"Is Childrearing by Lesbian-mothers Healthy?: Empirical Studies in Developmental Psychology and Disputes about the Children of Lesbian-mothers in America & Europe"
ARITA Keiko
last update: 20151224
Is Childrearing by Lesbian-mothers Healthy?: Empirical Studies in Developmental Psychology and Disputes about the Children of Lesbian-mothers in America & Europe
ARITA Keiko
Abstract:
In the last half of the 70's in America, lesbians who were married and had children
began to come out. When they waged custody battles against ex-husbands, they lost cases, one after
another, as a result of their sexuality. In 80's, courts began to employ a criteria of judgment named
'nexus test.' A nexus test prohibits to depriving lesbian-mothers of custody merely because they are
lesbians, as long as children are not harmed by them. So authorities of developmental psychology
were asked to examine the psychological adjustment of the children of lesbian-mothers. In the main
part of the paper, the author reviews these experimental studies. The author introduces studies for
examples, by Golombok,S., Patterson,C.J., and Brewaeys,A. Golombok established the Family and
Child Psychology Research Center in 1989 to conduct research on parent-child relations and the
psychological development of children raised in non-traditional families. She is famous for her
longitudinal follow-up study of the children of lesbian-mothers in the U.K. Patterson has been an
expert witness in the court cases of lesbian-mothers. Brewaeys is a professor of the Department of
Obstetrics and Reproductive Medicine, University Hospital, Leiden, The Netherlands. In the latter
part of the paper, the author poses questions about the general preconceptions within the
developmental psychology itself.
Key Words: Lesbian-mother, Nontraditional rearing, Artificial insemination, Golombok,S., Patterson,C.J.,
REV: 20151224