Ideological beliefs and gender essentialism: relations to individual and normative opposition to same-sex parent families

Abstract

ABSTRACT Although more research on attitudes towards same-sex parent families has been conducted in recent years, scant attention has been paid to its predictors in a Chinese context. This cross-sectional study aimed to investigate the relations of two ideological beliefs (social dominance orientation and right-wing authoritarianism) to gender essentialism and opposition to same-sex parent families among 425 Chinese individuals. We found that male, older generations, and heterosexual people showed higher levels of opposition in general. Our main result from structural equation modelling suggests that social dominance orientation and right-wing authoritarianism make significant and independent contributions to opposition to same-sex parent families via shaping individuals’ essentialist beliefs of gender. The predictions remained significant even after the potential influence of covariates (i.e. age, gender, and sexual orientation) was controlled statistically. This study has contributed to the understanding of the associations between ideological beliefs and attitudes towards same-sex parent families in an understudied cultural context.