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THE INTERACTION OF BIRTH ORDER AND PARENTAL AGE ON SEXUAL ORIENTATION: AN EXAMINATION IN TWO SAMPLES

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2004

ANTHONY F. BOGAERT  and
JOHN CAIRNEY
ANTHONY F. BOGAERT
Affiliation:
Departments of Community Health Sciences, Brock University, St Catharines, Canada L2S 3A1 Departments of Psychology, Brock University, St Catharines, Canada L2S 3A1
JOHN CAIRNEY
Affiliation:
Departments of Community Health Sciences, Brock University, St Catharines, Canada L2S 3A1 Health Systems Research and Consulting Unit, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health and the Department of Psychiatry, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada
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Abstract

A birth order and sexual orientation relationship has been demonstrated numerous times in men, but a related variable, parental age (i.e. age of parents when the participant was born), has been less studied and has demonstrated contradictory results. In this research, the relations among birth order, parental age and sexual orientation were examined in a national probability sample of the US (Kessler, 1994; Kessler et al., 1994) and in a Canadian sample of homosexual and heterosexual men closely matched on demographic characteristics (Blanchard & Bogaert, 1996a). In both studies, an interaction between birth order and parental age was observed in men, such that there was positive association between number of older siblings and the likelihood of homosexuality, but this association weakened with increasing parental age. No significant effects were observed for women. The results are discussed in relation to recent theories of the birth order/sexual orientation relationship.

Type
Regular Articles
Information
Journal of Biosocial Science , Volume 36 , Issue 1 , January 2004 , pp. 19 - 37
Copyright
© 2004 Cambridge University Press

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