Modern Prejudice and Same-Sex Parenting: Shifting Judgments in Positive and Negative Parenting Situations

Abstract

The current study compares the effects of traditional and modern antihomosexual prejudice on evaluations of parenting practices of same-sex and opposite-sex couples. Undergraduate university student participants (N = 436) completed measures of traditional and modern antihomosexual prejudice and responded to a vignette describing a restaurant scene in which parents react to their child's undesirable behavior. The parents’ sexual orientation and the quality of their parenting (positive or negative quality) were randomly varied. It was predicted that participants who score higher in modern prejudice would rate the negative parenting behaviors of same-sex parents more negatively than similar behaviors in opposite-sex parents. It was also predicted that this modern prejudice effect would be most pronounced for male participants. Both hypotheses were supported.

KEYWORDS:

• attitudes
• heterosexism
• modern prejudice
• same-sex parenting
• vignettes

Acknowledgments

This research was supported in part by the Interdisciplinary Research Group for the Study of Sexuality at Binghamton University, State University of New York. J.R.G. is supported in part by National Institutes of Health NICHD grant T32HD049336.