Ivett Szalma

Homophobia and same‐sex partnership legislation in Europe

Purpose – This paper seeks to answer the practical question whether the institutionalisation level of same‐sex relationships can affect the social acceptance of lesbian women and gay men in Europe, and highlight some of the factors that can potentially determine the incidence of homophobia in 26 European countries.Design/methodology/approach – The study contributes to the literature on acceptance of lesbian women and gay men in Europe by using the European Social Survey dataset, focusing especially on a key variable measuring the agreement level with the statement that gay men and lesbians should be free to live their own life as they wish. For data analyses, explanatory models were constructed by applying multilevel mixed‐effects linear regression.Findings – The study presented empirically tested arguments that the introduction of same‐sex partnership legislation can lead to a decrease of anti‐gay/lesbian attitudes, as has happened in the European countries examined in this study.Research limitations/imp...

Social Attitudes Toward Adoption by Same-Sex Couples in Europe

By examining social attitudes on same-sex adoption in 28 European countries, we highlighted individual and country-level factors that can determine the level of social acceptance or rejection of this specific kind of adoption. This article contributes to the literature on social acceptance of lesbian women, gay men, and their adoption practices in Europe and directs attention to several previously under-researched aspects of social attitudes on same-sex parenting rights. The empirical base of this study was the fourth round of the European Values Study, conducted in 2008–2010. Using ordered logistic regressions, we examined the impact of several individual and country-level characteristics on the agreement level with the statement that “Homosexual couples should be able to adopt children.” We found strong relationships between social attitudes towards adoption by same-sex couples and the existence of legislation permitting same-sex adoption practices at the country-level, as well as some individual attitudes, including those related to traditional family formation practices, “justification of homosexuality,” and (non-) preference for homosexual neighbors. Our findings indicate a shift within the potential interpretational contexts of adoption by same-sex couples from a narrow sexuality-based framework to a different and possibly much wider context of family and parenting practices.

Is There Voluntary Childlessness At All in Hungary

Abstract We chose to analyse Hungarian childlessness in order to map whether there is any voluntary childlessness at all in a society which is characterised by strong traditional family values and the widely accepted social norm that everyone should become a parent. To answer to this question, we applied both quantitative and qualitative methods. First, we analysed the first three waves of the Hungarian panel survey ‘Turning Points of the Life Course’ conducted in 2001, 2004 and 2008. The focus is on men and women who were childless in 2001 and were still childless in 2008. To have a better understanding of the background of the quantitative results, we have also analysed 55 life-history interviews conducted with heterosexual men and women, who were recruited by using chain-referral sampling. According to the qualitative findings the categorisation of childless people is quite fluid. For example, postponers became definitely childless while some originally voluntarily childless respondents became parents. However, the qualitative analysis allowed us to understand the mechanism behind this. In addition, using mixed methods also highlighted some inconsistencies between the qualitative and quantitative results.