Study suggests risks from same-sex parenting; Stark gaps in ‘gold standard’ data set

Washington Times ^ | 6/10/12 | Cheryl Wetzstein

[rhema]

Two studies released Sunday may act like brakes on popular social-science assertions that gay parents are the same as — or maybe better than — married mother-father parents.

"The empirical claim that no notable differences exist must go," University of Texas sociology professor Mark Regnerus said in his study in Social Science Research.

Using a "gold standard" data set of nearly 3,000 randomly selected American young adults, Mr. Regnerus looked at their lives on 40 measures of social, emotional and relationship outcomes.

He found that, when compared with adults raised in married, mother-father families, adults raised by lesbian mothers had negative outcomes in 24 of 40 categories, while adults raised by gay fathers had negative outcomes in 19 categories.

Findings like these contradict claims that there are no differences between gay parenting and heterosexual, married parents, said Mr. Regnerus, who helped develop the New Family Structures Study at the University of Texas.

Instead, "[C]hildren appear most apt to succeed well as adults when they spend their entire childhood with their married mother and father, and especially when the parents remain married to the present day," he wrote.

Mr. Regnerus' study of 2,988 people ages 18 to 39 — including 175 adults raised by lesbian mothers and 73 adults raised by gay fathers — marks the first research from the new data set, which initially included some 15,000 people.

The second study, also in Social Science Research, takes a critical look at the basis of an oft-cited American Psychological Association report on gay parenting.

[Dilbert San Diego]

Brace yourselves.

The liberal view is that there is no difference between traditional married couples and homosexual couples in raising children.

When an actual study contradicts the world view of liberals, something’s got to give.

[the invisib1e hand]

i actually saw, the other day, on the back of a Range Rover or something, one of those little stick-figure family decals. There was a stick figure mommy, and another stick figure mommy, and in between them was an inverted rainbow pyramid, and then there were a few stick-figure children. Whose, I don't know. I didn't notice if there was a stick-figure doggie.

The pyramid thing was particularly spooky.

[LearsFool]

when compared with adults raised in married, mother-father families

Hardly seems a fair comparison, since the sexually-disoriented pairs are sterile and therefore the children are adopted.

Of course, it hardly seems fair to the children to have to grow up in a "family" with sexual disorientation. (But who says America loves her children?)

[Uncle Slayton]

We need a national program where siege the children of lesbians and gays and relocate the kids to two male/female heterosexual parent families.

[rhema]

Most notably when that study ". . . should raise the bar, however, for research on gay parenting, especially since it is does not rely on "snowball samples," in which gay parents are recruited in the same places as their gay friends and colleagues, said Patrick F. Fagan, a family and marriage scholar at the Family Research Council.

The Regnerus study is the "gold standard," said Mr. Fagan. If "you can't draw conclusions from it [about causality], there's not a snowball's chance in hell you can draw conclusions from those other [gay parenting] studies."

[rhema]

link to Regnerus' study

[Arrowhead1952]

were a few stick-figure children. Whose, I don't know.

The answer is obvious.

[MrBambaLaMamba]

Hate crime arrests and prosecution in 10, 9, 8, 7, 6...

[Squawk 8888]

I’d be interested in some of the breakdowns. I’m no expert, but I would expect to see these outcomes from children of same-sex “parents”:

1. The men would be misogynistic and would probably have poor impulse control due to the absence of an authoritative male influence.

2. The women would put out for any older man who is a “father figure” in their lives.

[Republican Wildcat]

You don’t need a ‘study’ to know this - the relationship a child has with his/her mother is not the same as the relationship he/she has with his/her father - and they learn different things from each of them. That is impossible to have with same sex ‘parents’ - regardless of how well meaning they may be it is not at all fair to the child to intentionally deprive them of this.