Teenagers and Socialization to Sexuality in Same-sex Families

This paper presents the results of a research carried out in the Campania region, which aims to investigate the ways in which parents relate to the emotional and sexual lives of their adolescent children, considering the changes occurred in the configuration of current families, both on the relational and structural level. The former considers the quality of relationships among family members, while the latter refers to the new family forms currently appearing within the social scenario, disarranging the traditional way of thinking about the family and originating new ways of conceiving the roles of male and female, of being together, of the idea of couple and – last but not least - of sexuality and the various ways of living and experiencing it. The research aims to analyze the ways in which “atypical” families manage the issues of adolescent children regarding the concerns raised by their first love and sexual experiences. The idea is to verify if the new family configurations show different ways (from “traditional” families) of considering children’s education and managing the aspects related to this phase of life. The research focuses on same-sex families with the goal of understanding the complexities arising in this particular family environment – which in many respects in Italy is still not fully recognized – with teenagers. Inspired by grounded theory [as a research methodology], we will try to present the findings to date, emerging from in-depth interviews with parents, trying to highlight “conformities” and “differences” at both the inter-conjugal and inter-generational level.