Parent Child Relationships

2.2 Parent-child Relationship

Parent–child relationship quality is a measure of either the child or parent’s perception of the quality of their relationship (Crowl et al., 2008). The importance of the quality of parent-child relationship lies in the ability of children to form healthy and secure relationships. As young as the age of 2, children develop different attachment styles to their parents as demonstrated in Ainsworth’s experiment called Strange Situation (Kalat, 2015). Children with secure attachments tend to form trusting and stable relationships in the future while those with insecure attachments are mostly to develop into suspicious adults who lack trust in their relationships. As of present, the majority of literature has investigated

Children’s gender role behaviour and gender identity are often regarded as separate constructs, with gender role behaviour defined as the extent to which individuals adhere to their respective culturally appropriate masculine and feminine behaviours, and gender identity defined as an individual’s sense of being male or female (Anderssen, Amlie & Ytteroy, 2002). Through assessments such as Block’s Toy Preference Test or the Draw-a-Person test, structured interviews regarding toy, game, and peer preferences, tests such as the Human Figure Drawing and Draw-a-Person test, and questionnaires like the Personal Attribute Questionnaire, results from the earliest studies refuted the initial argument that gay and lesbian parents directly affected their children’s gender development, while opponents maintained that children would still develop alternative attitudes about gender through the indirect effect of their gay or lesbian parent’s homosexuality. Having a lesbian or gay parent does not seem to influence gender role development, and the large majority of sons and daughters of lesbian or gay parents grow up to identify as heterosexual (Tasker,2015). There were no differences in gender-typed behaviour between the children of lesbian parents and the children of heterosexual parents for either boys or girls (Golombok et al., 2003). Children with lesbian or heterosexual parents were not significantly different

Therefore, psychological adjustment encompasses not only the child’s overt displays of behaviour but also the quality of peer relationships and degree of stigmatization experienced by children as well as their inner psychological health, for example, self-esteem and overall mental health (Crowl et al., 2008). Reservations concerning the well-being of children of lesbian or gay parents arise because of the worry that children will be exposed to prejudice because of their family constellation and that this will make them more vulnerable to emotional distress and low self-esteem (Tasker, 2005). Generally, the findings have shown that psychological adjustment does not differ in children raised by same-sex or heterosexual parents. For example, examination of the psychosocial adjustment of children conceived via donor insemination by lesbian and heterosexual mothers demonstrated that children were developing in normal fashion, and that their adjustment was unrelated to their parent’s orientation. Rather, the parent’s self- reported relationship satisfaction was significantly correlated with the child’s well-being (Chan, Raboy & Patterson, 1998). Data from another study demonstrated that children raised by lesbian and gay parents showed a similar level of emotion regulation and psychological well-being than children raised by