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Parenting Quality and Attachment in Gay-Father, Lesbian-Mother, and Heterosexual-Parent Families

Fri, March 22, 3:00 to 4:30pm, Baltimore Convention Center, Floor: Level 3, Room 341

Integrative Statement

Introduction
Most research on the associations between variations in parental behavior and later child outcomes has been conducted in families with heterosexual parents (Lamb 2012; Thompson, 2008), with the principal focus on mothers. Although mothers are widely believed to provide superior quality parenting, and to be fundamentally better suited to parenting than fathers (Cabrera, Volling, & Barr, 2018), fathers have been shown to care for their infants just as capably as mothers (Lamb, 1997, 2010; Parke, 1996). However, no researchers have studied the parenting quality of primary caregiving fathers, or with gay fathers, with infants. The current explorative study will compare the parenting quality of two-parent families with gay fathers who became parents using surrogacy, lesbian mothers who did so using donor insemination, and heterosexual parents who conceived using in vitro fertilization (IVF) when the infants were 4 months old. In addition, we will compare the quality of early attachment relationships at 12 months of the three groups. Finally, we will assess the relation between parenting quality at 4 months and the quality of early attachment relationships at 12 months.
Study Population
Participants were 38 gay-father families, 61 lesbian-mother families, and 41 heterosexual-parent families from the U.K., the Netherlands, and France. In all families, both parents participated. Participants were recruited through fertility clinics, specialist lawyers, CAFCASS (in the UK), LGBT parenting support groups, online forums, and magazines, provided that infants were around 4 months of age or younger when the families were recruited, and that gay families had used a surrogate, lesbian couples had used a sperm donor, and heterosexual couples had used IVF without sperm or egg donation to conceive.
Methods
The families were assessed at home when their infants were 4 months old (+/- 14 days). Before the home visits, parents completed online questionnaires seeking demographic information. During the visit, parents were each video-recorded separately with their infant while participating in three daily tasks: playing, cleaning and feeding. The coding scheme of Manian and Bornstein (2009) was used to measure parenting behavior by generating six global codes (sensitivity, energy, positive affect, disengagement, intrusiveness, and negativity) from each of the observed interactions. The quality of developing parent-infant relationships was assessed using Ainsworth’s Strange Situation Assessment Procedure (SSA; Ainsworth et al. 1978) when the infants were about 12 months old.
Results
Hierarchical linear models, which accounted for the within-couple dependency in the outcome variables, showed that the quality of observed parental behavior (sensitivity, positive affect, energy, negativity, intrusiveness, and disengagement) was generally not associated with parents’ gender, sexual orientation, and caregiving role (primary vs secondary, based on parental reports). However, gay fathers were more energetic in the play and feed contexts and more intrusive while feeding than parents in the other groups, as well as less sensitive during cleaning than lesbian mothers, but the associated effect sizes were small. All Strange Situation Assessment Procedures were finished, but the data will be coded in the upcoming months and thus no results are yet available.

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