Is Your Baby Gay? What If You Could Know? What If You Could Do Somethg About It? | Opn News

Contents:

• IS YOUR CHILD GAY?
• IS YOUR BABY GAY? WHAT IF YOU COULD KNOW? WHAT IF YOU COULD DO SOMETHG ABOUT IT?
• BABY GAY
• "IS THIS YOUR BABY?": GAY FATHERED FAI' EXPERIENC NAVIGATG HETERONORMATIVY THE UNED STAT
• FIRST PERSON: ‘IS YOUR BABY GAY?’— SETTG THE RERD STRAIGHT
• GAY BABY
• ARE WE BORN GAY?

IS YOUR CHILD GAY?

Both lbians and gay men often have a history of cross-sex-typed behavrs: ltle boys beg fatuated wh their mother's makp k; ltle girls enamored of field hockey or profsnal wrtlg. Prehomosexual boys tend to be more attracted to solary sports such as swimmg, cyclg and tennis than they are to rougher ntact sports such as football and soccer.

IS YOUR BABY GAY? WHAT IF YOU COULD KNOW? WHAT IF YOU COULD DO SOMETHG ABOUT IT?

Children who show pronounced sex-atypil behavrs may have more of a geic loadg to their homosexualy.

BABY GAY

The behavral patterns are feared, loathed and often spoken of directly as harbgers of adult homosexualy. It is only relatively recently, however, that velopmental scientists have nducted ntrolled studi to intify the earlit and most reliable signs of adult homosexualy.

In lookg refully at the childhoods of gay adults, rearchers are fdg an trigug set of behavral ditors that homosexuals seem to have mon. Curly enough, the age-old homophobic fears of many parents reflect some genue predictive currency. Zucker, both psychologists, published a semal paper on childhood markers of homosexualy 1995.

"IS THIS YOUR BABY?": GAY FATHERED FAI' EXPERIENC NAVIGATG HETERONORMATIVY THE UNED STAT

So on the basis of some earlier, shakier rearch, along wh a good dose of mon sense, Bailey and Zucker hypothized that homosexuals would show an verted pattern of sex-typed childhood behavrs—ltle boys preferrg girls as playmat and beg fatuated wh their mother's makp k; ltle girls strangely enamored of field hockey or profsnal wrtlg—that sort of thg.

Given that a small proportn of the populatn is homosexual, prospective studi require a large number of children. Although only 12 percent of the women grew up to be genr dysphoric (the unfortable sense that your blogil sex do not match your genr), the odds of the women reportg a bisexual or homosexual orientatn were up to 23 tim higher than would occur a general sample of young women.

FIRST PERSON: ‘IS YOUR BABY GAY?’— SETTG THE RERD STRAIGHT

And the same holds for gay men. Bailey and Zucker, who nducted a retrospective study which adults answered qutns about their past, revealed that 89 percent of randomly sampled gay men relled cross-sex-typed childhood behavrs exceedg the heterosexual median.

GAY BABY

The thors found that “those targets who, as adults, intified themselv as homosexual were judged to be genr nonnformg as children.

ARE WE BORN GAY?

There is also evince of a “dosage effect”: the more genr-nonnformg characteristics there are childhood, the more likely is that a homosexual or bisexual orientatn will be prent adulthood. Not all ltle boys who like to wear drs grow up to be gay, nor do all ltle girls who spise drs bee lbians. I took to middle school wrtlg as a rather scrawny 80-pound eighth grar, and so dog, ironilly beme all too nsc of my homosexual orientatn.