Mothers’ personal traits
In keeping with the usual view that prehomosexual females are likely to have relatively unfavorable relationships with their mothers, it is frequently assumed that such girls tend to have negative perceptions of their mothers during the time they are growing up. Their mothers have been portrayed as unhappy over their female status, resentful of their roles as wives and mothers, and as either inadequate or domineering individuals whose distasteful personalities are responsible for predictably negative relationships with their daughters. In one study the mothers of homosexual females have been described as inadequate, and in two others as domineering and hostile. Thus, we considered whether the homosexual and heterosexual respondents differed in the ways they described their mothers’ personal traits and the extent to which such perceptions might affect the development of their sexual orientation.
As noted earlier, psychoanalytic theory regards a girl’s identification with her mother as a crucial step in the resolution of her presumed “Oedipal” conflict, and hence in her developing a heterosexual orientation. By identifying with her mother, this model suggests, a daughter resolves any ambivalence she feels about being female and begins to anticipate the kinds of rewards and relationships that are evident in her mother’s life. Otherwise, it has been suggested, she may come to reject her female status in favor of more “masculine” attitudes and behaviors. This rejection is thought to block the development of heterosexual interests and to encourage a different, often homosexual, resolution of the “Oedipal” situation.
Despite the importance that has been assigned to a girl’s identification with her mother as an explanation of her later sexual orientation, the only empirical support for such an appraisal comes from a single study in which homosexual daughters were found to be disinclined to imitate their mothers.
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