Implicit and explicit attitudes toward same-sex parenting among LGB and heterosexual people

Attitudes towards same-sex parenting (SSP) have become more positive in the last decades. However, factors like social desirability or internalized beliefs outside of awareness, can reduce the validity of self-report measures of prejudice. Implicit Association Tests (IATs) may help circumvent this problem. In this study, the relations among implicit and explicit attitudes toward SSP among lesbian, gay, bisexual (LGB) and heterosexual individuals were explored. 500 participants (62.59% women, 44.06% LGB, mean age= 28.62) were recruited through snow-ball sampling. Two IATs were administered to evaluate the associations between parenting types (i.e., IAT1: father-father vs. father-mother; IAT2: mother-mother vs. father-mother) and an evaluative dimension (i.e., good vs. bad). An explicit measure was used to evaluate the beliefs on SSP in terms of basic parenting skills and adjustment. For each measure, we conducted a separate mixed ANOVA with gender and sexual identity as a between-groups factor and the attitudes toward SSP types (i.e. father-father; mothermother) as a within-groups factor. Analyses of the between-groups differences showed a significant interaction effect of genderXsexual identity on explicit measures and a main effect of sexual identity on implicit measures: heterosexual women reported more positive attitudes compared to heterosexual men on explicit measures but not on implicit ones. Within-groups analyses showed that, regardless of sexual identity, women and men reported negative implicit attitudes toward two-father families. On the contrary, women were more positive and men more neutral on attitudes toward two-mother families. Explicit attitudes were very positive and weekly correlated with implicit measures. Investigation of implicit beliefs toward SSP among LGB people is of fundamental importance to understand the negative psychological consequences of living within a stigmatizing context. The internalization of the social stereotypes about inadequacy and moral inferiority of SSP may be a source of minority stress for some LGB people and prevent them from becoming parents.