ABSTRACT
However, whereas in the past such alternative families grew up by ‘happenstance’ – such as where a single mother, often pregnant from an extra-marital relationship which did not endure with her partner, decided to keep her child rather than to give it up for adoption (which was a very unusual course 50 years ago when the concept of the ‘illegitimate’ child still existed and was a social taboo). An alternative example sometimes arose where gay partners of either sex set up house together, often without existing children, but sometimes adopting them. Nevertheless, it is now possible to create such an atypical family as a matter of preference, without the former stigma of the
without social disapproval. Moreover, not only may same-sex, as well as opposite-sex, partners be involved in the assisted conception of children with whom they will then have a genetic connection, but it seems that transsexuals, who may now be fully recognised in their new gender pursuant to the Gender Recognition Act 2004 , can also participate in the new parenting regime of the 2008 Act.
