The desire of parenthood: intuitive co-parental behaviors and quality of couple relationship among Italian and Belgian same-sex and opposite-sex couples.

Studies that focused on family issues have allowed a great understanding of the aspectsrelated to its subsystems, such as parenting desire and its expectations, couples’satisfaction and quality of child’s outcomes. All these aspects are greatly interconnectedand contribute to the creation of specific family dynamics, such as the quality offamily interactions. The present study focuses on intuitive co-parental behaviors andthe quality of couple relationship observed during the decision process (intention anddesire) to be (or become) parents. Our first goal was to explore these aspects ina cross-national sample made of Italian and Belgian heterosexual, lesbian and gaycouples. We then aimed to evaluate if the degree of internalized homophobia affectsco-parental alliance. The quality of couple relationship and co-parental behaviors havebeen evaluated through the recruitment of a group of 115 stable heterosexual, gay andlesbian couples (230 individuals, 20–50 years of age) without children, who wanted tobecome parents. We used the Prenatal Lausanne Trilogue Play to evaluate the Co-parental Alliance; the couple’s satisfaction was assessed with the Dyadic AdjustmentScale and the Internalized Homophobia with the MISS-LG. In line with the existentliterature, the analysis did not find any difference between lesbian, gay and heterosexualcouples in terms of co-parental alliance. High levels of couple adjustment lead to betterparental performances among both Italian and Belgian couples. The results suggestalso that sexual stigma differs from one country to another, and it has an impact on thecapability of managing co-parenting. Clinical implications should be verified in furtherlongitudinal studies in order to observe the impact on the inter-generational transmissionof psychopathology.