Lesbian and Gay Parents: Their Experiences of Children's Health Care in Australia

This study investigates the experiences of lesbian and gay parents seeking health care for their children within the Australian medical system. Previously unavailable demographic data was collected on lesbian and gay families, and qualitative information was sought from parents about positive or problematic health care experiences related to sexual orientation and family constellation. Ninety-two lesbian or gay parents responded to a national postal and Web-based survey. Eighty-nine percent of respondents reported a high level of satisfaction with the health care received by their children. Despite overall satisfaction, however, 49 percent of parents identified fear of disclosure of sexual orientation, and 27 percent reported negative or problematic experiences with their children's health care related to sexual orientation or family constellation. This study indicates that fear of discrimination and homophobic attitudes towards lesbian and gay families remain a factor within the Australian health care system.     

Adult Daughters whose Mothers Come Out Later in Life: What is the Psychosocial Impact?

SUMMARY

When a family member comes out, it is a process not only for that individual lesbian but also for their entire family. Adult daughters whose mothers come out later in life have distinctive paths to navigate. This article reports findings of an interview study with six daughters who were adults when their mothers came out to them. Most daughters felt they emerged from childhood with an open mind about sexual identity, but had no idea about their mother's lesbianism until told by her. Half the participants questioned the role of women in their lives after their mother came out. Five of the six have a very close relationship, or have become closer, with their mother, since her coming out.     

The effect of current sexual behavior on friendship,dating, and marriage desirability

The purpose of this research was to extend previous studies examining the influence of a person's sexual behavior on others' perceptions of his/ her relationship desirability. Over 750 students from three universities judged the friendship, dating, and marriage desirability of a person based on information ostensibly provided by him/her about current sexual activity. Overall, the results indicated that a target person portrayed as engaging in low sexual activity in a current relationship was perceived to be more desirable as a friend and marriage partner than a person engaging in moderate or high sexual activity, whereas moderate or high sexual activity was preferred more in a dating partner. Whether the sexual activity occurred in a casual or steady dating relationship, however, also affected desirability perceptions. Finally, evidence was found for a reverse double standard in ratings of dating desirability: males were perceived as most desirable as a date when they engaged in moderate sexual activity, whereas females were perceived as most desirable as a date when they engaged in high sexual activity.     

Will daughters walk mom’s talk? The effects of maternal communication about sex on the sexual behavior of female adolescents

Numerous social marketing campaigns exhort parents to talk to their children about sexual abstinence, pregnancy risk, and sexually transmitted disease prevention. The effectiveness of these conversations is difficult to ascertain if parents are more likely to broach discussions related to sexual activity with adolescents who have greater propensities to engage in these risky behaviors. Our baseline empirical results indicate that female adolescents whose mothers communicate more about sex are more likely to have sexual intercourse, practice unsafe sex, and engage in casual sex. However, once we control for the adolescent’s environment and peers through the use of school fixed effects and for the daughter’s own propensity to engage in such behaviors through a rich set of adolescent-specific covariates, the effect of a mother’s talk on her daughter’s behavior is reduced dramatically indicating that mother’s talk is endogenous to the daughter’s sexual behavior. Models employing sister fixed effects to control for family-level unobservables, although imprecisely estimated, confirm this finding.     

Reclaiming the Mother-daughter Relationship after Sexual Abuse

This paper seeks to provide direction to therapists working with mothers and daughters after a disclosure of father-daughter sexual abuse. The importance of the mother's belief in and support for the child's recovery is highlighted, as are some of the cultural assumptions about mothers and daughters which negatively impact on the relationship. Despite paying lip service to offender responsibility, there continues to be a culture of mother blaming in the child sexual abuse and family therapy literature on incest. Current research findings challenge some of the prevalent myths about mothers’ responses to their children's disclosures. Few clinical sources have addressed this issue, and therapists who reject the mother blaming literature are therefore left with little guidance as to how to work more effectively with mothers and daughters. Consequently they may unwittingly further undermine the relationship. Work with mothers and daughters as they recover from intrafamilial sexual abuse is discussed, and key therapeutic themes and guidelines for practice presented. We explore the significant theme of the rebuilding of trust between mothers and daughters and facilitate a process whereby the woman is able to bear witness to and acknowledge the trauma experienced by her daughter.     

One Where the Kid Actually is “All Right”: The Queering of Iva in Marilyn Hacker's Love,Death, and the Changing of the Seasons

This article explores Marilyn Hacker's 1986 sonnet sequence, Love, Death, and the Changing of the Seasons, for its depiction of lesbian parenting. Hacker moves beyond the simply erotic to focus on a truly subversive act present within the queer community, namely that of child-rearing. Lesbian parenting is a private world, one not subject to the male gaze in the ways that other seemingly private worlds (like sex) are still commodified. The daughter character of Iva exemplifies the construction of self in a queer environment. Children of queer parents have the unique subject position of being “queered” themselves regardless of their ultimate sexual orientation. While this queering would seem to primarily affect their understandings of gender and sexuality, this article argues that such early “othering” serves to deconstruct one's understanding of binaries and social conformity on a large scale, thereby encouraging qualities of acceptance and compassion and increasing the intimate family bond.     

Degree and Direction of Sexual Desire Discrepancy are Linked to Sexual and Relationship Satisfaction in Couples Transitioning to Parenthood

Many new parents are concerned that they have different levels of interest in sex than their partner. Understanding the role of desire discrepancies in their sexual and relationship satisfaction could help promote adjustment. In community couples, larger desire discrepancies have been inconsistently linked to lower sexual and relationship satisfaction. However, these studies rarely accounted for both the degree and direction (e.g., which partner has higher desire) of the discrepancy. We surveyed 255 mixed-sex new parent couples to assess their sexual desire, sexual satisfaction, and relationship satisfaction. Using polynomial regression with response surface analysis (RSA), we found that desire discrepancies between partners (i.e., when partners were more mismatched as opposed to matched on their levels of sexual desire) were associated with lower sexual (but not relationship) satisfaction for both partners. However, the direction of desire discrepancy mattered: Parents felt less satisfied when mothers were the higher-desire partner compared to when fathers were the higher-desire partner. In addition, when partners’ level of sexual desire was in agreement, they were more sexually and relationally satisfied if both partners reported higher compared to lower desire. Results demonstrate the important role of both the magnitude and direction of desire discrepancies in new parent couples.     

Direct and Indirect Effects of Maternal and Peer Influences on Sexual Intention among Urban African American and Hispanic Females

Peer and family influences are interconnected in complex ways. These influences shape adolescent decision-making regarding engagement in sexual behaviors. Evidence indicates the more proximal (and direct) a process is to an individual, the more likely it is to affect his/her development and behavior. Therefore, family factors (e.g., parenting practices) and peer influence (e.g., peer norms) tend to be more strongly associated with adolescent behavior than distal factors (e.g., media or the economy). Guided by an ecological framework, this study explored how maternal influence variables interact with perceptions of peer influence to affect daughters’ intentions to have sex. A nonprobability sample of 176 mother–daughter dyads was recruited in clinics and service organizations in the northeastern United States. Results from path analysis revealed that maternal influence variables had a significant indirect relationship with daughters’ intentions to have sex through daughters’ perceptions of peer influence. Maternal processes can act as protective factors for adolescent girls who perceive their peers are engaged in sexual behaviors. Therefore, risk reduction interventions with adolescents should include opportunities for parents to learn about sex-related issues and develop skills that will allow them to buffer negative peer influence.     

Dynamics of the intergenerational transmission of welfare receipt in the United States

Using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, this article expands upon earlier empirical efforts to understand intergenerational welfare participation in the United States. Empirical studies have suggested that growing up in a household that receives Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) increases the probability that a child will receive AFDC, although little insight exists on the dynamics of this relationship. In particular, no one has formally examined how the time a daughter spends on AFDC varies from the time her parents receive welfare. By observing the behavior of parents and their daughters for five years, this study examines the length of participation in AFDC across generations. The results imply that growing up in a household that receives AFDC increases the amount of time that a daughter will also receive aid, although the time a daughter receives AFDC is not affected by the length of time parents receive AFDC. His research interests include welfare programs, tax policies, local public finance, and econometrics.     

Feeding the Hand that Bit You: Lesbian Daughters at Mid-Life Negotiating Parental Caretaking

SUMMARY

Like other women in our culture, lesbians find parental caretaking is a gendered expectation that often falls to them. This article explores how we negotiate competing demands and integrate our parents' needs into our lives. The daughter/parent relationship may have been strained by parental homophobia, exclusion of our partner, “splitting” between our lesbian and birth family lives, and physical distance. We may recall feelings of metaphorical and physical caretaking not offered to us when we came out, when lack of parental support may have brought financial abandonment and emotional upset. Inversion of the relationship into the child as parental caretaker, fraught with mixed emotions, can bring resolution of long-held resentments and pain.     

Parents’ awareness of lesbian,gay, and bisexual youths’ sexual orientation

This study used a sample of 293 lesbian, gay, and bisexual youth to examine factors that differentiated youth whose parents knew of their sexual orientation from youth whose parents did not know. Earlier awareness and disclosure of same‐gender attractions, greater childhood gender atypicality, and less internalized homophobia were characteristic of youth whose parents were aware of youths’ sexual orientation. Youth with aware parents reported more past verbal victimization on the basis of sexual orientation from parents, yet more current family support and less fear of future parental victimization on the basis of their sexual orientation.     

He Said,She Said: Gender Differences in Mother – Adolescent Conversations about Sexuality

This study examined gender differences in self‐reported and observed conversations about sexual issues. Fifty mother –adolescent dyads reported on their conversations about sexual issues and participated in videotaped conversations about dating and sexuality in a laboratory setting. Gender differences (more mother – daughter than mother –son) were found in the extent of sexual communication based on adolescents’ reports, but no gender differences were found based on mothers’ reports, or on observations of conversations. Aspects of laboratory interactions, however, did distinguish mother– daughter and mother – son dyads, and related to self‐report measures. Girls’ reported sexuality communication frequency related to behavior in the laboratory setting. During mother – son conversations, one person usually took on the role of questioner, whereas the other did not. In contrast, there was evidence for mutuality of positive emotions for mother – daughter dyads, but not for mother – son dyads.     

A test of explanations for the effect of harsh parenting on the perpetration of dating violence and sexual coercion among college males

This study uses structural equation modeling (SEM) with a sample of 760 college males to test various hypotheses regarding the avenues whereby harsh corporal punishment and a troubled relationship with parents increase the risk that a boy will grow up to engage in sexual coercion and dating violence. We found that three variables--a general antisocial orientation, sexually permissive attitudes, and believing that violence is a legitimate component of romantic relationships--mediated most of the association between negative parenting and our two outcomes. In addition to this indirect influence, we found that harsh corporal punishment had a direct effect upon dating violence. The findings are discussed with regard to various theoretical perspectives regarding the manner in which family of origin experiences increase the chances that a young man will direct violence toward a romantic partner.     

The Burden of Sexual Problems: Perceived Effects on Men’s and Women’s Sexual Partners

Sexual dysfunction sometimes negatively affects the individual, his or her partner, and the relationship. We investigated the relationship between the distress experienced by men and women with orgasmic phase difficulties and the perceived distress of their partner(s). We also identified predictors of perceived partner distress, and related self and partner distress to severity of the problem and relationship quality. Data were drawn from 374 men with premature ejaculation (PE) and 377 women with anorgasmia who responded to a survey regarding their sexual functioning, including their distress about their condition and the perceived distress of their partners. Results yielded an overall distress score consisting of combined self and perceived partners distress, with women showing a higher overall score and higher perceived partner distress than men. For men, significant predictors of perceived partner distress included self-distress, relationship quality, interest in sex, and arousal difficulty; for women, only the level of self-distress significantly predicted perceived partner distress. These findings indicate the burden of experiencing sexual difficulty, identify factors related to perceived partner distress, and demonstrate differences in self versus partner distress across men and women. Overall, such findings reiterate the strong need for the inclusion of the partner in any attempted remediation of a sexual problem.     

Explicit Versus Implicit Family Decision-Making Strategies Among Mexican American Caregiving Adult Children

Changing U.S. demographics make it increasingly vital to investigate experiences of Latinos caring for aging parents, with specific emphasis on how these families, who often value family closeness, make decisions about caregiving. This study investigates relationships among use of implicit versus explicit decision-making strategies, generation since immigration, and orientation toward family. Findings suggest that those with more recent immigration to the United States were more likely than those who immigrated longer ago to describe family decision making about their parents' care as implicit. Those that were classified as using predominately implicit decision making were also found to be not significantly different from those classified as predominantly explicit with regard to their overall support of a collective orientation toward family. There were exceptions to this, however, regarding two specific aspects of orientation toward family: engagement in shared activities with family members and avoiding family conflict by making choices that are consistent with the family values. In both cases those categorized as implicit expressed stronger endorsement of these specific values. These findings suggest that the relationship between family decision-making strategies, generation since immigration, and orientation toward family is more complex than suggested previously in the literature. Implications for future research and practice are offered.     

A Barrenness or Body and Theory: An Analysis or Infertility

This essay tracks the vicissitudes of woman's analysis during her three year attempt to become pregnant, and in her own words, “to become a real mother”. As a lesbian daughter of heterosexual parents, she attempted to “cure” her infertility, and redress her self- perceived sexual sins through compliance with a fantasy of heterosexual completion. This fantasy came to be seen as a diversion from the more difficult task of re-engaging with a symbolic oedipal dilemma and bearing parricide guilt.     

Sexual Portrait of Couples Seeking Relationship Therapy

This study sought to provide information about the sexual well‐being of 298 mixed‐sex couples seeking relationship therapy and determined the extent to which problems with sexual functioning and dyadic adjustment of both partners are associated with sexual satisfaction. Partners completed measures of dyadic adjustment, sexual satisfaction, and sexual functioning. Thirty percent of couples reported a clinically significant sexual problem. Compared to their male partners, the women were more likely to report a sexual problem as well as lower dyadic adjustment, sexual satisfaction, and overall sexual functioning. Path analysis indicated that relationship adjustment uniquely predicted individuals' own sexual satisfaction; problems in sexual functioning uniquely predicted own and partner sexual satisfaction. Findings underscore the need to address sexual problems in relationship therapy.     

Sensual and sexual marital contentment in parents of small children--a follow-up study when the first child is four years old

This follow-up study explored parents' (N = 452) intimate relationships when their firstborn child was 6 months old and then 4 years later. The measurement used was a modified version of the Dyadic Adjustment Scale, DAS. The present results show that most parents responding were content sensually at 6 months postpartum in 2002 and 4 years later, in 2006. More parents had changed from being sensually content in 2002 to discontent in 2006, than the contrary, however, and the sexual contentment remained low. The average sexual frequency was low both at 6 months and at 4 years for both parents with and without additional children. Experiencing tiredness as a hindrance to having sex was perceived as a greater problem among those parents without additional children. Prospective regression analyses indicated that sexuality was significantly related to both sensual and sexual contentment 4 years later. Sexuality was also one of the most significant covariates in the cross-sectional regression analysis for sensual contentment. Since sexuality plays a central role in partner well-being, it may be an important target for helping parents with small children.     

The Father–Daughter Relationship and Intimacy in the Marriages of Daughters of Divorce

This article examines how being the daughter of divorce affects one's marital relationship. We examined this issue by studying the role of the father–daughter relationship in a sample of 90 women, all of whom were currently married and had parents who were divorced, with a Web-based survey. Specifically, this study investigated whether there was a relationship between the strength of these women's relationships with their fathers and the level of commitment, intimacy, and communication in their current marriages. This study produced evidence that the strength of the father–daughter relationship corresponded with current marital intimacy. However, the level of commitment and communication in their own marriages was not linked to the strength of their relationships with their fathers. This study has important implications regarding the work clinicians do to protect and strengthen the father–daughter relationship when working with families who have experienced parental divorce.     

Sexual addiction and marriage and family therapy: facilitating individual and relationship healing through couple therapy

In recent decades there has been an increase in literature regarding sexual addiction as well as a growing number of clients presenting in therapy with problems related to their sexual behaviors (including internet sexual addiction). This article (a) presents a synthesis of the research on the impact of sexual addiction on the addict, the partner, and the couple; (b) outlines the process of healing for each based on the research synthesis; and (c) discusses the role of marriage and family therapy in facilitating both individual and relationship healing from sexual addiction. Implications for future research in sexual addiction, generally, and in marriage and family therapy, specifically, are presented.