Social-emotional functioning in planned lesbian families: does biological versus non-biological mother status matter? An Italian pilot study

ABSTRACT

To date, few studies have investigated the social-emotional functioning of planned lesbian families, wherein only one parent is the biological mother of the child. We examined if being a biological versus non-biological mother plays a role in planned lesbian couple functioning and mother-infant play interactions. The present study analyzes the attachment state of mind, couple alliance, parenting stress, and emotional availability in a sample of 40 mothers (20 biological and 20 non-biological). The results showed that mothers’ life-long attachment experiences and related mental states of mind, rather than biological relatedness between the parent and child, matter in a mother and child’s emotional involvement in parent-child interaction. Furthermore, the results confirmed the different impact of the perceived quality of the couple alliance on biological and non-biological mothers. The findings obtained elucidated what counts in this new family typology, and constitute a heuristic solicitation for future studies to better understand the key factors and mechanisms implied in social-emotional functioning.

KEYWORDS:

• Lesbian families
• biological relatedness
• AAI
• couple alliance
• social-emotional functioning

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank all families who kindly agreed to participate. We are grateful to Antonio Dellagiulia and Francesca Lionetti for their collaboration in data coding and collection.