Parenting Desire and Minority Stress in Lesbians and Gay Men: A Mediation Framework

Abstract

Despite the rapid increase in lesbian and gay (LG) people who desire and decide to become parents, LG childless individuals may encounter serious obstacles in the parenthood process, such as minority stress. Notwithstanding, the psychological processes by which prejudice events might affect the desire to become parents are still understudied. As an extension of the minority stress theory, the psychological mediation framework sheds light on these psychological processes, as it encompasses a more clinical view of stress. Within this framework, the current study aimed at assessing the role of prejudice events in affecting parenting desire in 290 childless Italian LG individuals (120 lesbians and 170 gay men), as well as the role of internalized heterosexism and sexual orientation concealment in mediating the relationship between prejudice events and parenting desire. The results suggest that only in lesbians prejudice events were negatively associated with parenting desire, and that sexual orientation concealment and internalized heterosexism were also negatively associated with parenting desire. Furthermore, sexual orientation concealment, and not internalized heterosexism, mediated the relationship between prejudice events and parenting desire in lesbians, but not gay men. The findings have important implications for clinical practice.

Heterosexist microaggressions, student academic experience and perception of campus climate: Findings from an Italian higher education context

“…Overall, previous studies have found that Italian sexual minority people frequently face several heterosexist prejudices in their daily life [31]. Research about negative attitudes toward homosexuality in Italy, although limited, supports the hypothesis that Italian people are quite ambivalent toward homosexuality [32,33].…”

Minority Stress and Mental Health in Italian Bisexual People

“…Previous studies have applied MST and PMF to bisexual populations (Dyar et al 2014;Katz-Wise et al 2017;Brewster et al 2013), confirming the validity of these frameworks in understanding the relationships between stress, stigma, and mental health. However, while Italian lesbian, gay (LG) (e.g., Amodeo et al 2018b;Baiocco et al 2010;Lingiardi et al 2012;Scandurra et al 2017b) and transgender (e.g., Amodeo et al 2018a;Scandurra et al 2017aScandurra et al , 2018aScandurra et al , 2019dScandurra et al , 2020 populations have been widely investigated in previous research, very few Italian studies to date have been conducted on bisexual people and, to our knowledge, no Italian studies have thoroughly tested the MST in this population. Thus, within MST and PMF, the current study aimed at exploring the effects of anti-bisexual prejudice on psychological distress, assessing the mediating role of proximal stressors and the moderating role of resilience.…”

Attitudes of Italian Group Toward Homosexuality and Same-Sex Parenting

“…ATLG-R consists of 10 items, five of which measure attitudes toward gays (ATG), while the other five measure attitudes toward lesbians (ATL). All items are rated on a 5-point Likert scale (from "totally agree" [1] to "totally disagree" [5]). A low rating on the ATLG-R scale connotes a low prevalence of negative attitudes.…”

“…The instrument consisted of 15 items. All items were rated on a five-point scale (from "totally agree" [5] to "totally disagree" [1]). The score of each subscale consisted of child development with homosexual parents (DE, items 1-6), legislative issues (LAP, items 7-10) and parenting skills of homosexual couples (AP, items [11][12][13][14][15].…”

“…Homophobic prejudice concern an higher numbers of gay and lesbians and is possible to find it in many aspects of social life, including political asylum research, access to health care, and the context of sports and education. To what we know only a small number of homophobic aggressions is denounced due to the prejudice and to the stigmatization (Rollè, Brustia, & Caldarera, 2014;Amodeo et al 2018). The attempt to study the homophobic prejudice gives the opportunity to increase the social knowledge on this field and, consequently, increasing the global well-being reducing the minority stress -of lesbian and gay people -and self-perceived stigma.…”