For sixty years, various studies have demonstrated that a significant percentage, perhaps a majority, of American males have always felt estranged from the fathers who raised them. As early as 1928, Meyer F. Nimkoff found that 60 percent of the 1,336 males he studied (average age twenty-two) did not feel close enough to their fathers to confide in them, and the father-son relationship was distant in other significant ways. He concluded: "If sons withhold trust from their fathers, it appears they deny his leadership and limit association with him, also."[3] Researchers have also noted that one-third to one-half of American teenage boys and adult men regard their fathers as "distant," unaccepting, "cold or indifferent."[4] The psychiatrist Irving Bieber found that 37 percent of the heterosexual males he studied even said they "hated" their fathers, which was paralleled by a study that 21 percent of male heterosexuals at the University of Utah disliked their fathers.[5]

As indirect evidence of this widespread father-son emotional dysfunction, studies of thousands of American adolescents since the 1930s have shown that only 5-22 percent of the young men "preferred" their fathers. In contrast, 34-76 percent of young men listed their mother as the preferred parent, even though the surveys also allowed sons to indicate equal preference or no preference. These statistics apply to young men in families without divorce.[6] In addition, 82 percent of males in a 1978 study felt alienated from their fathers, while a 1985 study reported that only 8 percent of 500 male adolescents felt "loved" by their fathers.[7]

Thus, claiming father-son emotional distance as the explanation for male homosexuality is similar to claiming that right-handedness causes homosexuality merely because most homosexuals are right-handed.[8] The equation "abdicating fathers, homosexual sons" is a theory based on isolating homosexual experiences from human experiences generally.[9] Typically, authors whose "reparative therapy of male homosexuality depends on "a failed relationship to father" do not acknowledge such well-known studies of father-son "failure" among American males generally.[10] As the psychiatrist Richard Green, whose own research was originally based on the assumption of parental causation, has observed: "A gnawing question in these studies is what percent of heterosexuals answer all items [concerning father-son relationships] in the ‘homosexual direction’ and what percent of homosexuals answer all items in the ‘heterosexual direction’." Because of such inconsistencies, Green returned to genetic or other biological determinants for homosexuality.[11]

Another fallacy involves attaching great significance to the finding of many studies that homosexual men are "more likely" to describe their fathers as "distant, hostile, or rejecting" than heterosexual sons are.[12] Such a pattern is unsurprising in a culture that has negative judgments about homosexuality. In other words, since both heterosexual and homosexual American males report unsatisfactory relationships with their fathers, the higher incidence of strain between homosexual sons and their fathers is more likely a result of the sons’ "homosexual tendencies" rather than the cause.[13]

In fact, a cross-cultural study of 148 heterosexual sons and 151 homosexual sons in families from the United States, Guatemala, Brazil, and the Philippines described this as a "culturally invariable" pattern from early childhood: "the father of a homosexual son becomes distant, detached, and hostile because he is disappointed in the effeminate son."[14] Even when fathers attempted to be close, accepting, and nurturing to sons who were effeminate or who seemed to be homosexually oriented, an American psychiatrist found that it was the boys themselves (aged six to sixteen) who had withdrawn emotionally and socially from their supportive fathers. As adults the homosexual sons blamed the fathers for this childhood estrangement.[15] Nevertheless, many of these studies acknowledge that a large proportion of male homosexuals have exhibited no effeminate behavior as children or as adults.
 

Notes

[1] In addition to this emphasis in chap. 1 and its notes, see also Thomas S. Weinberg, Gay Men, Gay Selves: The Social Construction of Homosexual Identities (New York: Irvington, 1983); Celia Kitzinger, The Social Construction of Lesbianism (London: Sage, 1987); Edward Stein, ed., Forms of Desire: Sexual Orientation and the Social Constructionist Controversy (New York: Garland, 1990); John P. DeCecco and John P. Elia, "A Critique and Synthesis of Biological Essentialism and Social Constructionist Views of Sexuality and Gender," Journal of Homosexuality 24, nos. 3-4 (1993): 1-26.

[2] This discussion emphasizes male homosexuality rather than female homosexuality because the former has been the primary emphasis of the behavioral science literature, which has often claimed direct parental causation of male homosexuality, while acknowledging ambiguous evidence for the parental role as a cause of lesbianism. See John Nash’s "The Father in Contemporary Culture and Current Psychological Literature," Child Development 36 (Mar. 1965): 277, for "paternal insufficiency as a causal factor" of male homosexuality because "homosexual case histories reveal that in the male there is characteristically a lack of warm, affectionate relationships with the father," although his bibliographic essay did not mention the similar findings for American males in general; Lewis Yablonsky’s Fathers and Sons (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982), 175, regarding his male homosexual patients, although there is no comparison to the "unrequited love for their fathers" among the 564 "normal" men he also surveyed (10); Charles W. Socarides’s "Abdicating Fathers, Homosexual Sons: Psychianalytical Observations on the Contributions of the Father to the Development of Male Homosexuality," in Stanley H. Cath, Alan R. Gurwitt, and John Munder Ross, eds., Father and Child: Developmental and Clinical Perspectives (Boston: Little, Brown, 1982), 509-21, based on his therapy with 214 homosexual males, although there is no reference to the experience of heterosexual males with their fathers; see also Victor L. Brown Jr., "Male Homosexuality: Identity Seeking a Role," AMCAP: Journal of the Association of Mormon Counselors and Psychotherapists 7 (Apr. 1981): 4; Elizabeth R. Moberly, Homosexuality: A New Christian Ethic (Cambridge: James Clarke, 1983), 2-11; Thomas E. Pritt and Ann F. Pritt, "Homosexuality: Getting beyond the Therapeutic Impasse," AMCAP: Journal of the Association of Mormon Counselors and Psychotherapists 13, no. 1 (1987): 41-42, 49; Joseph Nicolosi, Reparative Therapy of Male Homosexuality: A New Clinical Approach (Northvale, N.J.: Jason Aronson, 1991), 43-44, 45, 49; and Joseph Nicolosi, Healing Homosexuality: Case Stories of Reparative Therapy (Northvale, N.J.; Jason Aronson, 1993), 130. I make these assessments from the perspective of the historical evidences of these interpretations and relevant studies, but I claim no expertise as a clinician or behavioral scientist. The following paragraphs in the text constitute a brief history of ideas and methodologies. However, just as I regard the "compulsory heterosexuality" view of some homosexual theorists as fundamentally flawed, I likewise see essential flaws in the assumptions and methodology of certain clinical approaches to homosexuality. I do not question the sincerity of those who promote "reparative therapy" for homosexuality, and I feel only compassion for the desperation of those who seem willing to do anything to experience such a "cure."

[3] Meyer F. Nimkoff, "Parent-Child Intimacy: An Introductory Study," Social Forces 7 (Dec. 1928): 248, 249.

[4] L. Pearl Gardner, "An Analysis of Children’s Attitudes toward Fathers," Journal of Genetic Psychology 70 (Mar. 1947): 5, 11, for a study of 182 boys (37 percent "wished the father to show more love toward them"); Jerome Kagen, "The Child’s Percpetion of the Parent," Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 53 (Sept. 1956): 257, for a study of 111 boys ages 6-10 (a "majority" said their fathers were "less friendly" than their mothers); Irving Bieber, Harvey J. Dain, Paul R. Dince, Marvin G. Drellich, Henry G. Grand, Ralph H. Gundlach, Malvina W. Kremer, Alfred H. Rifkin, Cornelia B. Wilbur, Toby B. Bieber, Homosexuality: A Psychoanalytic Study (New York: Basic Books, 1962), 86-87, for a study of 100 heterosexual males (54 percent feared their fathers and only 47 percent felt accepted by their fathers); Leif J. Braatan and C. Douglas Darling, "Overt and Covert Homosexual Problems among Male College Students," Genetic Psychology Monographs 71 (May 1965): 273-74, 281, 294, for a study of 50 heterosexual men (25 percent had "detached-hostile father," 43 percent "did not feel accepted and respected by father," and 19 percent "expressed hatred for father"); W. W. Meissner, "Parental Interaction of the Adolescent Boy," Journal of Genetic Psychology 107 (Dec. 1965): 226-27, for a study of 1,278 male high school students (35 percent "felt that their fathers were cold or indifferent"), reprinted in Alvin E. Winder, ed., Adolescence: Contemporary Studies, 2d ed. (New York: D. Van Nostrand, 1974), 247, 250; Morris Rosenberg, Society and the Adolescent Self-Image (Princeton, N.J.; Princeton University Press, 1965), 44, for a study of 441 boys (32 percent of "lower class" boys, 24 percent of middle-class boys, and 15 percent of upper-class boys said they were "not close" to their fathers); Richard Melvin Smith, "The impact of Fathers on Delinquent Males" (Ed.D. diss., Oklahoma State University, 1974), 41, for a study of 183 nondelinquent white males (18.6 percent denied they were close with their fathers and 26.8 percent were undecided, which findings were paralleled at higher percentages for male residents of reform schools); Alan P. Bell, Martin S. Weinberg, and Sue Keifer Hammersmith, Sexual Preference: Its Development in Men and Women: Statistical Appendix (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1981), 22-26, for a study of 265 white heterosexual men (38 percent felt distant from their fathers, 35 percent described their fathers as emotionally detached, 31 percent regarded the relationship with their fathers as generally negative, 20 percent felt anger or hostility toward their fathers, and 19 percent felt rejected by their fathers) and for a study of 50 black heterosexual men (20 percent felt distant from their fathers, 30 percent described their fathers as emotionally detached, 18 percent regarded the relationship with their fathers as generally negative, 10 percent felt anger or hostility toward their fathers, and 14 percent felt rejected by their fathers); James Youniss and Jacqueline Smollar, Adolescent Relations with Mothers, Fathers, and Friends (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), 22, 68, for a study of 500 male adolescents (39 percent reported their fathers as "withdrawn," and 39 percent described fathers as "distant"); Samuel Oshershon, in Finding Our Fathers; The Unfinished Business of Manhood (New York: Free Press/Macmillan, 1986), 4-5, calls this pattern of father-son estrangement "one of the great underestimated tragedies of our times"; Ralph Keyes, in Sons on Fathers: A Book of Men’s Writings (New York: HarperCollins, 1992), xix, describes this "father hunger" as lifelong for most American males rather than as only an early developmental stage, which is how others characterize the impulse. Despite their emphasis on parent-child relationships, many well-known studies have not separately analyzed father-son relationships. For example, see Alice Sowers, "Parent-Child Relationships from the Child’s Point of View," Journal of Experimental Education 6 (Dec. 1937): 205-31; Theodore Caplow, Howard M. Bahr, Bruce A. Chadwick, Reuben Hill, and Margaret Holmes Williamson, Middletown Families: Fifty Years of Chane and Continuity (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982), 145-46, 374; George Gallup Jr., The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion, 1989 (Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 1990), 155.

[5] Bieber, Homosexuality, 86-87; see Thomas Elwood Pritt, "A Comparative Study between Male Homosexuals’ and Heterosexuals’ Perceived Parental Acceptance-Rejection, Self-Concepts, and Self-Evaluation Tendencies" (Ph.D. diss., University of Utah, 1971), 52, 72, for a study of 42 heterosexual male students. Bieber and Pritt reported findings that were two or three times higher than the later study by Bell, Weinberg, and Hammersmith, Statistical Appendix, 25, which found that 12 percent of 265 white heterosexual men disliked or hated their fathers, and 14 percent of 50 black heterosexual men disliked or hated their fathers. 

[6] See Margaret Simpson, Parent Preferences of Young Children (New York: Teachers College, Columbia University, 1935), 25, a study of hundreds of nine-year-old boys that found that only 10 percent preferred their fathers, as compared to 76 percent who preferred their mothers, as reported in Robert L. Griswold, "’Ties That Bind and Bonds That Break’: Children’s Attitudes toward Fathers, 1900-1930," in Elliott West and Paula Petrik, eds., Small Worlds: Children and Adolescents in America, 1850-1950 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1992), 257; a study of approximately 6,500 "public school" boys in White House Conference on Child Health and Protection, The Adolescent in the Family (New York: D. Appleton and Century, 1934), xiii, 133, 142-44 ("the Father—An Outsider"), 357, and report (142), which found that only 5 percent of urban "white" boys "preferred the father," as compared to 40 percent who preferred their mothers; H. Meltzer, "Sex Differences in Parental Preference Patterns," Character and Personality 10 (Dec. 1941): 119-20, a study that found that 17.9 percent of 76 boys preferred their fathers, compared to 50 percent who preferred their mothers; Meyer F. Nimkoff, "The Child’s Preference for Father or Mother," American Sociological Review 7 (Aug. 1942): 517, reporting that 22 percent of several hundred boys (ages 5 to 10) preferred their fathers as compared to 70 percent who stated a preference for their mothers; L. Pearl Gardner, "An Analysis of Children’s Attitudes toward Fathers," Journal of Genetic Psychology 70 (Mar. 1947): 5, 11, 23, a study that found that 15 percent of 182 boys preferred their fathers as compared with 34 percent who stated a preference for their mothers; Marvin O. Nelson, "The Concept of God and Feelings toward Parents," Journal of Individual Psychology 27 (May 1971): 47-48, a study that found that 14 percent of 37 men (ages 15 to 44) preferred their fathers, compared to 59 percent who preferred their mothers. 

[7] Daniel J. Levinson, Charlotte Darrow, Edward B. Klein, Martha H. Levinson, and Broxton McKee, Seasons of a Man’s Life (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1978), 74; Youniss and Smollar, Adolescent Relations, 68, concerning 500 male adolescents; see also Judith Arcana, Every Mother’s Son: The Role of Mothers in the Making of Men (Seattle: Seal Press, 1986), 143, who reported that "about 1 percent of the sons described only good relations with their fathers," while the rest had distant or troubled relationships with fathers. Since her study involved sixty sons (xi), only one son reported this positive relationship with his father. 

[8] However, as further evidence of the genetic/biological origins of homosexuality, homosexuals are more likely to be left-handed than heterosexuals, three or more times more likely according to some studies. See James Lindesay, "Laterality Shift in Homosexual Males," Neuropsychologica 25, no. 6 (1987): 965-69; Cheryl M. McCormcik, Sandra F. Witelson, and Edward Kingstone, "Left-Handedness in Homosexual Men and Women: Neuroendocrine Implications," Psychoneuroendocrinology 15, no. 1 (1990): 69-76; "Homosexuals Likely to Be Left-Handed, Study Shows," Deseret News, 26 July 1990, A-10; Nora Underwood, "The Hands Have It: A Study Provides a Clue to the Mystery of Sexuality," Maclean’s 6 Aug. 1990, 51; S. E. Marchant-Haycox, I. C. McManus, and G. D. Wilson, "Left-Handedness, Homosexuality, HIV Infection, and AIDS," Cortex: A Journal Devoted to the Study of the Nervous System and Behavior 27 (Mar. 1991):49-56. Those findings are consistent with other studies that indicate that the brain structure and mental processes of homosexuals are different from the brain structure and cognitive processes of heterosexuals, as in Brian A. Gladue, William W. Beatty, Jan Larson, and R. Dennis Staton, "Sexual Orientation and Spatial Ability in Men and Women," Psychobiology 18 (Mar. 1990): 101-8; D. F. Swaab and M. A. Hofman, "An Enlarged Suprachiasmatic Nucleus in Homosexual Men," Brain Research 537 (24 Dec. 1990): 141-48; Cheryl M. McCormick and Sandra F. Witelson, "A Cognitive Profile of Homosexual Men Compared to Heterosexual Men and Women," Psychoneuroendocrinology 16, no. 6 (1991): 459-73; Simon LeVay, "A Difference in Hypothalamic Structure between Heterosexual and Homosexual Men," Science, 30 Aug. 1991, 1034-37; Carol Ezzell, "Brain Feature Linked to Sexual Orientation," Science News, 31 Aug. 1991, 134; Allen and Gorski, "Sexual Orientation and the Size of the Brain," 7199-202; LeVay, Sexual Brain, 111-30; Cheryl M. McCormick and Sandra F. Witelson, "Functional Cerebral Asymmetry and Sexual Orientation in Men and Women," Behavioral Neuroscience 108 (June 1994): 525-31. 

[9] That same methodological fallacy has been common in published studies of other "deviant" groups, such as schizophrenics, whose family relationships have been analyzed without comparison to findings concerning the families of noninstitutionalized persons or of the "normal" population. The classic example is the comparative analysis in Louise Behrens Apperson and W. George McAddoo Jr., "Parental Factors in the Childhood of Homosexuals," Journal of Abnormal Psychology 73 (June 1968):201-6. Instead of comparing homosexuals to a "normal" heterosexual sample, Apperson and McAddoo used hospitalized schizophrenics as the "control group" for understanding the experience of homosexuals. As an LDS [Latter-Day Saints] example of interpreting homosexual experience in isolation, Pritt and Pritt, in "Homosexuality," 53, referred to "homosexuals’ unnatural and immoral physical transactions," explaining that male homosexuals "become highly responsive to [male] genitalia, the primary insignia" of a man. That observation ignored the fact that heterosexual men also "become highly responsive" to a woman’s breasts, which most men regard as "the primary insignia" of a woman. Either both equivalent behaviors are pathological or neither is, but it is fallacious to identify one as pathological while assuming that the equivalent behavior is not. 

[10] The phrases are Nicolosi’s, whose Reparative Therapy cites Bieber and Bell, Weinberg, and Hammersmith about difficulties in father-son relationships for homosexual males, without acknowledging the significant percentages of "father failure" for heterosexual sons in those two studies. Moreover Nicolosi’s bibliography (317-40) does not list the well-known studies of heterosexual estrangement from fathers, which I cite in note 4. Such omissions are extraordinary in a book whose central framework is father-son dysfunction. This same pattern of citing only studies of homosexual son-father difficulties and omitting standard sources about heterosexual son-father "failure" is observable in the citations of Socarides, "Abducting Fathers," 509-16, and in the bibliographies of Albert Ellis, Homosexuality: Its Causes and Cure (New York: Lyle Stuart, 1965), 57-58, 280-88; Lawrence J. Hatterer, Changing Homosexuality in the Male: Treatment for Men Troubled by Homosexuality (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1970), 19, 485-86; Charles W. Socarides, Homosexuality (New York: Jason Aronson, 1978), 183-84, 603-26; Charles W. Socarides, "The Psychoanalytical Theory of Homosexuality with Special Reference to Therapy," in Ismond Rosen, ed., Sexual Deviation, 2d ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), 267, 275-77; Charles W. Socarides, The Preoedipal Origin and Psychoanalytic Therapy of Sexual Perversions (Madison, Conn.: International Universities Press, 1988), 263-67, 587-614; Charles W. Socarides and Vamik D. Volkan, eds., The Homosexualities and the Therapeutic Process (Madison, Conn.: International Universities Press, 1991), 293-303; and Yablonsky, Fathers and Sons, 217-18. 

[11] Green, "Sissy Boy Syndrome," 372, 384, quotation from 59. 

[12] The phrases are from Nicolosi, Reparative Therapy, 43-44, who depends primarily on Bieber, Homosexuality, and Yablonsky, Fathers and Sons, 175-77. On this matter Yablonsky did not provide any statistical comparison of his 564 surveyed heterosexuals and his unspecified number of homosexual clients. Bieber, in Homosexuality, 86-87, shows that for 106 homosexual males, 66 percent feared their fathers, 60 percent hated their fathers, and only 23 percent felt accepted by their fathers, compared with 100 heterosexual males, of which 54 percent feared their fathers, 37 percent hated their fathers, and only 47 percent felt accepted by their fathers. However, Bieber ignored the obvious question of why this same factor did not produce homosexuality in the nearly half of heterosexual males who had equally troubled relationships with their fathers. Green, in "Sissy Boy Syndrome," 58, observed that "this overlap weakens the significance of the finding" in Bieber’s study. Nevertheless, a much higher rate of father-son antagonism for homosexual males than for heterosexual males has also been reported by Carl H. Jonas, "An Objective Approach to the Personality and Environment in Homosexuality," Psychiatric Quarterly 18 (Oct. 1944): 626, 629, 633; D. J. West, "Parental Figures in the Genesis of Male Homosexuality," International Journal of Social Psychiatry 5 (Autumn 1959): 92-93, 95; Leif J. Braatan and C. Douglas Darling, "Overt and Covert Homosexual Problems among Male College Students," Genetic Psychology Monographs 71 (May 1965): 273-74, 281, 294; Ray B. Evans, "Childhood Parental Relationships of Homosexual Men," Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 33 (Apr. 1969): 129, 133; John R. Snortum, James F. Gillespie, John E. Marshall, John P. McLaughlin, and Ludwig Mosberg, "Family Dynamics and Homosexuality," Psychological Reports 24 (June 1969): 767; Pritt, "Comparative Study," 52, 72, 78; Norman L. Thompson Jr., David M. Schwartz, Boyd R. McCandless, and David A. Edwards, "Parent-Child Relationships and Sexual Identity in Male and Female Homosexuals and Heterosexuals," Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 41 (Aug. 1973): 121, 123; Walter Stephan, "Parental Relationships and Early Social Experiences of Activist Male Homosexuals and Male Heterosexuals," Journal of Abnormal Psychology 82 (Dec. 1973): 507-8; Marcel T. Saghir and Eli Robins, Male and Female Homosexuality: A Comprehensive Investigation (Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins, 1973), 146; Brenda H. Townes, William D. Ferguson, and Sandra Gilliam, "Differences in Psychological Sex, Adjustment, and Familial Influences among Homosexual and Nonhomosexual Populations," Journal of Homosexuality 1 (Spring 1976): 270; Bell, Weinberg, and Hammersmith, Statistical Appedix, 22-26; Johanna H. Milic and Douglas P. Crowne, "Recalled Parent-Child Relations and Need for Approval of Homosexual and Heterosexual Men," Archives of Sexual Behavior 15 (June 1986): 239-46; and publications and doctoral dissertations on this matter in Europe and the United States summarized by Marvin Siegelman, "Kinsey and Others: Empirical Input," in Louis Diamant, ed., Male and Female Homosexuality: Psychological Approaches (New York: Hemisphere/Taylor and Francis Group, 1987), 51-57. However, Marvin Siegelman, in "Parental Background of Male Homosexuals and Heterosexuals," Archives of Sexual Behavior 3 (Jan. 1974): 16, "seriously question[ed] the existence of any association between family relations and homosexuality vs. heterosexuality" in his study of 445 cases. He repeated that assessment in a separate study of British samples, "Parental Backgrounds of Homosexual and Heterosexual Men: A Cross National Replication," Archives of Sexual Behavior 10 (Dec. 1981): 509-10. A similar finding appeared in Michael D. Newcomb, "The Role of Perceived Relative Parent Personality in the Development of Heterosexuals, Homosexuals, and Transvestites," Archives of Sexual Behavior 14 (Apr. 1985): 156: "The homosexual males did not perceive their relative parent personalities differently than did the heterosexual males." 

[13] Thompson, Schwartz, McCandless, and Edwards, "Parent-Child Relationships," 125, and Green, "Sissy Boy Syndrome", 277, both suggested this interpretation of data, which indicated that "nonmasculine" behavior and attitudes of young sons had actually preceded the estrangement and rejection by their fathers from early childhood onward. Moberly, in Homosexuality: A New Christian Ethic, 5, acknowledged this pattern of rejection by fathers, but insisted that such findings were no basis for concluding "that homosexuality is not caused by [parental] reactional difficulties in the first place." However, the LDS psychotherapist Jan Stout has stated that some male homosexuals "haven’t been able to make good bonds with father because of the way they feel inside. It’s the effect of the biology, not the other way around." See "Going Straight?" Deseret News, 3 May 1990, C-1. 

[14] Frederick L. Whitam and Michael Zent, "A Cross-Cultural Assessment of Early Cross-Gender Behavior and Familial Factors in Male Homosexuality," Archives of Sexual Behavior 13 (Oct. 1984): 432. 

[15] These are the findings of Bernard Zuger, who began a longitudinal study in the mid-1960s of 25 boys (ages 6-16) whose parents regarded them as effeminate or homosexually oriented, and 25 noneffeminate boys of similar ages. He discovered that 23 fathers (92 percent) had been rebuffed in their efforts to be affectionate, nurturing, and socially involved with their effeminate or homosexually oriented sons. He did not mention the probability that this situation caused a cycle of reciprocal antagonism: distancing by the homosexual son led to emotional frustration of the father whose frustrated irritation caused fear and hostility in the son who withdrew further from the father. Ten years later Zuger followed up with 16 of the original group of effeminate boys, finding that 8 were homosexual, 2 were "probably homosexual," 1 was heterosexual, 1 was "probably heterosexual," 1 was transsexual, 1 was a transvestite, and 2 were uncertain of their sexual orientation. See Bernard Zuger, "The Role of Familial Factors in Persistent Effeminate Behavior in Boys," American Journal of Psychiatry 126 (Feb. 1970): 1153, 1168, 1169; Zuger, "Effeminate Behavior Present in Boys from Childhood: Ten Additional Years of Follow-Up," Comprehensive Psychiatry 19 (July-Aug. 1978): 363, 366; Zuger, "Homosexuality and Parental Guilt," British Journal of Psychiatry 137 (July 1980): 55-56, in which Zuger denies parental causation and assumes inborn causality.