Parental Sensitivity and Intrusiveness in Gay-, Lesbian-, and Heterosexual-Parent Families Using ART: Does Gender or Caregiver Role Matter?

• In Event: Child’s attachment and Functioning, Coparenting, and Parents’ Needs in Gay, Lesbian, and Heterosexual Parent Families

Abstract

Introduction: Mothers are still widely believed to provide infants with parenting of superior quality and to be fundamentally better suited to parenting than fathers (Cabrera et al., 2018), but the evidence is inconsistent. In studies comparing the quality of paternal and maternal parenting behaviors, parental gender, and caregiving role (i.e., the division of caregiving responsibilities between parents) are often largely intertwined – with mothers usually being the primary caregivers – and this makes it hard to determine whether differences between fathers and mothers are due to parents’ gender or parents’ caregiving roles. Taking caregiving role into account is important because having more experience taking care of infants is related to better quality of parenting (Power, 1985).
Studying fathers and mothers from gay-, lesbian-, and heterosexual-parent families with infants born through artificial reproductive techniques (ART), we investigated whether differences in sensitivity and intrusiveness in three contexts (playing, cleaning, and feeding) were explained by gender or caregiver role. Because systems within the family are interdependent (Minuchin, 1985) and infant temperament influence the way parents feel and act, we controlled for infant temperament when analyzing fathers’ and mothers’ sensitivity and intrusiveness. We expect that, after controlling for infant temperament, differences in sensitive and intrusive behavior would be explained by caregiving role but not by gender.
Method: Thirty-eight two-parent gay families, 61 two-parent lesbian families, and 41 two-parent heterosexual families in France, the Netherlands, and United Kingdom participated in the study. Some families did not participate in the observation videos, which led to an analytic sample of 36 two-parent gay families, 58 two-parent lesbian families, and 41 two-parent heterosexual families (N = 135 families). All infants were first-borns, conceived using assisted reproductive technologies, and averaged 4 months of age.
Primary and secondary caregivers in each family were distinguished using answers to six items on the Who Does What questionnaire (Cowan & Cowan, 1990). Parents were each video-recorded separately while playing, cleaning, and feeding their infant. These videos were used to assess parental sensitivity and intrusiveness in each context, resulting in six outcome variables. All videos were coded by at least two raters and any disagreements were discussed until consensus was reached. The fussiness/difficulty subscale (9 items) of the infant Characteristics Questionnaire (ICQ; Bates et al., 1979) was used to assess infant temperament. Missing data were handled by multiple imputation.
Results: We performed six linear mixed models (one for each outcome) with families as a random effect, and parental gender, parental caregiving role, the interaction between parental gender and parental caregiver role, and child temperament as fixed effects. None of the sensitivity scores were predicted by these parameters. Results for intrusiveness were similar with the exception of an interaction between parental gender and parental caregiver role for intrusiveness during feeding: primary caregiving males scored higher on intrusiveness during feeding (M = .15, SD = .03) than primary caregiving females (M = .07, SD = .02).

Authors

• Loes van Rijn - van Gelderen, University of Amsterdam
  Presenting Author

• Kate Ellis-Davies, Swansea University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Katrien Helmerhorst, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen (UG/RUG)
  Non-Presenting Author

• Michael E Lamb, University of Cambridge
  Non-Presenting Author

• Henny Bos, Universiteit van Amsterdam (UvA)
  Non-Presenting Author