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Dr. Drexler is a research psychologist who has worked with children and their families for several years. A former Gender Scholar at Stanford University, she is now an Assistant Professor of Psychology in Psychiatry at the Weill Medical College of Cornell University.
She has recently published the groundbreaking book Raising boys without men.
Dr. Drexler hired DTS to employ the Lectical™ Assessment System (LAS) and a range of content analyses to examine patterns of response in the interviews of a sample of lesbian and traditional parents and their sons. The results are presented in three reports, which can be found under the first three tabs, below. Interviews and materials can be found on the remaining tabs.
This report compares the developmental levels of lesbian and traditional parents, and presents a concept analysis of six thematic categories:
The distribution of these concepts is analyzed and described across two developmental levels and presented in 12 tables with examples from the interviews.
The distribution of concepts in lesbian vs. traditional households and birth mother vs. other parent are presented in tables of the statistical findings and narrative descriptions.
There no statistically significant differences in developmental level between lesbian traditional parents.
Parents performing at higher levels of development produced more concepts that could be coded into the categories identified for each of the themes. This was consistent with previous findings indicating that people at higher developmental levels tend to have more differentiated conceptions.
Parent type did not have a large impact on the content of the interviews. For the most part, biological mothers and other parents spoke about the same kinds of things in approximately the same proportions. However, biological mothers were statistically significantly more likely than other parents to report seeking advice on parenting and they were also slightly more likely to express more moral considerations overall than the other parent. Biological mothers were also statistically more likely to mention and describe the influence of role models in their son’s life.
Family type had an important impact on the content of the interviews. Although, for the most part, lesbian parents and traditional parents spoke about the same kinds of things, the proportions sometimes differed significantly.
Overall, lesbian parents reported more considerations, suggesting greater reflectivity on the part of lesbian parents compared to traditional parents. Lesbian parents were statistically significantly more likely than traditional parents to report seeking advice on discipline, indicating that there may be a tendency for lesbian parents to seek more parenting advice in general. Overall, more aspects of discipline and style were mentioned by lesbian parents (an average of 5.5) than traditional parents (an average of 3.0).
Traditional parents were more likely than lesbian parents to report that their son learned morality from his school, peers, and siblings.
Lesbian parents were statistically significantly more likely than traditional parents to:
describe the importance of strong/ clear guidelines;
report talking through problems with their son;
report teaching their son to express/ understand his feelings; and
report trying to share parenting.
Lesbian and traditional parents differed in their discussions of childcare and schooling. Lesbian parents were more likely than traditional parents to report being involved in their sons’ schooling or that their son attended a special, private, or alternative school. Traditional parents were more likely than lesbian parents to report helping their sons with their homework. Overall, more aspects of childcare and schooling were mentioned by lesbian parents (an average of 1.7) than traditional parents (an average of 1.2).
Lesbian and traditional parents differed in their discussions of sleeping arrangements. Lesbian parents were more likely than traditional parents to report that their son had his own room. Two other suggestive trends did not reach statistical significance. These were in the categories:
reports that son shared parents' bed as a infant/ toddler; and
reports that son shares parents' bed. Taken together, the pattern of performance in these categories suggest that lesbian parents may be more open than traditional parents to sleeping with their sons.
Lesbian and traditional parents differed in their parenting concerns. Lesbian parents were more likely than traditional parents to report being concerned about raising their sons in an unconventional way. Traditional parents were more likely than lesbian parents to report being concerned about
raising a good/ moral/ not macho man;
their sons achieving things in his life/ having a good life; or
their sons being psychologically healthy/ happy.
One other suggestive trend did not reach statistical significance. This was in the category: expresses concern about the special quality of father/son relationships.
To download a complete copy of the full report click here.
For more information about our research, click here.
This report presents an analysis of sons' responses to two dilemmas. The first dilemma asks the sons to solve two problems. The first is about the distribution of money after a class fundraiser. The second is about grading. For a detailed description of the distributive justice dilemma go here. Four themes present in the children's responses are analyzed by developmental level and family type:
The second dilemma asks the sons to describe the best way to deal with a mother who breaks a promise to her son. For a detailed description of the picnic dilemma go here. Three themes present in the children's responses are analyzed by developmental level and family type:
Changes in reasoning across developmental levels are described in the full report. There was no statistically significant difference in the developmental levels of sons of lesbian parents and traditional parents. The sons of lesbian parents provided more evidence of buy-in than the sons of traditional parents.
Examples of concepts expressed more by sons of lesbian parents than sons of traditional parents:
Examples of concepts expressed more by sons of traditional parents than sons of lesbian parents:
Read the full report
This report presents the highlights of our in-depth analysis of parents’ and sons’ interviews. It is not exhaustive; it focuses primarily on evidence for a relation between reported parents’ level of reflection, the degree of sons' buy-in to parental authority, and the values of sons.
Buy-in is a term we borrow from leadership theory, which describes two types of leadership. The first is transactional leadership in which followers are motivated by a system of punishment and rewards. The second, is transformational leadership, in which leaders motivate followers by inspiring them to embrace the leader’s values and goals—buy-in. Transformational leaders increase buy-in by listening to their followers, inspiring them to embrace the leader’s goals and values, and by effectively modeling these values. They are also avid and reflective learners and encourage reflection and development in their followers. Transformational leadership is considered to be more effective than transactional leadership in most leadership situations. See Bass (1985) for a more complete definition of these two forms of leadership, and Popper and Mayseless (2003) for a recent comparison of transformational leadership and good parenting practices.
Parent type did not have a large impact on the content of the interviews. For the most part, birth mothers and other parents spoke about the same kinds of things in approximately the same proportions. However, there were some important differences in reports of parenting style, discipline, and morality.
It is immediately apparent from the data that birth mothers exceeded other parents in the number of categories they dominated, arguably indicating more reflectivity about parenting on the part of birth mothers than other parents. In addition, most of the categories into which birth mothers’ responses were more frequently coded can be thought of as transformational. These are learning, reflectivity, values, and modeling.
Family type had an important impact on the content of the interviews. Although, for the most part, lesbian parents and traditional parents spoke about the same kinds of things, the proportions sometimes differed significantly. Overall, lesbian parents reported more considerations, suggesting greater reflectivity on the part of lesbian parents compared to traditional parents. Moreover, many of the categories endorsed by more lesbian than traditional parents align with the transformational leadership model. These include sharing power, encouraging development, focusing on values, encouraging reflectivity, modeling, and learning.
For the most part, sons of lesbian and traditional parents spoke about the same kinds of things in approximately the same proportions. However, there were important differences between these two groups of sons, indicating that sons of lesbian parents provided more reasons for adhering to parental authority and values—buy-in. Moreover, there were indications that sons of traditional parents were more likely to consider deviating from parental authority or values.
Read the full report
All of these boys and girls are in the same class together. One day their teacher, Mr. Townsend lets them spend the whole afternoon making paintings and crayon drawings. Mr. Townsend thought these pictures were so good that the class could sell them at the school fair. They sold the pictures to their parents, and together the class made a whole lot of money. Now, all the children gathered the next day and tried to decide how to split up the money.
Remember Billy, he's the poor kid who never gets any allowance. Sometimes he asks Mr. Townsend, the teacher, for a free candy bar at school. Some of the kids tell Mr. Townsend that he shouldn't give Billy a free one because they have to pay a dime for theirs, and its not fair that he should get one free.
Remember, there was a lazy kid in the class—Rebecca. Now, Rebecca is very smart. She never studies or does her homework because she is so lazy. But, she always gets all the answers right on tests (or, for younger subjects, when Mr. Townsend asks her questions). Peter, here, is just the opposite. He works real hard, but he's not so smart and usually makes lots of mistakes.
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Note: The picture cards on this page were designed by Dr. Peggy Drexler to help children focus on the dilemma during the interview process. They depict the characters and their relationships to one another in each story. In order to standarize the set of issues scored for each interview, the central issues for each dilemma were predefined to include authority, contract, and/or positive justice. Picture sets can be ordered directly from Dr. Drexler.
How do you think John got to be captain of the baseball team?
Does John, the captain, have the right to tell Billy what position to play?
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Note: The picture cards on this page were designed by Dr. Peggy Drexler to help children focus on the dilemma during the interview process. They depict the characters and their relationships to one another in each story. In order to standarize the set of issues scored for each interview, the central issues for each dilemma were predefined to include authority, contract, and/or positive justice. Picture sets can be ordered directly from Dr. Drexler.
This is Peter (Michelle for girl subjects), and here is his mother. Mrs. Johnson wants Peter to clean up his own room every day, and she tells him that he can't go out and play until he cleans up his room and straightens out his toys. But one day, Peter's friend Michael comes over and tells Peter that all the kids are leaving right away for a picnic. Peter wants to go, but his room is a big mess. He tells his mother that he doesn't have time to straighten his room right now, but he'll do it later. She tells him no, that he'll have to stay in and miss the picnic.
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Note: The picture cards on this page were designed by Dr. Peggy Drexler to help children focus on the dilemma during the interview process. They depict the characters and their relationships to one another in each story. In order to standarize the set of issues scored for each interview, the central issues for each dilemma were predefined to include authority, contract, and/or positive justice. Picture sets can be ordered directly from Dr. Drexler.