Engelsk titel: Finnish children’s descriptions of lesbian and heterosexual parents
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Författare:
Martelin, Heidi
;
Li, Xuan
;
Antfolk, Jan
Email: jantfolk@abo.fi
Språk: Eng
Antal referenser: 60
Dokumenttyp:
Artikel
;
Jämförande studie
UI-nummer: 20020074
Sammanfattning
Comparisons of children's perceptions of lesbian mothers to children's perceptions of heterosexual parents are limited. To investigate whether children's descriptions of their parents vary by family type (lesbian versus heterosexual) and biological relatedness, we interviewed 29 Finnish children raised by lesbian mothers or heterosexual parents. Parents also completed surveys about division of childcare responsibilities and six parenting dimensions. We found no systematic differences between the parent types. A clustering of parents based on the descriptions indicated neither family type, parent gender, or biological relatedness systematically explained the variation in children’s descriptions of parents. Implications of our findings are discussed. Contrary to earlier findings, perceptions were similar across parent types, suggesting that perceptions might be shaped primarily by parents’ actual behavior and not by social categories such as gender and relatedness.