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Is My Child Gay?

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Is My Child Gay? | By Jesse Bering | Jessica Raposo - April 18th, 2013 |

In Jesse Bering’s “Is Your Child Gay?” which is excerpted from his book, Why Is The Penis Shaped Like That?, he talks about childhood behaviors that could potentially be an indicator for pre-homosexuality. Along with talking about his own experiences of how he came to find his own sexuality, Bering discusses several different studies that have shown, in fact there are certain behaviors that could pre-determine a child’s sexual orientation. Of course, just like many theories in child development, this is not something that is 100% reliable.
The core of this article focuses on a child’s domain of play and how, who, and what a child plays with can be proof to this “pre-homosexuality” theory.
The most obvious theme that is present in this article is the continuity-discontinuity issue. According to this view of continuity once a child begins down a particular developmental path, he or she stays on that path throughout life. On the flip side of this is the discontinuity part in which it is believed that early life experiences don’t necessarily carry out with you for the duration of your life. Of course neither one of these is 100% accurate but this article demonstrates the continuity issue, basically saying if a little boy plays with dolls when he is five years old it is likely for that boy to continue down that path and eventually be a homosexual adolescent and adult.
The other theme that is stated directly in Bering’s article is “Development is Always Jointly Influenced by Heredity and Environment.” This is the nature-nurture issue that is a constant back-and-forth in Child Development. How much does biology play a factor in homosexuality? Or is homosexuality based purely off of a person’s experiences? Bering sates that “heritable, biological factors interact with environmental

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