Gay Father Families

该研究将探讨英国、法国和荷兰由同性恋父亲抚养的婴儿的早期社会经历和发展。在婴儿四个月大时，将观察婴儿和父母的互动，同时采访父母。当婴儿12个月大时，他们对父母的依恋质量将使用安斯沃思的陌生情境程序进行评估。这些父亲的父母行为和婴儿与父母之间形成的关系的质量将与那些由女同性恋和异性恋夫妇抚养的婴儿进行比较。所有的婴儿都将通过生殖技术受孕，包括供体授精和代孕，以确保可比性。此外，本研究还将探讨在婴儿四个月大时，父母行为和社会环境指数的个体差异在多大程度上预测了一岁时婴儿-父母依恋的质量。这项研究将是第一个调查那些孩子从出生起就由父亲抚养的家庭。它将使我们能够确定婴儿是否“需要”女性参与他们的早期护理和情感生活，正如许多人仍然相信的那样;以及不仅由两名男性抚养，而且由两名具有同性取向的女性抚养的婴儿是否与由异性恋父母或两名具有同性取向的女性抚养的婴儿一样有可能正常发育。将在每个国家招募足够大的样本，以便探索法律的和文化差异对父母行为和婴儿适应的影响程度。

The study will explore the early social experiences and development of infants raised from birth by gay fathers inthe UK, France, and The Netherlands. Infants and parents will be observed interacting when the infants are fourmonths old, and the parents will be interviewed at the same time. When the infants are 12 months old, thequality of their attachments to their parents will be assessed using Ainsworth's Strange Situation procedure. Theparental behaviour of these fathers and the quality of the relationships formed between the infants and theirparents will be compared with those of infants being raised by lesbian and heterosexual couples. All infants willbe conceived using reproductive technologies, including donor insemination and surrogacy, to ensurecomparability. In addition, the study will explore the extent to which the quality of infant-parent attachment atone-year is predicted by individual differences in the parents' behaviour and indices of their social circumstanceswhen the infants are four months old. The study will be the first to examine families where children are raised ingay father families from birth. It will allow us to determine whether infants 'need' women to be involved in theirearly care and emotional lives, as many still believe; and whether infants raised not only by two men, but twomen with same-sex orientation, are as likely to develop normally as those raised from birth by heterosexualparents or by two women with same-sex orientation. Sufficiently large samples will be recruited in each countryto allow exploration of the extent to which legal and cultural differences affect parental behaviour and infantadjustment.