A longitudinal birth cohort study of early life conditions, psychosocial factors, and emerging adolescent sexual orientation

Abstract

This study tested whether previously reported associations between early life factors and later adolescent sexual orientation could be replicated in another prospective birth cohort, the UK Millennium Cohort Study (MCS). We used data on 9,795 youth from the MCS. Emerging sexual orientation was assessed using measures of sexual attraction to males and females in separate items at 14years. Factors including birthweight, breastfeeding, sibling composition, parental ages, maternal psychopathology, parent-child relationship, and contextual risks were separated into three developmental periods: prenatal (n=5 factors), before 7years (n=6 factors), and after 7years (n=5 factors). We controlled for handedness as a putative marker of prenatal androgen exposure and the possibility of mischievous responding statistically. Girls with greater maternal psychological distress since age 7 and greater pubertal body mass index were more likely to be nonheterosexual but the effect sizes were very small. Among boys there were no significant associations between any early life conditions and later sexual orientation. However, focusing on effect sizes rather than significance levels, there were small associations between preterm birth and nonheterosexuality. The results offer further evidence that psychosocial influences in the development of adolescent sexual orientation are weak or non-existent.