Research Framework: In Switzerland following a comprehensive reform of Adoption Law, in force since January 2018, it is possible for a child to have two legal parents of the same sex through the adoption of the partner’s child. While adoption is an important opening for the recognition of the doble filiation of existing parentalities, it is proving to be a very trying process and not devoid of considerable problems.

Objectives: This article looks at the family trajectories shaped by these procedures. It seeks to measure the impact of this major legal change on these families. Based on accounts of the experiences of lesbian mothers who have started adoption procedures for their children, this article sets out to analyse what these procedures do to these parents, to the couple and to the family.

Methodology: The sample consisted of 15 interviews with couples who had started adoption procedures for their children in the cantons of Geneva and Vaud; 5 individual interviews with mothers who had started the first adoption procedures; and a focus group with mothers involved in a same-sex parenting association. The interviews were analysed using an inductive thematic approach.

Results: The results show that adoption procedures, although aimed at recognising these families and making them legitimately ordinary, tend to take them out of their normality and highlight their minority status.

Conclusions: Our analyses show that the acquisition of legal rights does not guarantee that same-sex couples will be protected from stigmatisation and discrimination. On the contrary, these couples often face discrimination and institutional violence.

• lesbian family
• intra-family adoption
• recognition
• discrimination
• Switzerland

https://journals.openedition.org/efg/21604