What causes homosexuality? Can homosexuality ever result from a single, traumatic experience? What can parents do to prevent this tendency in their children?
Despite all the shouting to the contrary, no credible scientific research has substantiated the claim that homosexuality is genetic or innate. The causes of homosexuality, as they are known, are too complex to treat in the context of this book. As a generalization, it can be said that homosexuality results from a home life that usually involved confusion in sexual identity. Again, conditions vary tremendously, and the active recruitment to the lifestyle that is going on in some quarters has muddied the waters. I think we can still say that the most common home environment of a future male homosexual is a home where the mother is dominating, overprotective, and possessive, while the father rejects and ridicules the child. The opposite situation occurs too, where the mother rejects her son because he is a male. Generally, the same kinds of role confusion in the home contribute to female homosexual tendencies. In some sense, the girl feels rejection because of her gender and comes to believe only a male identity carries worth.
Homosexuality (or at least serious gender confusion) can result from a rape or other traumatic experience, but there is no evidence that it happens often. I worked with one homosexual teenager whose drunken father forced him to have sexual intercourse with his mother following a New Year's Eve party. His disgust for sex with women was easy to trace. Most cases are less obvious.
The best prevention of gender confusion remains a strong home life. Homosexuality is much less likely to occur in the context of a loving home where parents are reasonably well adjusted sexually themselves. I don't think it is necessary to react with paranoia even in this aberrant culture. If parents provide a healthy, stable home life and do not interfere with the child's appropriate sex role, homosexuality is highly unlikely to occur.
The New Hide or Seek
By Dr. James Dobson