Lesbian mothers with planned families: Internalized homophobia and social support

This study compared the perceived availability of social support and degree of internalized homophobia of two groups of demographically similar lesbians; lesbians with planned families and the childless lesbians. Results suggest that lesbians with planned families perceive significantly less availability of social support from friends overall, and from lesbians specifically, and perceive more availability of social support from their families-of-origin than childless lesbians. Lesbians with planned families obtained significantly lower scores on the NHAI full-scale and NHAI disclosure subscale which in turn indicates that they had higher internalized homophobia than childless lesbians specific to issues of disclosure. There were no significant differences between the groups on the NHAI self or NHAI others subscales. Results suggest that lesbians with planned families disclosed their sexual orientation less often than childless lesbians. The findings of this study raise the question of whether non-disclosure of sexual orientation is a valid measure of internalized homophobia for lesbians with planned families. It may be that for lesbians with planned families, selective disclosure is an adaptive response in a homophobic society, rather than an indication of high internalized homophobia. This study suggests that other measures of internalized homophobia weighted less heavily toward disclosure, constructed with and validated on a sample of lesbian mothers might better measure the construct of internalized homophobia for this population.