US study examines questionable negative outcomes for grown children of a gay parent

[~Tyson~]

Dr Regnerus said it was not possible to infer that gay parents were less capable than straight ones.

By Stephen Gray from PinkNews

A new study has been published in the US which appears to suggest that children born in the twentieth century to parents who had a gay relationship have encountered more personal problems in adult life than those born to married, straight parents.

The population-based survey published in July’s Social Science Research is the largest of its kind, the University of Texas said, to feature children with gay parents in such a broad, probability-sampled population.

Of 3,000 adults now aged 18 to 39, “How Different are the Adult Children of Parents Who Have Same-Sex Relationships? Findings from the New Family Structures Study” examined 175 children with mothers who had had a gay relationship and 73 with fathers who had had a gay relationship.

Mark Regnerus, an associate professor of sociology at The University of Texas at Austin led the research said the size of the 3,000-strong sample was important.

He said: “Most conclusions about same-sex parenting have been drawn from small, convenience samples, not larger, random ones.

“The results of that approach have often led family scholars to conclude that there are no differences between children raised in same-sex households and those raised in other types of families. But those earlier studies have inadvertently masked real diversity among gay and lesbian parenting experiences in America.”

The study results appear to show that adults who were raised by a parent who reported having had a gay relationship went on to have different life experiences from those who were raised by married, straight parents, but the author says this is more likely to be a result of other factors associated with having a gay parent in the twentieth century.

69 percent of children of mothers who had had gay relationships said their family received public assistance at some point, compared with 17 percent from married, biological parents.

Just under 50 percent of children of intact biological families said they were employed full time at the time of the survey, compared with 26 percent of children of lesbian mothers.

Children whose mothers had reported gay relationships were more likely to be in therapy, more likely to have had an affair while married or cohabiting and more likely to have been sexually assaulted than those raised by straight, married parents.

Children of lesbian mothers were more likely to be cohabiting than those of straight, married parents.

But Dr Regnerus stressed the study did not show a causal link between having a gay parent and experiencing negative outcomes in later life, with instability more likely to have been the cause of such outcomes.

The study, he said, needed to be taken in its historical context, representing an “earlier generation” of children.

“This study may not reflect the experience of younger children growing up today in same-sex families, particularly because society has become more accepting of gay and lesbian families in the last decade,” he said.

“Nor does the study tell us that same-sex parents are necessarily bad parents. Rather, family forms that are associated with instability or nonbiological parents tend to pose risks for children as they age into adulthood.”

Analyses posted on the Box Turtle Bulletin website pointed out that the figures compared above are between straight, married parents and parents who had a gay relationship of any length, an "equal footing".

Concerns were raised, and acknowledged by Dr Regnerus, about implying that sexual orientation had any effect on parenting skills and using this in political debate, particularly about marriage rights for gay couples in the US.

In the same issue of Social Science Research, Cynthia Osborne, of the University of Texas LBJ School of Public Affairs pointed out: “Because the [group raised by a mother who had a gay relationship] is comprised of young adults who experienced multiple family forms and transitions, it is impossible to isolate the effects of living with a lesbian mother from experiencing divorce, remarriage, or living with a single parent.”

She added: “Importantly, one cannot clearly link having a lesbian mother (or gay father) with any of these [negative] outcomes. As stated earlier, the group is comprised of young adults who experienced multiple family structures, not only a same-sex parent household (indeed, some of the respondents never lived with the mother’s same-sex partner). It is quite possible, for example, that many or most of the negative outcomes result from the divorce of the young adult’s biological parents that preceded the mother’s same-sex relationship.”

Dr Regnerus agreed that instability in the lives of those who took part in the study was a more likely culprit for negative outcomes in adult life, noting that given the age of the participants, they were more likely to have been born into a straight relationship which broke down than they were to have been planned children of gay parents.

He said organisations might use these findings “to press a political program. And I concur that that is not what data come prepared to do [...] Implying causation here—to parental sexual orientation or anything else, for that matter—is a bridge too far.”

[Nozzle Meister]

The study is irrelevant due to several missing strands of data; one, how many of these children assessed were born in wedlock; two, how many of the parents assessed begot, birthed and partially raised their child before realising their latent *******uality; three, of the cases catalogued, during which period of the subjects' lives did the aforementioned parents decide separate from their hetero***ual partners; and fourth, the rates of ****-centric adultery from the cases in which *******ual couples cohabited successfully for a period of five years or more.

[Unknown Soldier]

A new study has been published in the US which appears to suggest that children born in the twentieth century to parents who had a gay relationship have encountered more personal problems in adult life than those born to married, straight parents.

They needed to do a study - to figure this out?

[toby]

Thing is this I agree that children could have some kind of problems -but come on there are a lot more suffering from all sorts of family background and worse.

If you were to count the problems I am sure you will find a million others that have no connection to this and in fact caused bye a straight married couple with the so called normal upbringing.

[~Tyson~]

Controversial study suggests having gay parents could have downside, but social scientists cry foul.

By Stephanie Pappas from Huffington Post

A new study claiming to find disadvantages for children raised by same-sex parents is attracting criticism from social scientists, who say that the research does not actually address how well gay and lesbians parent.

The research surveyed almost 3,000 18- to 39-year-olds. Most were raised by heterosexual parents, but 175 had mothers who at one point had same-sex relationships and another 73 of whom had dads once in same-sex relationships. The results suggested that children of these parents are more likely than kids in other family structures to be on public assistance, unemployed or in therapy as adults, among other negative outcomes.

The study found "that the scholarly and popular consensus that there are no notable differences between the children who grew up with a mother or father in a same-sex relationship and those whose (heterosexual) mother and father were and are still married is a fiction," study researcher Mark Regnerus, a sociologist at the University of Texas, told LiveScience.


Strong criticism

But other scientists say the research is deeply flawed, and does not measure the effect of same-sex parenting at all. The study defined same-sex parenting by asking participants if their parents had ever had same-sex relationships, and whether they had lived with the parent at that time. That led to a "hodgepodge" group of people who Regnerus then compared with kids in stable, married homes, said Judith Stacey, a sociologist at New York University who was not involved in the research.

"He doesn't have an actual category of gay parents in the project that you can isolate and say the most important thing in this kid's childhood is that they were raised by gay parents," Stacey told LiveScience. "These are kids whose parents, maybe they divorced, maybe they separated, maybe they had a scandalous affair, we just don't know."

In contrast, a fair comparison would have matched up children of same-sex parents with children of heterosexual parents who looked otherwise similar — no extra divorces, no extra separations, no extra time in foster care for the kids, said Gary Gates, a researcher at the Williams Institute, a sexual orientation policy think tank at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Instead, Regnerus categorized all people who said their parents were once in a same-sex relationship in the same group, even if those people had also experienced major childhood upheavals. About half of the people whose parents had ever been in gay or lesbian relationships also said their parents had once been in a heterosexual marriage, suggesting that a great many of these children were the products of a heterosexual relationship in which one parent later came out as gay or bisexual. Fifty-eight percent of those raised by moms who'd indicated a lesbian experience said their mother once left the household during their youth, and 14 percent said they'd spent time in foster care.

"All he found is that family instability is bad for children and that's hardly groundbreaking or new," Gates, who was not involved in the research, told LiveScience.

"What I find most frustrating is that from what I could tell, he could have used his data to test the way I'm suggesting the test, and he chose not to," Gates added. "He intentionally chose a methodology that is absolutely primed to find bad outcomes in those kids."

Regnerus said he plans to look more closely at the experiences of the same-sex parented kids in an upcoming article.

"A detailed exploration of who lived with whom, when, for how long, etc., was not the point of this study," he said.


Where same-sex parenting stands

Regnerus detailed his findings Sunday (June 10) in the journal Social Science Research, alongside several commentaries on the work. The study was funded by two conservative-leaning foundations, Witherspoon Institute and the Bradley Foundation, though the funders had no control over the study design, interpretation or conclusions, Regnerus wrote.

Only two of the 1.7 percent of respondents who reported a parental same-sex relationship reported living with that couple as parents for their entire childhood, meaning that the study has little to say about gay couples who deliberately chose to parent children through donor insemination, surrogacy or other means.
Researchers are increasingly studying these parents, Stacey said, and research both in the U.S. and abroad consistently shows that the kids are just fine.

"We know that when we compare same-sex couples who are parenting by choice with heterosexual couples who are biological parents, the lesbian couples do really, really well," Stacey said. (Fewer studies have been done on gay men who become parents.)

Many of the studies on gay parenting have limitations, such as focusing more on moms than dads, Gates said. But the fact that they overwhelmingly conclude that kids of gay parents turn out fine on the whole is "persuasive," he said.

In a commentary published alongside Regnerus' paper, Pennsylvania State University sociologist Paul Amato put it another way.

"If growing up with gay or lesbian parents were catastrophic for children, even studies based on small convenience samples would have shown this by now," Amato said.


Political fallout

Regnerus himself told LiveScience that he doesn't believe his study speaks to the politics of same-sex marriage. Nevertheless, the research has been cast in that light, showing up in a New York Times op-ed piece by Ross Douthat suggesting that the article is a case for caution in legalizing gay unions. By the same token, Slate writer William Saletan argued that the research makes a case for gay marriage in order to promote stable same-sex relationships for the sake of the children.

Scientists, however, say that both uses of the research reach too far, given the fuzzy definition of same-sex parenting in the survey.

"I don't think it's the kind of study to lead you to any policy position, frankly," Stacey said.