*1.4. The Current Study*

This study was aimed at filling a gap in the literature by applying the PMF to parenting desire in childless Italian LG individuals. Previous studies have already demonstrated that MST is a useful perspective for understanding psychosocial obstacles to parenting desire [9–11]. On the contrary, to our knowledge, although the PMF is an extension of MST, no previous studies have applied this framework to parenting desire.

Informed by MST, we first hypothesized that prejudice events could be negatively associated with parenting desire and, based on previous Italian studies highlighting the heteronormative social context for Italian LG individuals [20,38–42], that this association might be stronger in childless lesbian women than in childless gay men (Hypothesis 1). Second, informed both by the PMF and previous Italian studies [20,38–42], we hypothesized that the most subjective minority stressors (i.e., sexual orientation concealment and internalized heterosexism) would be negatively linked to parenting desire, with a stronger effect in lesbian women (Hypothesis 2). Third, informed by the PMF, we expected that both sexual orientation concealment and internalized heterosexism would act as mediators between prejudice events and parenting desire, and that these indirect effects would be dependent on an individual's gender (woman vs. man) (Hypothesis 3). Finally, as sociodemographic factors

might influence both minority stressors and parenting desire [3,11,46,47], we considered the possible confounding effect of the following dimensions, age, education level, political orientation, and having a partner.
