SEXUAL PREFERENCE OF MALES: FATHER-SON RELATIONSHIPS
Posted on 2009 under Men's Health-Erectile Dysfunction | No CommentRecent literature suggests that fathers may influence their sons’ psychosexual development more strongly than mothers do. It has been concluded that homosexual men’s reports of their childhood relationships with their fathers tend to be more consistent than their reports about their mothers. Indeed, a great number of investigations have found that homosexual men describe negative relationships with their fathers. In one clinical sample, male homosexual patients were described by their psychiatrists as less likely than heterosexual patients to have respected their fathers, to have spent much time with them, or to have been their fathers’ favorite child. Although the psychiatrists described a minority of their patients, whether homosexual or heterosexual, as having had hostile, detached fathers, this description was more common for the homosexuals. The same findings were reported by another researcher comparing nonclinical samples of homosexual and heterosexual men. In other studies, the fathers of homosexual males have been described as autocratic and brutal, abusive and rejecting, unloving, critical and impatient, absent or aggressive, and distant.
Such adverse father-son relationships, according to psychoanalytic theory, may interfere with a heterosexual resolution of the “Oedipal struggle.” In this crisis of early childhood, such theory maintains, the boy becomes a jealous rival of his father and wishes to take over his privileged position as master of the house and the chief object of his mother’s affection. However, in the “normal” developmental pattern, the boy fails to realize this ambition because his father is too powerful to be summarily displaced; from this defeat, the boy develops a sense of fear and inferiority to his father, which he deals with by identifying with this powerful figure and eventually transferring his sexual interests to other females.
This developmental pattern is thought to require a father-son relationship characterized by warmth, affection, and mutual respect. Such a relationship presumably lays the groundwork for a boy’s identifying and feeling comfortable with his father, and later with other males. According to this view, a boy who considers himself a “chip off the old block” is likely to feel relatively certain about his masculine identity and un-threatened in his relationships with other males. A boy’s close relationship with his father has been found to increase his self-esteem and thus to contribute to feelings of confidence in his relationships with both males and females outside the home.
Opposite circumstances have been posited for prehomosexual boys. It has been suggested that these boys’ relationships with their fathers are often characterized by distance, antagonism, fear, and mutual low regard—qualities that make it hard for a boy to identify with his father or, in turn, to develop a strong masculine identity. It has been suggested that such boys need to assure themselves that other males consider them worthwhile; thus, homosexual activity has been interpreted as a male’s attempt to feel less threatened by other males and/or to find a father-surrogate. In terms of the “Oedipal struggle,” rather than competing with his father for his mother’s affections, the prehomosexual boy has been viewed as competing with his mother for his father’s love and as emulating his mother in order to win favor with his father, whom he basically fears.
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