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No research has examined the challenges faced by lesbian women seeking to adopt from the perspective of lesbian couples themselves. The current qualitative study utilized data from 70 women (from 35 same-sex couples) who were in the process of adopting to explore how lesbian women experience and navigate the challenges they encounter during this critical life transition. Ecological, minority stress, and feminist perspectives informed our analysis. Results indicated that many women experienced tensions between their desire to be 'out' in the adoption process and the legal and social realities of adoption. Based on their reports, women in this sample faced numerous barriers to adopting but engaged in multiple forms of resistance to legal and social inequities. Women also identified supportive practices by agencies that facilitated the adoption process. Findings suggest the importance of considering lesbian women's experiences as a starting point in understanding how heteronormative social practices shape the experiences of same-sex couples striving to adopt. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although a growing literature exists on children of lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) parents, little is known about these children's experiences as adults. Of interest is how these individuals negotiate disclosure of their parents' sexual orientation. This qualitative study of 42 adults raised by LGB parents explores this issue. Participants grew up in a diverse range of contexts: Some were always aware of their family's nontraditional status, some were told in childhood, and others were never explicitly told. As adults, participants described a number of reasons for coming out about their family, including a desire to educate, a desire to 'screen out' homophobic individuals, and a need for openness in their relationships. Several participants did not disclose about their families at all, and several told only when necessary. Findings are discussed in terms of the diversity inherent among adult children of LGB parents and implications for practice, policy, and research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is well-established that (non-linguistic) categorization is driven by a functional demand of prediction. We suggest that prediction likewise may well play a role in motivating the learning of semantic generalizations about argument structure constructions. We report corpora statistics that indicate that the argument frame or construction has roughly equivalent cue validity as a predictor of overall sentence meaning as the morphological form of the verb, and has greater category validity. That is, the construction is at least as reliable and more available than the verb. Moreover, given the fact that many verbs have quite low cue validity in isolation, attention to the contribution of the construction is essential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BACKGROUND: Season of birth is a putative etiological factor for several psychiatric illnesses. An excess of late winter and early spring births has been demonstrated repeatedly for schizophrenia, which has usually been interpreted as the result of prenatal or infant exposure to seasonally mediated 'harmful effects,' such as infectious diseases. This study determined whether the seasonal birth rates of substance abusers differed from those of unaffected control groups. METHODS: The 1992 National Longitudinal Alcohol Epidemiologic Survey, an interview-based study of 42,862 men and women, provided data to assess the association between quarter year of birth and lifetime diagnoses of substance abuse. RESULTS: Logistic regression revealed decreases in winter births in men with histories of alcohol dependence. The significant interaction of sex with season of birth reflected an excess of fall births among male but not female alcoholics. In contrast, there was no evidence of seasonality of birth among alcohol abusers. Men and women with histories of illicit drug use had excesses of fall birth. DISCUSSION: Birth rates of men with past or present alcohol dependence, and of men and women with histories of illicit drug use, implicated seasonal factors in the pathogenesis of substance abuse. The similar birth patterns of illicit drug users and male alcoholics suggest that they may share some common etiological factor, such as seasonal effects on environmental temperature, hormonal function, or susceptibility to viral infection during pregnancy or early infancy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parent mental health challenges in the postpartum and early parenthood have profound implications for parent, child, and family well-being. Little research has focused on postpartum mental health challenges and barriers to help-seeking among queer birthing people, including members of this community who may be particularly vulnerable to mental health difficulties, such as queer cis women partnered with men, trans/nonbinary parents, and queer parents who are young, low-income, and/or of color. This mixed-methods study of queer parents (n = 99), all of whom were assigned female at birth (AFAB) and gave birth to a child within the past several years, explores parents' postpartum mental health difficulties and perceived barriers to seeking help. Using a structural stigma framework, this study found that participants reported high rates of postpartum mental health difficulties (89%) and reported various barriers to seeking support including fears of discrimination and being deemed "unfit" by providers, which might lead to child welfare system involvement. Young parents and low-income parents were particularly fearful of child welfare system contact and potential child removal. Factors that encouraged help-seeking (e.g., desire to be a good parent; partner pressure to seek help) and implications for family practitioners are discussed., (© 2024 The Author(s). Family Process published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Family Process Institute.)

The current study marries two important observations. First, there is a growing recognition that word meanings need to be flexibly extended in new ways as new contexts arise. Second, as evidenced primarily within the perceptual domain, autistic individuals tend to find generalization more challenging while showing stronger veridical memory in comparison to their neurotypical peers. Here we report that a group of 80 autistic adults finds it more challenging to flexibly extend the meanings of familiar words in new ways than a group of 80 neurotypical peers, while the autistic individuals outperform the neurotypicals on a novel word-learning task that does not require flexible extension. Results indicate that recognized differences in generalization present an ongoing challenge for autistic adults in the domain of language, separate from social cognition, executive function, or the ability to assign single fixed meanings to new words., (Copyright © 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Each grammatical construction serves a function, such as conveying that part an utterance is at-issue or is backgrounded. When multiple constructions combine to produce an utterance, their functions must be compatible. This preregistered study (N = 680) addresses the enigmatic case of "syntactic island constraints": Long-distance dependency constructions (LDDs) do not combine equally well with all base constructions. While widely presumed to require unlearned syntactic constraints, we test the idea that it is infelicitous to make an element both prominent (via an LDD construction) and backgrounded (via the base construction). Using 10 base constructions of English (144 base stimuli), results confirm two independent measures of backgroundedness strongly correlate with acceptability ratings on each of three LDD constructions. Results indicate that "island" constraints arise from a clash between the functions of the constructions being combined., (Copyright © 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Languages are powerful solutions to coordination problems: They provide stable, shared expectations about how the words we say correspond to the beliefs and intentions in our heads. Yet, language use in a variable and nonstationary social environment requires linguistic representations to be flexible: Old words acquire new ad hoc or partner-specific meanings on the fly. In this article, we introduce continual hierarchical adaptation through inference (CHAI), a hierarchical Bayesian theory of coordination and convention formation that aims to reconcile the long-standing tension between these two basic observations. We argue that the central computational problem of communication is not simply transmission, as in classical formulations, but continual learning and adaptation over multiple timescales. Partner-specific common ground quickly emerges from social inferences within dyadic interactions, while community-wide social conventions are stable priors that have been abstracted away from interactions with multiple partners. We present new empirical data alongside simulations showing how our model provides a computational foundation for several phenomena that have posed a challenge for previous accounts: (a) the convergence to more efficient referring expressions across repeated interaction with the same partner, (b) the gradual transfer of partner-specific common ground to strangers, and (c) the influence of communicative context on which conventions eventually form. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, and trans (LGBTQ) parents become parents in a variety of ways, including via reproductive technologies, through foster care and adoption, and in the context of different-gender relationships. This review addresses research developments over the past 5-6 years, revealing that LGBTQ people continue to face barriers in becoming parents, especially those who are trans, of color, and have limited financial means. Bisexual and trans parents are increasingly centered in research, and have unique experiences of parenthood related to navigating (in)visibility and stigma in various contexts. Recent work has documented the impacts of sociopolitical events (e.g., COVID-19, the Trump presidency) on LGBTQ parent families, particularly those with multiply marginalized statuses. Likewise, an increasingly intersectional lens has exposed how axes of privilege and oppression impact LGBTQ parents' sense of belongingness in various contexts and social groups. Finally, recent work has continued to document the powerful role of context and family processes in the lives and adjustment of youth raised by LGBTQ parents. More research is needed on LGBTQ parents with marginalized identities that have been poorly represented in the literature, such as nonbinary parents and parents with disabilities., Competing Interests: Conflict of interest statement Nothing declared., (Copyright © 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) families have expanded our understanding of who counts as family, to include legal as well as chosen ties. Yet, nonbiological parents in LGBTQ families are vulnerable to invalidation and erasure in social institutions, including health care, legal, and educational settings, where genetic and gestational linkages are privileged. The current study was guided by a queer phenomenological perspective to examine how LGBTQ parents experience and respond to dominant norms related to family relatedness and membership and thus queer the family. This mixed-methods study sampled 250 LGBTQ parents (including cisgender women and trans/nonbinary participants) to examine the question: In what ways does genetic asymmetry matter for families? The qualitative and quantitative analyses yielded three primary findings that revealed experiences of erasure and discrimination, as well as proactive strategies and active resistance used to counteract these difficulties. Themes were organized by (a) encountering marginalization and invalidation: health care, schools, and beyond; (b) strategic actions and discursive practices toward parental equality; and (c) confronting and resisting the need for legal, symbolic, and parenting strategies. This study documents ways in which nonbiological LGBTQ parents, in particular, embrace and resist societal norms for biological connectedness. Implications for nursing professionals include our finding that reproductive and perinatal contexts were particular sites of invalidation, necessitating education about the range of queer, nonbiological, and trans/nonbinary parents so that all parents are included in professional health care encounters.

Reproductive loss, which includes miscarriage and nongestational loss, such as adoption loss, is rarely recognized as part of the family-building journey. Such loss tends to be even more invisible among LGBTQ individuals. The current study examines the experiences of 80 LGBTQ individuals who experienced adoption-related losses (i.e., failed adoption matches, child removals, disrupted child placements), with attention to how these losses impacted them and what enabled them to move forward. Participants who pursued private domestic adoption experienced failed matches (i.e., birth parents deciding to parent or choosing another family) both before ( n = 21) and/or after ( n = 24) a child was born. Participants who pursued public domestic adoption experienced child removals involving reunification with birth parents ( n = 14) and other birth relatives ( n = 18), as well as disrupted placements initiated by parents ( n = 10) and children ( n = 7). Failed matches, child removals, and disrupted placements were typically experienced as "crushing" and invisible losses. They were often followed by a period of grieving, and sometimes prompted adjustments to the type of matches or placements participants would consider (e.g., to mitigate the likelihood of future similar losses). Moving forward from adoption losses was facilitated by support from partners and those who experienced similar losses, knowledge or hope regarding the children once in their care, and finally being placed with the child(ren) whom they ultimately legally adopted.

Background: Parents and children in LGBTQ+ parent families face unique stressors (i.e., minority stress), but also possess unique resources (i.e., positive identity aspects) related to their family identity. Empirical evidence and theory suggest that these minority stressors and positive identity aspects are situated on the individual, couple, and family level and may be associated with key outcomes, including parent and child health, family functioning, and school-related outcomes. A systematic evidence synthesis and a theoretical placement are currently lacking. The aims of the systematic review outlined in this protocol are thus to (1) map minority stressors and positive identity aspects according to multiple levels in the family system, and (2) to synthesize evidence on their associations with key outcomes., Methods: We will conduct a PRISMA-conform mixed-methods systematic review. Studies will be retrieved using a multi-tiered search strategy, including database searches (PsycInfo, PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science), cited literature searches, authors' publication lists, and study requests. The mixed-methods synthesis will follow a parallel-results convergent synthesis design, where quantitative results will be synthesized via meta-analysis and qualitative results via thematic synthesis., Conclusions: Our proposed systematic review may add to the theoretical understanding of LGBTQ+ parent family functioning and advance social inclusion of LGBTQ+ parent families.

This study explored how 30 trans graduate students made decisions regarding graduate school. Specifically, it examined how the students chose their graduate program and, secondarily, how they chose their field, what led them to apply to graduate school, and their outness during the application process. In selecting a program, participants considered contextual and personal factors that encompassed commonly cited academic and pragmatic circumstances (e.g., reputation; cost) and factors salient to their gender identity, including state and university climate. Participants identified a number of tensions in choosing a program (e.g., whether to prioritize academic factors over program climate)-although some could not prioritize program climate because their field (e.g., STEM) was not LGBTQ savvy. In applying to graduate school, participants weighed the benefits of being out as trans (e.g., authenticity; finding a "good fit") and risks (e.g., discrimination). Findings have implications for higher education administrators, career counselors, clinicians, and researchers.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, parents face unprecedented challenges linked to social isolation, uncertainty about the future, and financial, employment, and school-related stress. Individuals who planned to separate and divorce before the pandemic now find their lives on hold. In this exploratory study of 14 women who completed an online survey of open- and closed-ended questions regarding the divorce process and parenting challenges during COVID-19, we were guided by family stress and resilience theory and a directed qualitative content analysis approach to generate a collective story of their experiences, which included four themes: (a) pile-up of tensions, challenges, and stressors, (b) living in limbo during the pandemic, (c) finding creative strategies and solutions to navigating parenting and relational dissolution, while still living together, and (d) reaching the breaking point. We conclude with implications for professionals seeking to support individuals, couples, and families during a time of unprecedented transition and uncertainty., (© 2021 American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy.)

Our ability to comprehend and produce language is one of humans' most impressive skills, but it is not flawless. We must convey and interpret messages via a noisy channel in ever-changing contexts and we sometimes fail to access an optimal combination of words and grammatical constructions. Here, we extend the notion of good-enough (GN) comprehension to GN production, which allows us to unify a wide range of phenomena including overly vague word choices, agreement errors, resumptive pronouns, transfer effects, and children's overextensions and regularizations. We suggest these all involve the accessing and production of a 'GN' option when a more-optimal option is inaccessible. The role of accessibility highlights the need to relate memory encoding and retrieval processes to language comprehension and production., Competing Interests: Declaration of interests No interests are declared., (Copyright © 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Objective: This mixed-methods exploratory study sought to address the experiences of 89 adoptive parents (heterosexual, lesbian, and gay) in the United States with school-age children in relation to the transition to remote schooling and their children's mental health during the early part of the COVID-19 pandemic., Background: The transition to remote schooling and associated confinement during the COVID-19 pandemic presents challenges for families, particularly when children are struggling with mental health and learning challenges., Methods: Data were collected via an online survey between May and June 2020. Before the pandemic, almost half of the children received special education services., Results: Findings revealed that although a minority of children were doing well with remote schooling, the majority were struggling due to lack of motivation and an inability to work independently. Some parents voiced challenges with teacher communication and inconsistencies across classes and were overwhelmed by the demands of their new role as proctor/teacher. Some were dissatisfied with how children's school services had been implemented and noted difficulties with the online format of various services (e.g., therapy was less engaging). Regarding children's mental health, half of parents said it had stayed the same, one third said it had worsened, and the remainder said it had improved. The mental health of children adopted via foster care seemed to have benefited from the additional time spent at home. Yet most children were described as struggling in part due to social isolation and loss of routine, which manifested in a variety of ways, including anxiety, schoolwork avoidance, and boundary testing. Most parents tried to show patience, tolerance, and reassurance, but more than one third reported stress and frustration associated with not knowing how to best support their children., Conclusion: The transition to remote schooling during COVID-19 may be especially challenging for adoptive families and other families whose children have higher levels of need., Implications: Findings have implications for parents, teachers, school social workers and psychologists, and other professionals who work with children and families., (© 2021 National Council on Family Relations.)

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused significant stress for individuals, couples, and families. Divorced and separated couples with children face unique stresses amid the pandemic. This mixed-methods study explored these challenges among 296 divorced and separated parents: namely 204 women formerly partnered with men, 34 men formerly partnered with women, and 58 women formerly partnered with women, who were surveyed during Summer/Fall of 2020. Participants described legal, financial, and coparenting challenges. Those who were not yet divorced described difficulties filing for or finalizing their divorce because of court closures and lack of responsiveness from legal professionals. Those who were already divorced also faced legal challenges, such as being unable to obtain a court date to modify custody arrangements. Financial challenges included renegotiating financial support obligations in the context of job loss. Salient coparenting conflicts, explored through closed- and open-ended questions, included communication issues, different views on virus risk mitigation behaviors, financial issues (especially for those not yet divorced), and transitioning between households and handling remote schooling (especially for those with shared physical custody). Participants elaborated on COVID-19-specific challenges, revealing that (a) lack of communication or agreement regarding shared strategies for risk mitigation reflected and exacerbated challenging dynamics between coparents, (b) remote schooling was often the site of disagreement when one parent felt that they were doing more than their fair share of coordination and oversight, and (c) different perspectives on science were expected to lead to future contention when making a joint decision about whether to vaccinate children. Findings have implications for family and legal professionals working with divorced, divorcing, and separated parents., (© 2021 Family Process Institute.)

Abstract: The potential of artificial intelligence (AI) applied to clinical data from electronic health records (EHRs) to improve early detection for pancreatic and other cancers remains underexplored. The Kenner Family Research Fund, in collaboration with the Cancer Biomarker Research Group at the National Cancer Institute, organized the workshop entitled: "Early Detection of Pancreatic Cancer: Opportunities and Challenges in Utilizing Electronic Health Records (EHR)" in March 2021. The workshop included a select group of panelists with expertise in pancreatic cancer, EHR data mining, and AI-based modeling. This review article reflects the findings from the workshop and assesses the feasibility of AI-based data extraction and modeling applied to EHRs. It highlights the increasing role of data sharing networks and common data models in improving the secondary use of EHR data. Current efforts using EHR data for AI-based modeling to enhance early detection of pancreatic cancer show promise. Specific challenges (biology, limited data, standards, compatibility, legal, quality, AI chasm, incentives) are identified, with mitigation strategies summarized and next steps identified., Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflict of interest. S.T.C., B.F.F., V.L.W.G., W.A.H., and D.S.K. are Kenner Family Research Fund scientific advisors. A.E.G., B.J.K., and L.J.R. are Kenner Family Research Fund board members., (Copyright © 2021 The Author(s). Published by Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc.)

The current work suggests that two factors conspire to make vocabulary learning challenging for youth on the Autism spectrum: (1) a tendency to focus on specifics rather than on relationships among entities and (2) the fact that most words are associated with distinct but related meanings (e.g. baseball cap, pen cap, bottle cap). Neurotypical (NT) children find it easier to learn multiple related meanings of words (polysemy) in comparison to multiple unrelated meanings (homonymy). We exposed 60 NT children and 40 verbal youth on the Autism spectrum to novel words. The groups' performance learning homonyms was comparable, but unlike their NT peers, youth on the spectrum did not display the same advantage for learning polysemous words compared to homonyms.

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and other sexual and gender (LGBTQ+) minorities experience intimate partner violence (IPV) at higher rates than heterosexual and/or cisgender people. Providers often are less prepared to work with LGBTQ+ survivors, which can be the result of a reliance on stereotypes on what constitutes an IPV victim. This article provides recommendations for working with LGBTQ+ survivors, including screening for IPV regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity, participating in LGBTQ+-affirming trainings regarding IPV, and creating a welcoming and inclusive space that promotes LGBTQ+ survivors' comfort in disclosing IPV., Competing Interests: Disclosure The authors have nothing to disclose., (Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

There are times when a curiously odd relic of language presents us with a thread, which when pulled, reveals deep and general facts about human language. This paper unspools such a case. Prior to 1930, English speakers uniformly preferred male-before-female word order in conjoined nouns such as uncles and aunts; nephews and nieces; men and women . Since then, at least a half dozen items have systematically reversed their preferred order (e.g., aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews ) while others have not ( men and women ). We review evidence that the unusual reversals began with mother and dad(dy) and spread to semantically and morphologically related binomials over a period of decades. The present work proposes that three aspects of cognitive accessibility combine to quantify the probability of A&B order: (1) the relative accessibility of the A&B terms individually, (2) competition from B&A order, and critically, (3) cluster strength (i.e., similarity to related A'&B' cases). The emergent cluster of female-first binomials highlights the influence of semantic neighborhoods in memory retrieval. We suggest that cognitive accessibility can be used to predict the word order of both familiar and novel binomials generally, as well as the diachronic change focused on here., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2021 Goldberg and Lee.)

Relational dissolution is often characterized by heightened feelings, especially around co-parenting and child custody. Lesbian mothers may experience their emotions in uniquely nuanced ways due to intersections among female gender, minority sexual orientation, and family structural change. Framed by a critical feminist perspective, we conducted a qualitative analysis of telephone interview and online survey responses by 17 lesbian adoptive mothers whose relationship ended. Four emotional response patterns emerged - mostly positive, mixed feelings, mostly negative, very negative - corresponding to four adaptation patterns: adapted, improving, stalled, and stuck. We provide implications for individuals, families, and societal change related to LGBTQ divorcing families.

Many words are associated with more than a single meaning. Words are sometimes "ambiguous," applying to unrelated meanings, but the majority of frequent words are "polysemous" in that they apply to multiple related meanings. In a preregistered design that included 2 tasks, we tested adults' and 4.5- to 7-year-old children's ability to learn 4 novel polysemous words or 4 novel ambiguous words. Both children and adults demonstrated a polysemy over ambiguity learning advantage on each task after exposure, showing better learning of novel words with multiple related meanings than novel words with unrelated meanings. Stimuli in the polysemy condition were designed and then normed to guard against learners relying on a simple definition to distinguish the multiple target meanings for each word from foils. We retested available participants after a week-long delay without providing additional exposure and found that adults' performance remained strong in the polysemy condition in 1 task, and children's performance remained strong in the polysemy condition in both tasks. We conclude that participants are adept at learning polysemous words that vary along multiple dimensions. Current results are consistent with the idea that ambiguous meanings of a word compete, but polysemous meanings instead reinforce one another. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Despite U.S. federal laws that require placing siblings together in foster care whenever possible, a majority of children are still separated from at least one of their siblings when in foster care or when adopted, due to various barriers including difficulty finding adoptive parents that match the needs of sibling groups. Few studies have focused on the experiences of parents who adopt sibling groups, resulting in little understanding of (a) their motivations for doing so, and (b) the challenges and strengths that accompany sibling group adoption. The current exploratory longitudinal qualitative study aims to address this gap. Twelve parents in six same-sex couples who adopted a sibling group from foster care were interviewed before, immediately after, and two years after they adopted. Findings indicate that sibling group adoption introduces several obstacles during the transition to parenthood including difficulty responding to children's varied needs during the transition and difficulty developing a close bond with each child. Further, parents described challenges integrating their own expectations with the family practices of the sibling group. Parents also indicated ways that adopting siblings together deepened their understanding of their children's behaviors and provided opportunities to establish family norms even when one child was struggling to adapt to the transition. After several years, parents reported reorganizing their family roles to meet the needs of their children. They also identified areas of perceived competence (e.g., behavior management) and areas where challenges persisted (e.g., navigating birth family contact). Implications for policy and practice around supporting sibling group adoptions are discussed., Competing Interests: Conflict of interest There was no conflict of interest for this article and the work completed therein.

The present study aims to investigate the neural correlates of processing conventional figurative language in non-native speakers in a comparison with native speakers. Italian proficient L2 learners of German and German native speakers read conventional metaphorical statements as well as literal paraphrases that were comparable on a range of psycholinguistic variables. Results confirm previous findings that native speakers show increased activity for metaphorical processing, and left amygdala activation increases with increasing Metaphoricity. At the whole-brain level, L2 learners showed the expected overall differences in activation when compared to native speakers (in the fronto-temporal network). But L2 speakers did not show any distinctive activation outside the caudate nucleus as Metaphoricity increased, suggesting that the L2 speakers were less affected by increasing Metaphoricity than native speakers were. With small volume correction, only a single peak in the amygdala reached threshold for L2 speakers as Metaphoricity increased. The findings are consistent with the view that metaphorical language is more engaging for native speakers but not necessarily for L2 speakers., (Crown Copyright © 2020. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Little research has examined victimization among school-aged children raised in lesbian/gay (LG) parent households and almost no work has attended to the school and community contexts that may impact their victimization risk. This study examined predictors of parent-reported child victimization and child adjustment, and parent responses to victimization, in 43 two-mother, 37 two-father, and 56 mother-father families, with adopted children (median age = 8.6 years). Predictors included parent (sexual orientation), school (climate, public versus private) and community (urbanicity, percentage voted Democrat) factors, with parent and child demographics included as controls. A total of 47% of parents reported one or more child victimization experiences in the past year; there were no differences by family type. An exploratory interaction between family type and urbanicity indicated that in large urban areas, children with LG parents were predicted to experience less victimization than children with heterosexual parents; in more rural regions, children with LG parents were predicted to experience more victimization than children with heterosexual parents. School climate was related to victimization: Parents who reported more negative school climate reported more child victimization. Children with higher levels of parent-reported victimization had higher levels of parent-reported internalizing and externalizing symptoms. In large urban areas, children with LG parents were predicted to have fewer internalizing symptoms than children with heterosexual parents; in more rural areas, children with LG parents were predicted to have more internalizing symptoms than children with heterosexual parents. Regarding parents' responses to victimization, LG parents were more likely to talk to school administrators, their children, and the bully, compared to heterosexual parents., (Copyright © 2020 Goldberg and Garcia.)

Adoptive parents may be placed with children conceived under difficult circumstances, such as via rape or incest. At the same time, adoptive parents are generally encouraged to communicate openly with their children about their adoption stories and birth families. No research has examined the experiences of parents who adopt children who were conceived through rape or incest. This exploratory study examines how parents discuss their decision-making when adopting children conceived via rape or incest, how they manage varying levels of uncertainty about their children's origins, and whether and how they plan to disclose this information to children. The researchers used thematic analysis to examine the experiences of 11 couples (22 parents) interviewed at four time points after adopting children who were reportedly conceived via rape or incest. Findings revealed that even soon after adopting, parents discussed the need to eventually talk to their children about their conception circumstances. Parents generally struggled to determine how and when to disclose this information, particularly when they felt uncertain about the veracity of the conception stories they had been told. Some hoped to rely on professionals or birth mothers to guide them in these communications. Findings have implications for supporting adoptive families as they navigate the complexity of managing sensitive information and uncertainty when adopting children conceived through rape or incest. Practitioners should provide ongoing guidance to adoptive parents about how and when to disclose developmentally appropriate information to children about difficult conception circumstances., (© 2019 Family Process Institute.)

Despite shifts in societal attitudes, lesbian women who separate and divorce still must cope with recriminating societal messages that blame and condemn them for not conforming to the gendered heteronormative dictate of married motherhood. Guided by feminist theory, we conducted a qualitative analysis of narratives from 17 adoptive lesbian mothers who had dissolved their relationship. The women's narratives revealed five cultural discourses that they variously embraced, resisted, or disrupted: (1) the ideology of the good mother; (2) divorce is bad for children; (3) marriage is the ideal way to live; (4) couples should stay together for the children; and (5) lesbian ex-lovers should be lifelong friends. All women embraced the cultural belief in "the good mother," which is the linchpin of gendered oppression, but they were much more disruptive regarding the remaining four discourses surrounding marriage, divorce, and lesbian relationships. Their assessments of life after separation revealed that divorce can actually be better than marriage for their children; marriage is often overrated; having children can complicate a marriage; and remaining friends with one's ex-partner is not always desirable. The feminist tenet that oppression and agency coexist was revealed as the women both engaged and resisted dominant cultural narratives in order to navigate the dilemmas of crafting a new life for themselves and their children post-divorce.

Although the literature consistently shows an association between parental substance use disorders (SUDs) and child abuse, it is unknown what factors discern non-abusive and abusive parents with SUDs. This study aims to investigate which specific risk factors are associated with child abuse in clinically treated parents with SUDs in the Netherlands. It examines two groups of parents with SUDs in a clinical setting, with and without known instances of child abuse. These groups were compared on SUD-related factors such as the type and severity of the SUDs, and variables addressing psychological disability such as comorbid diagnoses and quality of life. Other than a marginally significant difference in severity of addiction and a lower mean age of the parents in the child abuse group, no significant differences were found. The small sample size and the inherent difficulty of studying SUDs in a clinical sample is likely to have affected the results., (© 2019 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.)

Learners preferentially interpret novel nouns at the basic level ('dog') rather than at a more narrow level ('Labrador'). This 'basic-level bias' is mitigated by statistics: children and adults are more likely to interpret a novel noun at a more narrow label if they witness 'a suspicious coincidence' - the word applied to three exemplars of the same narrow category. Independent work has found that exemplar typicality influences learners' inferences and category learning. We bring these lines of work together to investigate whether the content (typicality) of a single exemplar affects the level of interpretation of words and whether an atypicality effect interacts with input statistics. Results demonstrate that both four- to five-year-olds and adults tend to assign a narrower interpretation to a word if it is exemplified by an atypical category member. This atypicality effect is roughly as strong as, and independent of, the suspicious coincidence effect, which is replicated.

Objectives This study sought to explore how sexual minority women (SMW) and heterosexual women compare in terms of reproductive history, with a particular focus on examining within-group differences among SMW. Methods Women were predominantly recruited through consecutive sampling during presentation for prenatal care in Toronto Canada, and Massachusetts, USA. In total, 96 partnered pregnant women (62 SMW, 34 heterosexual) completed an internet survey during 2013-2015. Results We found few significant differences in reproductive history outcomes when comparing SMW and heterosexual groups. However, when we compared male-partnered SMW to female-partnered SMW, we found potentially important differences in rates of miscarriage and pregnancy complications, indicating that partner gender may be an important contributor to differences in reproductive history among SMW. Conclusions for Practice These findings highlight the need to recognize the unique health risks with which male-partnered SMW may present. Considering that this group is often invisible in clinical practice, the findings from this exploratory study have important implications for providers who treat women during the transition to parenthood. Future research should further examine the differences in social and health access within larger samples of SMW groups, as well as seek to understand the complex relationships between sexual identity and perinatal health for this understudied group of women.

Women who (a) hold plurisexual identities (e.g., bisexual, pansexual) and (b) are male-partnered are understudied. Of interest is how these women construct their sexual identities across the transition to parenthood-a period associated with intensified heteronormative expectations, and changes in women's roles and identities. This longitudinal study of 28 plurisexual, male-partnered women examined women's sexual identity construction across the first year of parenthood, using four waves of data. Most women were White, bisexual-identified, and first-time parents. The majority of women described decreases in the salience or centrality of their sexuality more generally. Almost all women continued to hold plurisexual identities across the first year of parenthood, although many described these as private identities amidst public assumptions of heterosexuality. Some, though, sought to maintain a connection to their plurisexual identities through sexual identity disclosure, same-gender fantasies, and involvement in consensual nonmonogamy. Although only one woman articulated a shift in sexual identity label (from bicurious to heterosexual), others increasingly distanced themselves from their same-gender behaviors and desires. Our findings illustrate how women engage in an active process of sexual identity construction amidst heteronormative pressures, and how they navigate tensions amongst their partnership and parenthood statuses and their private identities and past behaviors., Competing Interests: There are no conflicts of interest to report.

Though social scientists have researched sexual minority parenting practices regarding the gender socialization of children, to date this research has focused exclusively on sexual minority parents in same-gender relationships, and almost exclusively on the experiences of gay and lesbian parents. The current paper addresses the gender socialization parenting practices of 25 nonmonosexual sexual minority women who are in different-gender relationships through analysis of qualitative in-depth interviews that took place over the course of one year. Our findings indicate that the experiences of these participants differ from both those reported in previous literature on sexual minority parents in same-gender relationships as well as heterosexual parents in different-gender relationships. Specifically, participants do not report sexual identity stigma as restricting the degree of cross-gender socialization in which they engage, nor do they report a gender normative influence from their male partners. Findings are discussed in the context of a socioecological framework.

Children tend to regularize their productions when exposed to artificial languages, an advantageous response to unpredictable variation. But generalizations in natural languages are typically conditioned by factors that children ultimately learn. In two experiments, adult and six-year-old learners witnessed two novel classifiers, probabilistically conditioned by semantics. Whereas adults displayed high accuracy in their productions - applying the semantic criteria to familiar and novel items - children were oblivious to the semantic conditioning. Instead, children regularized their productions, over-relying on only one classifier. However, in a two-alternative forced-choice task, children's performance revealed greater respect for the system's complexity: they selected both classifiers equally, without bias toward one or the other, and displayed better accuracy on familiar items. Given that natural languages are conditioned by multiple factors that children successfully learn, we suggest that their tendency to simplify in production stems from retrieval difficulty when a complex system has not yet been fully learned.

Little research has examined the experiences of plurisexual women (i.e., those with attractions to more than one gender) during the transition to parenthood, despite the fact that many plurisexual women intend to become parents. Further, no research has specifically explored plurisexual mothers' LGBTQ community connections, although many studies highlight the importance of social support for (a) sexual minority individuals and (b) mothers. The current study investigated LGBTQ community connection among 29 plurisexual women with different-gender partners during the perinatal period. Participants completed interviews once during late pregnancy, and three times in the year after giving birth. Thematic analysis of the interview data explored how participants conceptualized community, finding that women varied in their level of and desire for engagement in both LGBTQ and parenting communities. Participants' accounts suggested that various barriers restricted their involvement (e.g., practical barriers such as time constraints, community-level barriers such as perceived rejection from LGBTQ communities, and psychological factors such as internalized stigma). At the same time, several women identified LGBTQ others as sources of support during the transition to parenthood, and many expressed a desire for their children to be connected to LGBTQ communities. Findings have implications for how researchers conceptualize community, provide insight into the disconnection between plurisexual women and LGBTQ communities, and suggest possibilities to increase LGBTQ community accessibility during this period.

Little research has examined the friendships of lesbian parents, especially within the context of children's schools. This study of 40 lesbian adoptive parents (20 couples) focused on their relationships with other parents in the school community and how sexual orientation, race, and class dynamics impacted these relationships. Half of the participants described friendships with parents at the school, sometimes in spite of demographic differences, whereas others felt disconnected due to these differences. Outside of school, most participants reported friendships with other lesbian/gay parents. Parents who felt less connected to other parents at school tended to describe more lesbian/gay parent connections. Findings highlight the impact of life stage and context in shaping friendship patterns among lesbian parents.

The current study constitutes a qualitative investigation of experiences with and perceptions of consensual nonmonogamy (CNM) among a sample of 21 bisexual and plurisexual women with different-gender partners. Participants from Massachusetts, USA, and Toronto, Canada, were interviewed four times during pregnancy and the postpartum period. Using an inductive qualitative approach, we found participants were selective about CNM disclosure, and generally apprehensive about stigma surrounding CNM involvement. Additionally, results emphasize the importance of communication and highlight the range of barriers to and benefits of CNM endorsed by these parents. Directions for future research and implications for practitioners are discussed.

Although partner support is an established determinant of mental health, we know little about bisexual and other plurisexual people's experiences of support from their partners. Further, very limited research has examined how bisexual or plurisexual people experience partner support during pregnancy, a significant life stage for many couples. This paper draws from semi-structured interviews with 29 plurisexual women partnered with different-gender (i.e., cisgender male or transgender) partners to examine women's perceptions of partner support during pregnancy. While participants reported many of the same partner support issues and dynamics that have been described in research with monosexual childbearing women, their experiences as plurisexual women were unique in two regards: a) unconditional acceptance from partners was connected to the partner's support for their plurisexual identities/histories; and b) social integration support often included shared integration into social networks related to their plurisexual experiences, including sexual networks. These findings offer important implications for sexual and relationship therapists, who can play an important role in helping to foster these plurisexual-specific forms of partner support, and in so doing, improve outcomes for women during this significant life stage.

Drawing from queer and communication privacy management frameworks, this study examines the narratives of 22 bisexual, male-partnered women who were interviewed during the perinatal period and one year postnatally about their disclosures of sexual identity to family of origin. Most women rarely discussed their sexual identity with family; participants who had disclosed described such disclosures as provoking discomfort. Some women stated that their parental status seemed to invalidate the need to talk about their sexual history or identity with family, due its declining salience and increased concerns about judgment. This study reveals how partnership and parenthood statuses contribute to the intensification of heteronormative pressures in relation to family. Therapists should attend to the role of heteronormative values regarding partnering, family-building, and parenting., (© 2017 American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy.)

How do people learn to use language in creative but constrained ways? Experiment 1 investigates linguistic creativity by exposing adult participants to two novel word order constructions that differ in terms of their semantics: One construction exclusively describes actions that have a strong effect; the other construction describes actions with a weaker but otherwise similar effect. One group of participants witnessed novel verbs only appearing in one construction or the other, while another group witnessed a minority of verbs alternating between constructions. Subsequent production and judgment results demonstrate that participants in both conditions extended and accepted verbs in whichever construction best described the intended message. Unlike related previous work, this finding is not naturally attributable to prior knowledge of the likely division of labor between verbs and constructions or to a difference in cue validity. In order to investigate how speakers learn to constrain generalizations, Experiment 2 includes one verb (out of 6) that was witnessed in a single construction to describe both strong and weak effects, essentially statistically preempting the use of the other construction. In this case, participants were much more lexically conservative with this verb and other verbs, while they nonetheless displayed an appreciation of the distinct semantics of the constructions with new novel verbs. Results indicate that the need to better express an intended message encourages generalization, while statistical preemption constrains generalization by providing evidence that verbs are restricted in their distribution., (Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

This study, involving a community-based sample of 45 predominantly white primary caregivers of 45 trans and gender-nonconforming (TGNC) children between 6 and 12 years of age, provides descriptive data on children's gender presentations, peer relations, and well-being. Most (n = 31; 69%) of the children were cross-gender identified (CGI). That is, 17 of 28 children assigned male at birth explicitly and consistently identified as girls, and 14 of 17 children assigned female at birth explicitly and consistently identified as boys. The 14 remaining children appeared to have nonbinary gender identities (e.g., "boy-girl") or to identify with the sex and gender they were assigned at birth but were gender-nonconforming, or their gender identities were uncertain. This subgroup was labeled non-CGI. Most of the children were in the normal range for internalizing (64%), externalizing (67%), and total behavior problems (62%), yet a sizable minority were in the borderline-clinical/clinical range for these symptoms. Children in the CGI group had fewer internalizing and total problems than children in the non-CGI group. Child's degree of gender conformity, caregiver's level of anxiety, and child's peer relations were correlated with children's well-being; children in the CGI group were reported to have better peer relations than children in the non-CGI group. Caregivers' rates of depression and anxiety appeared to be similar to normative samples, although anxiety may have been slightly elevated. Findings from this study add to a small but growing body of literature that documents the well-being of TGNC children growing up in supportive and affirming familial environments. (PsycINFO Database Record, ((c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).)

Objectives: Non-monosexual women - those who report attraction to or sexual relationships with individuals of more than one gender - have elevated risk for poor mental health outcomes. We aimed to examine which elements of non-monosexual experience are associated with this elevated risk., Methods: We conducted a sequential exploratory mixed methods analysis of qualitative interview and survey data from 39 non-monosexual women recruited consecutively through prenatal care providers. Qualitative analyses identified distinguishing features, and quantitative analyses tested associations between these features and mental health symptoms., Results: Nine qualitative themes were identified to describe distinguishing features of non-monosexual women. Of these, current and past five years partner gender, lack of LGBTQ community connection, and low centrality of sexual minority identity were associated with anxiety symptoms. Latent class analysis revealed significantly higher levels of anxiety symptoms among non-monosexual women partnered with men relative to those partnered with women., Conclusion: Sexual minority women who partner with men may be particularly at risk for poor mental health. Considering this group's invisibility in public health research and practice, interventions are needed to address this disparity.

The current study is the first to examine parental gatekeeping in both same-sex (57 female, 51 male) and heterosexual (n = 82) couples, all of whom became parents via adoption. Aspects of the individual, the couple, and the work context, measured preadoption, were examined as predictors of gatekeeping. Gatekeeping refers to attitudes and behaviors aimed at regulating and limiting the involvement of the other parent in housework and child care and was measured 2 years postadoption. Findings revealed that women in heterosexual relationships reported higher gatekeeping compared with all other groups, and men in same-sex relationships reported higher gatekeeping compared with women in same-sex relationships and men in heterosexual relationships. Across the full sample, lower job autonomy predicted higher gatekeeping in both housework and child care, whereas greater relationship ambivalence, greater perceived parenting skill, and lower perceived partner parenting skill predicted higher gatekeeping in child care. Findings provide insight into how gatekeeping behaviors and beliefs are enacted in diverse types of couples and suggest that work factors should be taken into account when conducting research on, and seeking to improve, coparenting relationships. (PsycINFO Database Record, ((c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).)

Male-partnered sexual minority women (SMW) have received little research attention, despite the fact that they represent a large proportion of SMW - particularly child-bearing SMW. Male-partnered SMW are less "out" than female-partnered SMW and will likely be "read" as heterosexual by perinatal providers. Given this, and evidence that pregnant women have unique mental health care needs, the current study focuses on male-partnered SMW ( n = 28) during the perinatal period, recruited from Toronto, Canada and Massachusetts, USA, in an effort to understand disclosure and concealment processes in general and to perinatal heath care providers specifically. Women generally reported that they did not disclose (but made no effort to conceal) their sexual identities and histories in new or unfamiliar relationships, largely because the topic rarely came up, although some women highlighted bisexual invisibility and fear of biphobia as reasons for non-disclosure. Despite overall positive experiences with perinatal providers, less than one-quarter of the sample ( n = 6) had disclosed their sexual identities and histories to them. Most women felt that this information was generally not relevant to their health care, and particularly their reproductive/obstetric care, although some believed that disclosure would be appropriate under conditions of sexual health risk ( n = 8). Others noted that although they did not feel the need to disclose, they did prefer an LGBQ-affirming provider ( n = 7). Findings provide insight into male-partnered SMW's views and patterns of disclosure during the perinatal period, and have implications for providers, organizations, and scholars who interface with SMW. Pregnant sexual minority women with male partners are often assumed to be heterosexual, raising questions about whether and when these women disclose their sexual minority status in the perinatal context. This qualitative study of 28 women found that most participants did not share their sexual identity or sexual histories with their perinatal health care providers because this information was perceived as not relevant to their care, although some women nevertheless valued having LGBTQ friendly providers.