Parent-child relationships and sexual identity in male and female homosexuals and heterosexuals.

Abstract

This article includes two studies of reported parent-child relations and sexual identity : one of a population of 84 white, well-educated female homosexuals and their 94 matched heterosexual controls and the other of a group of 127 similarly welleducated, white male homosexuals and their 123 heterosexual matched controls. Female homosexuals reported having had more negative relations with their fathers in childhood that female heterosexuals, although a wide variety of parent-daught er relations was reported by both groups. The female homosexuals were neither mother nor father identified, but they were more distant from both parents and other people than their controls. The female homosexuals also reported a more masculine childhood than the heterosexuals, and they were more masculine on an objective measure of masculinity-f emininity. Compared with their controls, the male homosexuals reported more close-binding, intimate mothers and hostile, detached fathers than the heterosexual controls. As with the two female groups, a wide variety of parentson relations was reported. Homosexual males were not more mother identified than their controls, but, like the female group, they were more distant from parents and other people than the matched controls. Male homosexuals reported more feminine childhoods, and they were less masculine than controls on a masculinity-femininity test. Considerable attention has been focused on the psychological factors involved in homosexuality. Today, most students in the area realize that a homosexual adjustment has exceptionally complex determining components, but they agree that one profitable approach is the study of the relationship between parents and the prehomosexual child, especially as this affects the child's sex-role identification. Few research workers have studied female homosexuality. Thus, little is known about parent-child interactions among prehomosexual females and the relations of these interactions with later sexual identity; and the little research that has been conducted is inconsistent in its results. Looking at homosexuals in Britain, Bene (1965) found no differences between female homosexuals and the heterosexual controls in their reported feelings toward their mothers. In contrast, Gundlach and Riess (1968) found that homosexual females more often reported feeling neglected and ignored by their mothers,