Across the world, people have seen their lives interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Using an online survey, we explored how the psychosocial effects of the pandemic affected the mental health of LGBTQ+ young adults who were confined with their parents during the lockdown period (N = 1,934), from six countries: Portugal, UK, Italy, Brazil, Chile, and Sweden. South American participants experienced more negative psychosocial effects of the pandemic. Depression and anxiety were higher among participants who were younger, not working, living in Europe and who reported feeling more emotionally affected by the pandemic, uncomfortable at home, or isolated from non-LGBTQ friends. Not attending higher education predicted depression while not being totally confined at home, residing habitually with parents, and fearing more future infection predicted anxiety. LGBTQ+ community groups, as well as health and educational services should remain particularly attentive to the needs of LGBTQ+ young adults during health crises.

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After lesbian couples have decided to become parents, their family-making journey entails a wide range of encounters with professionals in fertility clinics and/or in maternal and child healthcare services. The article presents the results of an analysis of 96 lesbian mothers’ interview talk about such encounters. In their stories and accounts, the interviewees draw on two separate and contradictory interpretative repertoires, the ‘just great’ repertoire and the ‘heteronormative issues’ repertoire. Throughout the interviews, the ‘just great’ repertoire strongly predominates, while the ‘heteronormative issues’ repertoire is rhetorically minimized. The recurrent accounts of health services as ‘just great’, and the mitigation of problems, are meaningful in relation to a broader discursive context. In a society where different-sex parents are the norm, the credibility of other kinds of parenthood is at stake. The ‘just great’ repertoire has a normalizing function for lesbian mothers, while the ‘heteronormative issues’ repertoire resists normative demands for adaptation.

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Female same-sex couples in Sweden have had access to fertility treatment within public health care since 2005. Treatment is generally tax funded, with a minimal of personal expenses. After birth, both mothers gain legal status as the child's parents. This article draws on findings from interviews with 29 lesbian mothers, all of whom have sought treatment at fertility clinics within the Swedish public health care system. Parts of the interviews in which the mothers describe deficiencies in the provided treatment have been scrutinized in detail. Results show how heteronormative assumptions about the family and a feeling of exposure in the role of patient give rise to vulnerability in lesbian mothers. Furthermore, neither routines nor the offered treatment are adapted to lesbian women's specific needs. Regarding dealing with deficiencies, the interviews are filled with expressions of acceptance, which rhetorically minimize the impact of potential stressors. A main conclusion is that legal inclusion of lesbians in fertility treatment is of groundbreaking importance to lesbians with a desire to become parents. The next step is to address heteronormativity within the health care institutions in order to develop treatment adapted to lesbian couples' specific needs.