Sons Of Fathers Research Articles

Sexual orientation of adult sons of gay fathers.

The sexual development of children of gay and lesbian parents is interesting for both scientific and social reasons The present study is the largest to date to focus on the sexual orientation of adult sons of gay men. From advertisements in gay publications, 55 gay or bisexual men were recruited who reported on 82 sons at least 17 years of age . More than 90% of sons whose homosexual orientation could be rated were heterosexual. Furthermore, Gay and heterosexual sons did not differ on potentially relevant variables such as the length of time they had lived with their fathers. Results suggest that any environmental influence of gay fathers on their sons' sexual orientation is not large. An appreciable minority of both gay men and lesbians have children (Bell & Weinberg, 1978), and although difficult to document, it seems likely that increasing numbers of openly gay and lesbian people are forming families. Development of children of gay and lesbian parents has begun receiving the attention of researchers (e.g., Patterson, 1992) for both scientific and social reasons. A primary scientific question is whether children of gay and lesbian parents are especially likely to become gay or lesbian themselves, and if so, why. The primary social question, whether gay and lesbian parents are as desirable as heterosexual parents, has arisen most vividly in child custody cases. The scientific and social issues are closely related, because a primary focus of expert testimony in custody cases has been the impact of being reared by a gay or lesbian parent on children's sexual orientations (Falk, 1989; Harvard Law Review, 1989). Sexual Development of Children of Gay and Lesbian Parents Children of gay and lesbian parents might be expected to have elevated rates of homosexuality because they receive both environmental and genetic input from their parents. At least three environmental transmission routes are conceivable. The most obvious possibility is that children may acquire their sexual orientations in part by imitating their parents. By this model (discussed generally by, e.g., Sears, Rau, & Alpert, 1965). a child identifies with his same-sex parent and thereby adopts the kind of love object preferred by that parent. An immediate problem with this model is that most gay men and lesbians have heterosexual parents and thus develop opposite to the model's prediction. Psychoanalytic theorists (eg., Bieber, 1962) haw attempted to resolve this paradox by hypothesizing that, as children, homosexual individuals identified with their opposite-sex parents. In men, such atypical identification supposedly results from an unusually dose mother-son relationship coupled with a distant father-son relationship. In women, according to psychoanalytic theory, an especially antagonistic relationship with the mother impedes identification. Consistent with the theory, gay men tend to recall their fathers as having been emotionally distant and lesbians tend to report poorer

Temperament: a salient correlate of risk factors for alcohol and drug abuse

A sample of sons of substance abusing (SA+; n = 39) and normal fathers (SA−; n = 45) were studied to determine the relative contribution of temperament characteristics and paternal lifetime history of substance abuse as factors that are putatively linked to risk for substance abuse. Cluster analyses of sons' and fathers' scores on the Revised Dimensions of Temperament Survey (DOTS-R) yielded ‘difficult’ temperament and normative temperament clusters. In a comparison of risk liability associated with SA+ SA− status versus temperament cluster membership, boys in the difficult temperament cluster were differentiated from boys in the normative temperament cluster on cognitive, behavior, family and peer affiliation risk factors. In subsequent logistic regression analyses, 85% of sons in the difficult temperament cluster and 72% of sons in the normative temperament cluster were correctly classified by their risk factor scores.

Monoamine Oxidase and Homovanillic Acid in Boys with Predispositions to Substance Abuse

Both dopaminergic dysregulation and abnormalities in monoamine oxidase (MAO) have been postulated as etiological factors in substance abuse. This study assessed whether MAO activity differed in sons of substance-abusing fathers compared with sons of nonsubstance-abusing fathers. It also assessed the levels of homovanillic acid (HVA), the metabolite of dopamine, and MAO in a group of substance-using/-abusing boys compared with peers without this history in the same setting. Sixty-five boys admitted to a residential center were evaluated on blood tests for HVA and MAO, and on a series of diagnostic instruments and questionnaires designed to elicit information about parental substance abuse and about the subject's own substance use/abuse. The results indicated tentatively that younger (< 12.0 years) sons of substance-abusing fathers had higher levels of MAO than younger sons of nonsubstance-abusing fathers. Levels of MAO in older (> or = 12.0 years) sons of substance-abusing and nonsubstance-abusing fathers did not differ. Boys with histories of significant use/abuse of substances themselves had significantly higher MAO levels and significantly lower HVA levels than peers of the same age without substance use/abuse histories.

Individual, family, and peer affiliation factors predisposing to early-age onset of alcohol and drug use.

In this study, a multifactorial model of liability to early-age alcohol and drug use was elucidated on a sample of sons of substance-abusing fathers (n = 59) and sons of normal fathers (n = 71) at time 1 when the boys were 10-12 years of age. Three hierarchical regression analyses were computed to test models to identify salient risk characteristics associated with sons' perception of family dysfunction unconventional activities among peers, and affiliation with peers engaged in delinquent behaviors. The respective models explained 28% of the variance on sons' Dysfunctional Family Index scores, 21% of the variance on sons' Conventional Activities of Friends Scale scores, and 53% of the variance was accounted for on sons' Peer Delinquency Scale scores. In subsequent logistic regression analyses, a multifactorial model comprised of individual, family, and peer risk characteristics obtained at time 1 correctly predicted 83.7% of sons who had used alcohol and/or drugs by time 2 when they were 12-14 years old. The findings also suggest that temperament phenotype influences family interaction patterns that in turn influence the psychosocial development of the child.

Anticipated biphasic effects of alcohol vary with risk for alcoholism: a preliminary report.

Twenty-five sons of alcoholic fathers and 114 sons of nonalcoholic fathers reported the stimulant and sedative effects they expected alcohol would produce on both the ascending and descending limbs of the blood alcohol curve. High-risk subjects anticipated more stimulation on the ascending limb, and more sedation on the descending limb than low-risk subjects. These results are comparable to some studies of subjective responses to alcohol in high- and low-risk men, and to previous work on risk and anticipated effects. These expectancies may contribute to risk-related differences in responses to alcohol, as well as the development of problem drinking.

Eye Movement Effects of Diazepam in Sons of Alcoholic Fathers and Male Control Subjects

Both animal and human studies suggest that the GABA-benzodiazepine receptor complex may be involved in the acute effects of ethanol, as well as the development of tolerance and dependence with chronic ethanol use. The current study was performed to assess sensitivity to benzodiazepines, and thus the functional sensitivity of the GABA-benzodiazepine receptor system, in subjects at high risk for alcoholism. Sons of alcoholic fathers (SOAs; n = 27) were compared with male controls without a family history of alcoholism (n = 23) in response to diazepam versus placebo. SOAs and controls received four logarithmically increasing doses of intravenous diazepam or placebo in randomized order on 2 days at least 1 week apart. Effects of diazepam were assessed using two eye movement tasks, peak saccadic eye movement velocity, and average smooth pursuit eye movement gain, which provide reliable, quantitative measures of benzodiazepine effects. In addition, memory, self-rated sedation, and pleasurable drug effects were measured. In comparison with control subjects, SOAs displayed significantly less diazepam effects on peak saccade velocity, average smooth pursuit gain, memory, and self-rated sedation, but significantly greater pleasurable drug effects. Differences in response to diazepam between SOAs and male controls may reflect altered functional sensitivity of the central GABA-benzodiazepine receptor system or a more general difference between groups in the effects of CNS active or sedating drugs.

The Path to Alcohol Problems Through Conduct Problems: A Family-Based Approach to Very Early Intervention With Risk

A program to prevent the development of conduct problems among preschool sons of alcoholic fathers was established as a way to interrupt what is likely to be one of the major mediating factors in the development of risk for alcoholism in later years. A community sample of 104 alcoholic men who: (a) had been convicted for driving while impaired with high blood alcohol concentrations (BACs), Co) were living in an intact relationship, (c) were the fathers of 3- to 5-year-old sons, and (d) lived within a 30-mile radius of the treatment facility was recruited from all district courts in a four-county area. Subjects were randomly assigned to one of two intervention formats, both parents or mothers only, or to a control group. The intervention combined a parent-training model with a marital issues component, and it spanned a 10-month interval. Evaluations were conducted at preintervention, midtreatment, termination, and 6-month follow-up. Overall, the intervention program had significant effects on negative, pro...

Male-Female Delinquency in the Philippines

Self-report data were obtained from male and female students in a coastal city in the southern Philippines. Analyses reveal higher rates of delinquency among males. Delinquency is regressed on several independent variables, including peer relations, social bond measures, age, and father's occupation. Peer relations and attitudinal constructs are significantly associated with delinquency, particularly among males. Interestingly, sons of higher-status fathers are more delinquent than are juveniles from lower-status backgrounds. Among girls, the collective influence of the independent variables is negligible. The results of the study are discussed relative to various theoretical explanations but with an emphasis on Philippine social structure and values. Attention is given to the family context and to the influence of peer groups, or the barkada, on delinquency, especially among middle-class males. The lack of explanation of female delinquency in this data set is addressed relative to the status of women in Philippine society and the need to focus on the contextual factors that affect the lives of juvenile females.

Manning as Politician

It is a convention—now hardened to cliché—of Victorian historiography that Henry Edward Manning and John Henry Newman lived parallel lives: both virtual contemporaries, both sons of bankrupt fathers, both Oxford Anglicans with promise of greatness, both converts to Rome, both ascetics, both Cardinals. Equally conventional are the differences: Newman’s subtlety, Manning’s stoutness, Newman’s ‘Englishness’, Manning’s Romanita, Newman the outsider, Manning an Establishment figure from the start. These conceits are serviceable, but a more useful linkage is this: Manning and Newman lived not parallel lives, but paradoxical ones, the paradox being that each, in a sense, lived the other man’s life. Consider how each developed in unimagined ways. Newman was one of the most private men of his day. To a temperament already solitary was added the isolation of conversion, then the loneliness of failure, finally the realisation that he represented only a minority in a flamboyantly Ultramontane church. Yet Newman was never left alone with his solitude. His inner life became public property: his soul-struggle debated in the popular prints, his spiritual journey subject of tract and pamphlet and letter to the editor. People thought they knew him better than he knew himself, and, were they a Henry Kingsley or a Robert Wilberforce or an Orestes Brownson, lost little time in telling him. The boundaries of a decent interiority were crossed again and again, until he became icon, symbol, Everyman’s Newman.

Codependency and Parenting Styles

This study examined the association between the parent-child relationship (as perceived by late adolescent-early adult children) and the adolescent's codependency. College students 17through 22 years of age (N = 175) reported the parenting style of their mother and father (via ratings of perceived parental support and coercive control) and completed a scale assessing their own level of codependency. Parenting style (uninvolved, permissive, authoritarian, and democratic) was related to offspring codependency in that daughters of authoritarian fathers had higher codependency scores than did daughters of permissive fathers, whereas sons of authoritarian fathers reported higher levels of codependency than did sons of uninvolved fathers. It appeared that the exercise of control on the partoffathers untempered byperceptions ofpaternal warmth or support was related to higher codependency scores in offspring. Parenting style of mothers was unrelated to codependency scores in offspring. Future research should investigate other indirect as well as direct associations of parenting with offspring codependency.

Cognitive and motoric functioning of sons of alcoholic fathers and controls: The early childhood years.

This study compared cognitive and motoric abilities of male preschoolers with alcoholic fathers with matched community comparison boys. Despite meticulous neighborhood searches, socioeco- nomic status (SES) and Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment (HOME) scores of control families were significantly higher than alcoholic families. Among high-risk boys, overall developmental quotient, fine motor, and personal/social development were significantly less ad- vanced than for controls when SES and HOME scores were not considered. In analyses of develop- mental data when HOME scores were considered as a covariate, only personal/social development remained significantly different. Findings suggest that paternal alcohol problems are related to cognitive development of their preschool sons, primarily if they impact on aspects of family envi- ronment related to intellectual abilities. Estimates from the Children of Alcoholics Foundation sug- gest that there are 6.6 million children under the age of 18 years in the United States with an alcoholic parent (Russell, Hender- son, & Blume, 1985). These children of alcoholics (COAs) are at high risk for a host of behavioral and emotional difficulties during childhood, adolescence, and adulthood (Sher, 1987; West & Prinz, 1987; Zucker & Noll, 1982). The risk for the development of difficulties in COAs, along with a body of evi- dence suggesting that specific biogenetic mechanisms for vul- nerability to alcoholism may be inherited, especially between fathers and sons (Cadoret, Troughton, O'Gorman, & Heywood, 1986; Cloninger, Bohman, & Sigvardsson, 1981; Goodwin, Schulsinger, Hermanse, Guze, & Winokur, 1973), has resulted in considerable research evaluating both biological and psycho- social functioning in these children. This work has been spurred by the possibility of specifying childhood risk factors for adult disorders and by the promise that identification of specific vulnerable youths could occur. Investigations have fo- cused on a broad spectrum of factors including static ataxia, rates of ethanol metabolism, platelet enzyme activity, electro- physiological markers, and cognitive abilities.

Cognitive and motoric functioning of sons of alcoholic fathers and controls: The early childhood years.

Cognitive and motoric functioning of sons of alcoholic fathers and controls: The early childhood years.

Subjective feelings and changes in body sway following diazepam in sons of alcoholics and control subjects.

The possible generalization to diazepam of the dampened response to ethanol in sons of alcoholic fathers was evaluated in 62 sons of alcoholics (family history positive [FHP] subjects) and 62 family history negative (FHN) controls (124 men). Following challenges with placebo, .12 and .2 mg/kg of diazepam in three separate sessions, evaluation of subjective feelings and increases in body sway revealed no decreased reaction for FHPs.

Tridimensional Personality Questionnaire scores of sons of alcoholic and nonalcoholic fathers

The authors studied 33 men whose fathers had severe alcohol-related problems and 33 subjects with no family history of alcoholism. The former supplied information about the course of their fathers' alcohol problems; all 66 men answered questions about their own drinking and drug use and completed the Tridimensional Personality Questionnaire. There were no significant relationships between any of the 18 questionnaire scores and a subject's quantity/frequency of drinking or his family history of alcoholism. There was only one significant correlation between the alcoholic fathers' type 2 characteristics, according to the type 1/type 2 theory, and the sons' questionnaire scores. The relevance of these findings to the theory is discussed.

TSH response to TRH and family history of alcoholism

The thyrotropin (TSH) response to intravenous thyrotropin-releasing hormone (TRH) was evaluated in 10 sons of alcoholic fathers (FHP group) and 10 matched controls (FHN group). No differences were observed between the two groups in basal TSH, peak TSH levels, on the incidence of TSH-blunting to TRH. Though there was a trend for a less intense TSH response over time after the TRH infusion, the difference between the family groups was not significant. These results are not consistent with some previous reports of an increased percentage of blunted TSH response to TRH for children of alcoholics. The clinical and research implications of these findings are discussed.

Plasma GABA-like activity in response to ethanol challenge in men at high risk for alcoholism

Sons of alcoholic fathers (high risk, HR) and matched control men from families without alcoholism (low risk, LR) were administered, in a randomized double-blind fashion, either a placebo beverage or an isovolemic beverage containing ethanol (0.8 g/kg). Serial blood sampling for determination of plasma gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA)-like activity, mood, and intoxication ratings were performed. The HR subjects were found to have significantly less plasma GABA-like activity than LR during the placebo condition. The alcoholic beverage condition washed out the differences in plasma GABA between groups. Significant interactions between risk group status and beverage conditions were found with respect to plasma GABA-like activity. Alcohol produced an increase in mean GABA-like activities among HR subjects, whereas a slight decline was noted among LR subjects. Plasma GABA-like activity also had a significant inverse correlation with self-reports of perceived tension in the placebo condition, and tension, confusion, and intoxication in response to the alcoholic drink. Since previous investigators have reported reduced plasma GABA levels in alcoholic individuals, reduced plasma GABA-like activity may be a biological marker for vulnerability to alcoholism or for heightened tension as a behavioral factor that predisposes to alcoholism.

Clinical applications of the contralateral components of the brain-stem auditory evoked potentials

The thyrotropin (TSH) response to intravenous thyrotropin-releasing hormone (TRH) was evaluated in 10 sons of alcoholic fathers (FHP group) and 10 matched controls (FHN group). No differences were observed between the two groups in basal TSH, peak TSH levels, on the incidence of TSH-blunting to TRH. Though there was a trend for a less intense TSH response over time after the TRH infusion, the difference between the family groups was not significant. These results are not consistent with some previous reports of an increased percentage of blunted TSH response to TRH for children of alcoholics. The clinical and research implications of these findings are discussed.

Specific cognitive impairment in sons of early onset alcoholics.

Cognitive and behavioral functioning in school-aged sons of early onset alcoholics, late onset alcoholics, normal social drinking fathers, and depressed fathers were compared on a battery of neuropsychological measures. Sons of early onset alcoholics performed more poorly than offspring of the normal fathers on tests measuring attention and verbal intellectual capacity, but were not significantly different from sons of late onset alcoholic fathers. Sons of normal and late onset alcoholics were not distinguishable from each other.

An analysis of the clinical relevance of type 1 and type 2 alcoholics.

Predictions inherent in the proposed Type 1/Type 2 continuum of alcoholic subtypes were indirectly explored in 31 sons of primary alcoholic fathers. The fathers' alcoholism was rated on a 0-5 scale utilizing characteristics typical of the Type 2 extreme of the continuum. If a predisposition to Type 2 alcoholism is genetically transmitted, then we would have predicted that the sons of Type 2 alcoholics would be more likely than the sons of Type 1 men to show an earlier onset of drinking, as well as more alcohol and substance intake and associated problems. The results did not support any consistent trend in the correlation between the FHP fathers' alcoholic characteristics and the sons' problem picture. Potential explanations for this finding are discussed including the possibility that the Type 2 extreme might represent a separate diagnostic entity, the antisocial personality disorder, and not alcoholism itself.

Responses by Sons of Alcoholic Fathers to Alcoholic and Placebo Drinks: Perceived Mood, Intoxication, and Plasma Prolactin

Young adult sons of alcoholic fathers (HR) were compared with matched young men from families without alcoholic relatives (LR) with respect to perceived mood, perceived intoxication, and plasma prolactin responses to oral challenge with two doses of alcohol and a placebo drink. HR subjects were found to have a qualitatively and quantitatively different mood response than controls to all three beverage conditions. HR subjects endorsed greater tension, depression, and fatigue across beverage conditions independent of alcohol dose. Alcohol dose interacted with risk status for perceived anger, vigor, and confusion. HR subjects reported less perceived intoxication on the descending limb of the alcohol concentration-time curve across all three conditions. These differential responses could not be explained by the occurrence of personality subtypes determined through administration of the Tridimensional Personality Questionnaire. A significantly reduced prolactin response to alcohol in HR subjects could not be confirmed. Perceived mood effects of alcohol could have etiological significance in the development of alcoholism among HR individuals.