Same-sex parent families in Italy: Validation of the Coparenting Scale-Revised for lesbian mothers and gay fathers

Even though Italy is still struggling to establish equal rights and access to assisted reproduction techniques for sexual minorities, an increasing number of lesbian women and gay men are now becoming parents. There are only a few studies that have evaluated coparenting in same-sex couples. However, these addressed adoptive couples and not the lesbian and gay parent families through donor insemination or surrogacy, respectively. This study examined the psychometric properties of the Coparenting Scale-Revised and its relationship with dyadic adjustment, discipline management, and internalized sexual stigma in Italian same-sex-planned families. The factor structure showed a satisfactory internal consistency and criterion validity with correlates of coparenting behaviours. While Family Integrity factor was confirmed, Disparagement and Reprimand dimensions collapsed into Conflict factor. Non-genetic parents showed lower levels of conflict than genetic parents. Most importantly, coparenting emerged as a significant function not shaped by gender, but influenced by parental status and internalized sexual stigma.     

生育健康的伦理学基础:个人本位还是社会本位

随着“以妇女为中心”生育健康概念的提出,女性的健康与他们在社会中享有权利的关系正引起人们的关注。然而,如何实现女性有生育过程中的主体地位,解决她们所面临的与社会选择的矛盾,在很大程度上取决于特有的社会伦理背景以及所遵循的价值原则。由于中国与西方的社会伦理发展轨迹的差异,构建生育健康的伦理框架和强调女性生育自主权的努力方向也应异于西方。     

Negotiating Responsibility: Case Studies of Reproductive Decision-Making and Prenatal Genetic Testing in Families Facing Huntington Disease

Three case studies are presented to further our understanding of how responsibility is negotiated in families when making decisions about genetic risk. These draw on a model of responsibility generated in a study of reproductive decision-making in families facing Huntington disease (HD) to illustrate the impact of prenatal testing on this process. This involves analyzing: how people present themselves as acting responsibly whether or not they utilize genetic testing; who they feel responsible to in their family and elsewhere; the impact that testing has on these relationships; and, how negotiating responsibility changes over time with repeated use of prenatal testing, changing risk status and maturational changes. Two key findings are: how decision-making is perceived can become as important as what is decided; and, how responsibility is negotiated depends on which of these relationships are prioritized. Implications of the findings for clinical practice are noted and suggestions made for further applications of the model.