Susan Golombok
Professor
Psychology
University of Cambridge
United States of America
Biography
Susan Golombok is Professor of Family Research and Director of the Centre for Family Research at the University of Cambridge. Her research examines the impact of new family forms on parenting and child development, specifically lesbian mother families, gay father families, single mothers by choice and families created by assisted reproductive technologies including in vitro fertilisation (IVF), donor insemination, egg donation and surrogacy. Her research has not only challenged commonly held assumptions about these families but also has contested widely held theories of child development by demonstrating that structural aspects of the family, such as the number, gender, sexual orientation, and genetic relatedness of parents, is less important for children’s psychological wellbeing than the quality of family relationships. In addition to academic papers she is the author of Parenting: What really counts? and co-author of Bottling it Up, Gender Development, and Growing up in a Lesbian Family.
Research Interest
Family Research
Publications
-
Golombok, S. (in press). Parenting in new family forms. In M. van IJzendoorn & M. Bakermans-Kranenburg (Eds.) Parenting. Current Opinion in Psychology.
-
Ilioi, E., Blake, L., Jadva, V., Roman, G., & Golombok, S. (in press). The role of age of disclosure of biological origins in the psychological wellbeing of adolescents conceived by reproductive donation: A longitudinal study from age 1 to age 14. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry.
-
Golombok, S., Blake, L., Slutsky, J., Raffanello, E., Roman, G., & Ehrhardt, A. (in press). Parenting and the adjustment of children born to gay fathers through surrogacy. Child Development.
