Rachel G. Riskind

Parenting intentions and desires among childless lesbian, gay, and heterosexual individuals.

Parenthood is one of the most universal and highly valued experiences of American adults. However, lesbian and gay adults in the United States are much less likely than heterosexual adults to be parents. Our goal was to explore the reasons why this is the case. Using nationally representative data from the 2002 National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG), we studied parenting intentions, desires, and attitudes of childless lesbian, gay, and heterosexual individuals 15 to 44 years of age. We found that gay men and lesbian women were less likely than matched heterosexual peers to express desire for parenthood. Moreover, gay men who expressed desire to become parents were less likely than heterosexual men to express the intention to become parents; this was not true for women. Despite being less likely to express parenting desires, gay and lesbian participants endorsed the value of parenthood just as strongly as did heterosexual participants. By exploring the psychology of family formation as a function of sexual orientation, these results inform ongoing debates about sexual orientation and parenthood.

To Be a Parent: Issues in Family Formation among Gay and Lesbian Adults

For many years, parenthood was considered to be the exclusive prerogative of heterosexual people. Today, gay men and lesbian women remain less likely than their heterosexual peers to have children, but increasing numbers of openly gay and lesbian adults are becoming parents. In this essay, we review social science research on the numbers of openly gay and lesbian parents, the ways in which their pathways to parenthood may be changing, and the extent to which childless gay and lesbian adolescents and young adults expect to become parents. We have much to learn about supports for and barriers to family formation as well as the impact of decisions about family formation among gay and lesbian populations. Directions for future research on sexual orientation and family formation are discussed.

Sexual orientation and future parenthood in a 2011–2013 nationally representative United States sample.

Previous researchers have found evidence for differences in parenting goals between lesbian and gay people and their heterosexual peers. However, no previous research has quantified the parenting goals of bisexual people or evaluated parenting goals as a function of sexual partner gender. In addition, political and social climates for sexual minority people had improved rapidly since the last representative data on lesbian and gay peoples’ plans for parenthood were collected. We analyzed data from 3,941 childless lesbian, gay, bisexual, and heterosexual participants from the 2011–2013 National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG; United States Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics, 2014), a nationally representative sample of United States residents aged 15 to 44 years. We found that statistically significant, within-gender sexual orientation differences in parenting plans persist, despite social and legal changes. Consistent with hypotheses, bisexual men’s parenting desires and intentions were similar to those of their heterosexual male peers and different from those of their gay male peers, while bisexual women’s reports were more mixed. Also consistent with hypotheses, the gender of the most recent sexual partner was a strong predictor of parenting goals. We discuss implications for mental and reproductive health-care providers, attorneys, social workers, and others who interact with sexual minority adults.

Haven’t I seen you before? Straight men who are insecure of their masculinity remember gender-atypical faces

To navigate a busy interpersonal landscape, people direct perceptual resources in a motivated fashion that maximizes goals and minimizes threats. While adaptive, these heuristics can also lead to noteworthy biases, including a well-documented memory advantage for ingroup members. Recent research has extended these findings to reveal other motivational biases that emerge early in social perception. When perceivers feel threatened, for example, they are vigilant to outgroup members. Although compelling, evidence for this vigilance-threat hypothesis is currently limited to feelings of physical threat and memory for racial outgroups. Here, we extended these findings to a different form of threat—gender identity threat. Four studies documented that straight men who feel insecure about their masculinity have heightened recognition of gender-atypical faces. We therefore argue that gender identity concerns play an important role in social vision, arousing perceptual biases that have implications for how men attend to and remember others in their social environments.