Parent-child relationships and sexual identity in male and female homosexuals and heterosexuals.

This article includes two studies of reported parent-child relations and sexual identity : one of a population of 84 white, well-educated female homosexuals and their 94 matched heterosexual controls and the other of a group of 127 similarly welleducated, white male homosexuals and their 123 heterosexual matched controls. Female homosexuals reported having had more negative relations with their fathers in childhood that female heterosexuals, although a wide variety of parent-daughter relations was reported by both groups. The female homosexuals were neither mother nor father identified, but they were more distant from both parents and other people than their controls. The female homosexuals also reported a more masculine childhood than the heterosexuals, and they were more masculine on an objective measure of masculinity-femininity. Compared with their controls, the male homosexuals reported more close-binding, intimate mothers and hostile, detached fathers than the heterosexual controls. As with the two female groups, a wide variety of parentson relations was reported. Homosexual males were not more mother identified than their controls, but, like the female group, they were more distant from parents and other people than the matched controls. Male homosexuals reported more feminine childhoods, and they were less masculine than controls on a masculinity-femininity test.