Comparisons of children’s perceptions of lesbian mothers to children’s perceptions of heterosexual parents are limited. To investigate whether children’s descriptions of their parents vary by family type (lesbian versus heterosexual) and biological relatedness, we interviewed 29 Finnish children raised by lesbian mothers or heterosexual parents. Parents also completed surveys about division of childcare responsibilities and on six parenting dimensions. We found no systematic differences between the parent types. A clustering of parents based on the descriptions indicated neither family type, parent gender, or biological relatedness systematically explained the variation in children’s descriptions of parents. Implications of our findings are discussed.
Children's descriptions of parents
