Determinants of Coparenting Quality in Gay-, Lesbian-, and Heterosexual-Parent Families with Infants

• In Event: 1-209 - Rainbow Connections: Parent Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity, Child Development, and Family Dynamics

Integrative Statement

How parents divide and share co-parenting responsibilities and roles has previously been linked to child adjustment, parental adjustment, and parenting quality (Feinberg, Kan, & Hetherington, 2007). However, research on co-parenting has mainly focused on heterosexual couples with biological children (Patterson & Farr, 2011). During the transition to parenting, new parents need to make decisions about how parenting roles will be shared (Cao et al., 2016). Dissatisfaction with these decisions is a major source of parenting stress, which undermines parental adjustment.


In heterosexual couples, division of labor is usually gender-related, with mothers taking on more direct care responsibilities (Goldberg & Perry-Jenkins, 2004). However, in same-sex couples, gender cannot be the deciding factor. Currently, we know little about how same-sex parents define their new family roles in the first year of life (Goldberg, 2012). Inspired by Feinberg’s ecological model of co-parenting (Feinberg, 2003), this study sought to investigate which child, parent, and interparental factors explained how first-time gay, lesbian, and heterosexual parents divide caregiving roles when their infants were 4 and 12 months old.

Thirty-eight gay-father families, 61 lesbian-mother families, and 41 heterosexual-parent families were recruited in the U.K., the Netherlands, and France; both parents participated in the study (N = 280 parents).

Participants were recruited by specialist lawyers with expertise in surrogacy and fertility clinics. All gay-father families had used surrogate carriers, lesbian-mother families had used sperm donors, and heterosexual-parent families had used IVF without sperm or egg donation. Parents completed a questionnaire when their infant was 4 and 12 months of age. This included measures on demographic characteristics and standardized online questionnaires on co-parenting, and parental well-being.

At 4 months of age, parents across family type were likely to divide caregiving in a non-egalitarian manner, with one parent taking on more responsibility for direct caregiving. In lesbian mother and heterosexual parent families, the parent who had carried the pregnancy was more likely to be the parent taking on more direct caregiving at 4 months. This relationship was not found for gay fathers when infants were 4 months of age. These results will be discussed in relation to theories of family dynamics, as well as contextual approaches to caregiving that take into account economic parenting leave factors, as well as the impact of breastfeeding on caregiving distribution. For the longitudinal analyses, multilevel regression models (one for child care and one for family decision-making) will be discussed to consider the stability of the caregiver roles across the 4-to-12 months of age and the roles that parent gender, parental biological link, parental well-being and family type may have for the stability of emerging caregiver roles of first time parents.

This study will be the first that provides information about which determinants of co-parenting quality might explain how first-time gay, lesbian, and heterosexual parents define their new family roles in the first four months after birth when gender cannot be the deciding factor.

Authors

• Kate Ellis-Davies, Nottingham Trent Univerisity & University of Cambridge
  Presenting Author

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

• Bérengère Rubio, IFSTTAR Versailles
  Non-Presenting Author

• Alice Winstanley, University of Cambridge
  Non-Presenting Author

• Terrence Jorgensen, University of Amsterdam
  Non-Presenting Author

• Martine Gross, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
  Non-Presenting Author

• Olivier Vecho, Universite Paris Nanterre
  Non-Presenting Author

• Henny Bos, University of Amsterdam
  Non-Presenting Author

• Susan Golombok, Centre for Family Research, University of Cambridge
  Non-Presenting Author

• Michael Lamb, University of Cambridge
  Non-Presenting Author