Dr H.M.W. Bos (1963) has been appointed professor of Sexual and Gender Diversity in Families and Youth at the University of Amsterdam’s (UvA) Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences.
Henny Bos carries out research into same-sex parenting families and sexual minority youth. Bos is the co-investigator of the U.S. National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study (NLLFS), the longest-running prospective study on lesbian mothers who had children as the result of donor insemination during the lesbian baby boom of the 1980s. Now in its 31st year, the NLLFS began with interviews of the prospective mothers (birth mothers and co-mothers) before the children were born and focused on parental relationships, social supports, reasons and motives for pregnancy, concerns about stigmatisation and coping strategies.
As professor at the UvA, Bos will focus on (1) lesbian, gay and transgender parenthood, and (2) sexual minority and gender nonconforming youth. Studying gay father families, lesbian and gay father co-parenting arrangement families, and transgender parent families might help to tease apart the relative influences of gender, genetic connections and minority status on child-rearing and child development. These studies could benefit from including measures of resilience, as well as assessments of how parents deal with and prepare their offspring for the prospect of homophobic or transphobic discrimination.
More information on the UvA site.
