Research paper example

Parental influence on sexuality Introduction Sexuality and sexual orientation has been an issue that is subject to both social and political debate. According to an article Personality Processes and Individual Differences by Netta Weinstein and William S Ryan, it is evident that most societies hold the opinion that an individual’s upbringing determines his sexual orientation. In this regard, most societies hold the opinion that individuals who grow up with autonomy-thwarting parents have lower chances of exploring their sexual values and identities and therefore disregard social aspects that they believe to be unacceptable. In most cases such individuals are forced to disregard issues like homosexuality and attraction to same sex due to stigmatization of such sexuality aspects by their societies (or parents) in their childhood.
Discussion
As a result, individuals who hold such socially unacceptable feelings will often tend to suppress them. In their research, Netta Weinstein and William S Ryan developed a hypothesis based on the idea that individuals who experienced low parental autonomy support had a higher discrepancy between implicit and explicit indicators of sexual orientation measured using reaction time (Netta et al, 2012). Furthermore, the research is based on the idea that such discrepancy may threaten an individual’s perception of his sexual orientation which may result to an individual developing defensive mechanism.
For instance if an individual was brought up in an environment in which his parents who did not support autonomy and had strong negative perception on homosexuality, then the individual will experience strong discrepancy between implicit gay orientation and explicit gay orientation resulting to homophobia and negative perception of homosexuality without any solid reason for doing so (Grolnick, 2009). Based on the study, these ideas have been verified in the literature review since the research evaluates scientific papers that show similar results.
For instance, the research paper identifies that the relationship between parents and their children lays a foundation for a child’s behavior; specifically, autonomy-supportive parents enables children to grow up into individuals who determine their own fate or opinion on social issues including sexuality. In this regard such individuals have personal opinions that are different from their parents and therefore have low discrepancy on implicit and explicit perspectives on sexual orientation (Netta et al, 2012). Furthermore, the research also considers two previously done studies on sexuality in order to show validity of their research.
The research supported the idea that an individual brought up by autonomy-supportive parents experiences less discrepancy between implicit and explicit perception of sexual orientation (Grolnick, 2009). Moreover, this study also supported the idea that individuals with strong discrepancy between implicit and explicit perception of sexual orientation had high levels of homophobia and antigay bias. Moreover, the research showed that there was no relation between an individual’s explicit and implicit sexual orientation if the father had low autonomy support.
Conclusion
Though the research supports the fact that an individual’s character is influenced by the degree of autonomy that the individual experienced in his childhood, and that the sexual orientation is also influenced by the parent’s autonomy, the research fails to address other important factors like the role of government regulation as well as the legal perspective of individuals’ sexuality in other nation (Grolnick, 2009). Moreover, the research only addresses the US and German culture which forms a bias to other conservative cultures that stigmatize homosexuality. Additionally, the research also source their information from college students, majority of who no longer live with their parent. This information is subject to recall bias (Netta, 2012). Despite the above limitations, this research provides information that could be used to argue and understand variation of individual’s perception of their sexual orientation and understand behaviorism of children especially when counseling their parents.
References
Grolnick, W. S. (2009). The role of parents in facilitating autonomous self-regulation for education. Theory and Research in Education, 7(1), 164–173.
Netta W, William S. R., Cody R. D., Andrew K. P., Nicole L., & Richard M. R. (2012). Parental Autonomy Support and Discrepancies Between Implicit and Explicit Sexual Identities: Dynamics of Self-Acceptance and Defense 1(1), 5-16.