Psychological Health and Factors the Court Seeks to Control in Lesbian Mother Custody Trials

Abstract

The court has repeatedly ruled that a mother will lose custody of and visitation privileges with her children if she expresses her lesbianism through involvement or cohabitation with a female partner, being affiliated with a lesbian community, or disclosing her lesbianism to her children. Associations between expressions of lesbianism for 25 self-identified lesbian mothers and psychological health as measured by three scales on the California Psychological Inventory and by the Affectometer were therefore examined. Psychological health correlated positively with openness to employer, ex-husband, children, and a lesbian community, and with amount of feminist activism. There was no correlation between psychological health and openness to parents, possibly because of parental rejection.