethnography can deepen research practices. Collectively, the project aimed at understanding the processes and social anxieties relating to same sex parenting, and same sex families. As this work demonstrates, although LGBT individuals have gained the right to marry and adopt, there are multiple masked social anomalies that have not been accounted for. They are located in the ideological dominance of conventional family structures and services. What is at stake now are the effects of such inequalities on our children. As a contribution to encourage local research on the subject, this study illuminates’ endeavours and misconceptions of power, homophobia and education which is much needed, in local research.