Examining the relationship between same-sex parenting and attachment: a systematic review

Attachment is considered one of the key characteristics of the relationship between parents and their children. Research based on attachment theory, however, has rarely focused on lesbian mother and gay father families. Likewise, although research involving same-sex parent families has been active for several decades, the focus on attachment has been scarce. Nonetheless, attachment is an important factor that allows the anticipation and interpretation of important developmental outcomes, such as psychological and socioemotional adjustment. The present systematic review led to the identification of 10 studies focused on attachment in same-sex parent families through the consultation of the databases PsycInfo, Scopus, Web of Knowledge, and ERIC. The main results were analyzed for child age range, with 4 studies reporting results on children in early childhood, 4 on children in middle childhood, and 2 including adolescents and young adults. All studies described positive relationships between lesbian and gay parents and their children, characterized on average by secure attachment relationships. The comparison between scores from children with lesbian and gay parents and children with heterosexual parents often showed similar results for all types of family; some studies even reported higher attachment security scores for children in lesbian and gay parent families than their peers in heterosexual parent families. The results from some of the studies provided further information to the area of knowledge concerning the association between attachment and parental behaviors, such as parental sensitivity, warmth, and emotional involvement, showing that in gay father families, fathers’ sensitivity during the interactions with the child were significantly associated with child attachment security. Furthermore, data on children's psychological and socioemotional adjustment showed that parental sexual orientation was not associated with either children's emotional or behavioral symptoms, which resulted on average aligned with normative scores. Overall, the results encourage further investigation of the development and quality of attachment relationships in children with lesbian mothers and gay fathers.