Disclosure and child exploration of surrogacy origins in gay father families: Fathers' Adult Attachment Interview coherence of mind matters

ABSTRACT

Objective

The present study aimed at investigating whether gay fathers’ coherence of mind within the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) moderated the influence of parental disclosure on children’s exploration of their surrogacy origins during middle childhood and early adolescence.

Background

Once children of gay fathers are disclosed to about their surrogacy conception, they may start exploring the meanings and implications of their conception. Very little is known about the factors that may enhance such exploration in gay father families.

Method

A home-visit study was conducted with 60 White, cisgender, gay fathers and their 30 children born through gestational surrogacy, all residing in Italy and with medium to high socioeconomic status. At time 1, when children were aged 6–12 years (M = 8.31, SD = 1.68), fathers were rated for AAI coherence of mind and interviewed about their disclosure of the surrogacy origins to their child. At time 2, approximately 18 months later (M = 9.87, SD = 1.69), children were interviewed about their exploration of their surrogacy origins.

Results

In the context of more information disclosed about the child conception, only children whose fathers showed greater AAI coherence of mind explored their surrogacy origins in more depth.

Conclusion

Gay fathers’ ability to show an internally consistent, but not emotionally overwrought, state of mind regarding their own attachment experiences impacted the extent to which their children felt safe and legitimated in sharing their curiosity about their conception.

KEYWORDS:

• Gay father family
• surrogacy origins
• attachment coherence of mind
• Adult attachment interview
• disclosure

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Availability of data and material (data transparency)

Data are available upon reasonable request from the corresponding author.

Consent to participate

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

Author contributions

N.C. conception and design. Data collection was completed by N.C. and D.M. Data coding was conducted by N.C., D.M., and M.M. Analyses of data were conducted by N.C. and D.M. First draft was written by N.C. and D.M. Following drafts were reviewed and revised according to comments by L.B., M.M., A.M.S., R.B., V.L. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Declarations

This study was not preregistered. There was no prior dissemination of the ideas and data appearing in the manuscript.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by funding from Sapienza University of Rome (Sapienza Starting Grant for Research, grant number AR11715C77EB56B2; wave 1) and the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (Grants-in-Aid; wave 2) awarded to Nicola Carone. In her work, Marta Mirabella was supported by a research fellowship (Rep. 4/2020, Prot. N. 102 23 January 2020) funded by the Ministry of University and Research under the call Progetti di Rilevante Interesse Nazionale (PRIN) 2017 (project number 2017×NYB9C; Principal Investigator: Vittorio Lingiardi). However, the views and opinions expressed by the authors do not necessarily state or reflect those of Sapienza University of Rome, the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, and the Italian Ministry of University and Research.