Myth That More Boys in a Family Make Homosexuals
BOYHOOD EFFEMINANCY AND Afterwards HOMOSEXUALITY
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December 16, 1986
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MOST young boys who persistently human activity like girls abound upwardly to exist homosexuals or bisexuals, a fifteen-year report of ''sissy boys'' has shown. Co-ordinate to the findings, neither therapy designed to discourage the extremely feminine behavior nor ideal kid rearing could guarantee that the boys would develop equally heterosexuals, although parental discouragement of the boys' girlish behavior tended to result in a more heterosexual orientation.
3-fourths of 44 extremely feminine boys followed from early childhood to boyhood or young machismo matured every bit homosexuals or bisexuals, every bit against simply i bisexual among a comparing grouping of more than typically masculine boys.
In many cases parents either overtly or subtly encouraged the feminine behavior. Merely when parents actively discouraged it and took other steps to enhance a male cocky-concept, homosexual tendencies of the feminine boys were lessened, although not necessarily reversed. Neither did professional person counseling divert a trend toward homosexuality, although it resulted in more conventional masculine behavior and enhanced the boys' social and pyschological aligning and comfort with beingness male.
The report was conducted by Dr. Richard Greenish, a noted sex researcher who is professor of psychiatry at the University of California, Los Angeles and director of its Program in Psychiatry, Law and Human Sexuality. Details of the findings and implications are described in Dr. Green's new book, ''The 'Sissy Male child Syndrome' and the Development of Homosexuality,'' to be published in February by Yale University Printing.
Although the written report examined extreme cases of boyhood effeminacy, Dr. Greenish believes the findings may take relevance to bottom degrees of feminine behavior in boys. Such boys, who may, for case, be athletically inept or prefer music to cars and trucks, often accept difficulty making friends with other boys and identifying with typically male activities. Dr. Greenish suggested that to help the boys call back of themselves as male, parents might assist them in finding male child friends who are similarly unaggressive and that the fathers might share in activities the boys bask, such every bit going to the zoo or a concert, rather than insist on taking the boys to athletic events. Counseling to guide such parents and enhance the kid's masculine self-image may also be helpful, Dr. Green said.
The study did not examine the development of homosexuality in boys whose childhoods are typically masculine. About one-third of homosexual men recall such masculine boyhoods. Nor does the report suggest that all boys with the sissy-boy syndrome are destined for homosexuality. Indeed, one-fourth of the extremely feminine boys followed to maturity developed equally heterosexuals.
Co-ordinate to Dr. Light-green and other experts familiar with his study, the findings indicate that some children may have an inborn ''receptivity'' to environmental factors that encourage a homosexual orientation. Whether such a predisposition is genetic or the result of prenatal factors, or both, is not known. Contempo research in animals suggests that prenatal hormonal influences tin can interfere with programming the brain of the male fetus and result in the birth of males that act like females.
The study supports a contempo Kinsey Found survey of i,500 adults that singled out ''gender nonconformity'' in childhood as the most important predictor of homosexuality. Dr. Alan Bell of Indiana Academy, a manager of the Kinsey study, said he was pleased and not surprised that the findings of Dr. Greenish's prospective report corresponded with the retrospective Kinsey data.
''The pendulum is swinging dorsum to biology,'' Dr. Bong remarked. ''Obviously in that location is a very important physiological component that plays a big part in determining one'south sexual identity.''
Equally take other contempo investigations, including the Kinsey study, the new enquiry challenges long-held psychoanalytic beliefs that ascendant, overprotecting mothers and ineffectual fathers are principal ''causes'' of a son's homosexuality.
Rather, the study suggests that some boys are born with an indifference to rough-and-tumble play and other typical adolescence interests and that this indifference alienates and isolates them from their male person peers and oftentimes from their fathers as well. Dr. Green believes that such boys may grow up ''starved'' for male affection, which prompts them to seek dear from men in adolescence and adulthood. To Dr. Bong, however, a sense of difference and social altitude from males during childhood is what leads to the romantic and erotic allure to other males. Tomboys Now Being Studied
Dr. Richard Isay, a New York psychoanalyst whose practice is largely homosexual men, said: ''I would agree with Dr. Green. I too see no back up for the notion that bounden mothers produce homosexual sons, nor do I see any consistent pattern for absent fathers that I don't also see among heterosexual men in analysis.'' Dr. Isay, who is affiliated with Columbia Psychoanalytic Constitute and New York-Cornell Medical School, suggested that the common depiction among homosexual men of an absent-minded, distant father is in fact a defense confronting an underlying erotic attachment to their fathers.
Dr. Green, who is now studying the development of tomboy girls, said the issue for girls who act like boys is very different. ''There are far fewer sissy boys than tomboy girls, but many more homosexual and transsexual men than women,'' he said.
Asked to comment on Dr. Green'due south findings, Dr. Judd Marmor, professor emeritus of psychiatry at the University of Southern California and the University of California at Los Angeles, said that they ''are some other indication at that place is a biological chemical element involved in the genesis of homosexuality, at least for those homosexuals with effeminate qualities.''
He added: ''Some children really feel different from earliest childhood; they are born without the aggressive masculinity other boys take. This is not something created by an overprotective mother or an absent or ineffectual begetter.''
Although the written report involved a relatively pocket-size number of boys, Dr. Marmor, who is a past president of the American Psychiatric Association and an dominance on homosexuality, chosen the research ''most important'' in what it revealed about the evolution of sexual orientation. ''Society tends to treat male homosexuals equally if they had a choice nearly their sexual orientation, when in fact they have no more than choice well-nigh how they develop than heterosexuals do,'' he said. 'Not Answer to All Homosexuality'
An innate sissiness is ''non the answer to all homosexuality,'' Dr. Marmor said, ''but it is a cistron that plays a role in a substantial number of male homosexuals.'' He added that homosexuality could also develop from a seriously distorted family environment simply that ''information technology is much harder to develop that way, without a biological predisposition.''
Boys who participated in Dr. Green's written report were get-go examined in early babyhood, when their parents became concerned most the boys' persistent feminine behaviors and dislike of activities boys usually like. Many of the boys also repeatedly said they wanted to exist girls. At the starting time, Dr. Green idea he was examining the origins of male transsexuals -boys who abound upwards thinking they are girls trapped in male bodies and who may later seek sexual activity-change surgery. However, only ane of the feminine boys became a transsexual.
In an interview, Dr. Light-green pointed out that the boys he studied were notably different from other children. While many, if not most, young children - boys as well as girls - occasionally dress upwards in their mothers' clothes, put on makeup or jewelry, play with dolls or assume the part of the opposite sexual practice in fantasy play, the boys in Dr. Green's report did then most exclusively. They spurned typical boy games, rough-housing and sports and instead would play with Barbie dolls for hours, oft don female clothing and nearly always presume a female office when playing firm. Many followed their mothers around the business firm, mimicking the mothers' activities.
The boys and their parents were interviewed every few years, and some were seen several times a yr in therapeutic counseling aimed at intercepting the boys' feminine tendencies and encouraging more ''gender-appropriate'' activities. Parental Actions Cited
Although Dr. Green found no prove that the parents ''created'' feminine boys (many, in fact, had other sons who were ordinarily masculine), sure parental attitudes and actions were correlated with a stronger homosexual orientation. 1 of the primeval influences was the prenatal want on the part of either parent, and the begetter in particular, that the child be a girl. Afterwards the boy was born, the parents often considered their son to be an especially beautiful babe. Fifty-fifty strangers who admired the baby tended to make comments like ''what a pretty little daughter.''
Ane of the well-nigh important factors related to a more homosexual orientation in adolescence and adulthood was how parents responded to the boys when they dressed upwardly as girls and pretended to be girls. Many of the parents, Dr. Greenish said, thought it was cute and directly or indirectly encouraged the cross-gender behavior. For case, photographs of the boys dressed as girls were plant in many family albums of feminine boys just in none of the albums of the comparison group of masculine boys.
No relationship was found between after homosexuality and the amount of time a boy spent with his female parent. In fact, many of the feminine boys spent less time with their mothers than did the masculine boys. Nor was in that location whatever link to a mother-dominated household.
Nevertheless, less fourth dimension shared betwixt father and young son was an important factor. In the outset year of life, the fathers tended to spend somewhat less time with their effeminate sons than did the fathers of masculine boys. During the next four years, however, the differences increased. By the time the boys were 3 to 5 years old, fathers of feminine boys were spending significantly less fourth dimension with their sons than were fathers of the masculine boys. Child 'Impinges on Parents'
This does not mean, withal, that the father rejected the son and that this rejection turned the boy into a sissy. Rather, Dr. Light-green suggested that the boys' feminine behaviors and rejection of male activities contributed to the fathers' indifference. ''It's non just a question of how parents impinge on a kid; the kid also impinges on the parents,'' he explained.
In an before developmental study of 50 effeminate boys seen at a children's psychiatric dispensary in Greenwich, Conn., Dr. Bernard Zuger, a psychiatrist, reported that the boys' ''closeness to the female parent and distance from the father spring from their ain needs.'' He suggested that parents need not feel guilty if their effeminate sons plow out to be homosexual.
Another factor that interfered with the father-son human relationship in Dr. Green'south study was that the feminine boys were likely to be sick more frequently and more seriously than the masculine boys. In well-nigh cases, it was the boys' mothers who cared for them when they were sick, especially if a lot of fourth dimension was spent in hospitals. This also encouraged a more protective parental attitude toward the feminine male child.
The civilization may besides play a role, Dr. Greenish said, though its furnishings are harder to measure. ''If the culture were less condemning of cross-gender behavior, social stigmatization would be less and possibly these boys could socialize more than with other boys,'' he remarked. ''Certainly that is the case with tomboys, who are treated by society every bit normal girls.'' Difference of Twins
On the other hand, he cited studies in several unlike cultures past Dr. Frederick Whitam, sociologist at Arizona State Academy in Tempe, who found that homosexuals in these cultures were more than likely to remember cross-gender behavior in childhood than were heterosexuals. Dr. Marmor pointed out that in many cultures, including certain American Indian tribes, less ambitious boys are recognized by their elders and are given institutionalized roles, usually as a priest.
Rather than attributing homosexuality to cultural, parental or genetic factors, Dr. Dark-green sees an interaction of the three, equally evidenced in particular past a pair of identical twins in his written report. One male child was clearly feminine and the other twin typically masculine. The feminine male child was sick a lot and had niggling to do with his father, whereas the masculine twin had a more typical relationship with his begetter. As adults, both boys were bisexual, but the feminine twin was far more homosexual than his brother.
''The twins are the metaphor for this written report,'' Dr. Green said. ''They are similar but non the same. The degree to which they are not the aforementioned can exist explained by the early on feminine behavior of one, not by genetics.''
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