When most people think of stepparent adoption, they think of divorce, remarriage and the stepparent adopting their new spouses child. Very rarely do people think of situations such as surrogacy and sperm donations when they think of stepparent adoption, but in many of these cases too, stepparent adoption is part of the process.

There are two types of surrogacy, traditional surrogacy as well as gestational surrogacy. In gestational surrogacy, the surrogate mother is not biologically related to the child that she is carrying at all. The sperm is that of the intended father (the father waiting to parent the child) or that of a third party anonymous donor, and the same goes for the egg. The surrogate serves only as a place for the child to grow, she is for lack of a better term, renting out her womb to parents whom cannot conceive and carry a child to full term on their own.

In traditional surrogacy, the surrogate is biologically related to the child, as it is her egg that is fertilized with either the sperm of the intended father, or as mentioned above, the sperm from a third party donor. In the instance where it is her egg with the intended father's sperm, once the child is born, the father is biologically and legally the father of the child, yet the intended mother of the baby is considered a stepparent, until she goes through the process of formally adopting her child, becoming the child's legal mother.

Surrogacy contracts and situations can become sticky. Not every state upholds surrogacy contracts, and in cases of traditional surrogacy the surrogate can change her mind after the baby is born and fight for custody or visitation rights to the child, because the child is biologically hers. Some states will even allow a surrogate whom is not biologically related to the child fight for visitation or custody rights to the child that she carried inside her body for nine months, although those instances are more rare, they have and do occur.

When a woman cannot become pregnant with her husband because of his fertility issues, they may decide to use a sperm bank in order to have a baby that is partially biologically related to them instead of adopting. For many people the biological connection is important, or the desire to experience pregnancy drives them to pursue this option instead of domestic infant adoption. Cost too can play a role in their decision, as getting pregnant on the first or second attempt can be significantly cheaper than domestic infant adoption. However once the baby is born, the father will have to go through the legal process of adopting the baby that his wife has given birth to, otherwise he will legally be considered the child's stepfather since he is not biologically related to the baby.

There are many different ways for stepparent adoption to come into a family. While we may only think of the two big "D's" when it comes to stepparent adoption; divorce and death of a spouse, there are several more ways for a family to becomes a family through stepparent adoption.