57 replies to this topic

[smac97]

Proponents of same-sex marriage have long cited a 2005 brief from the American Psychological Association to that “Not a single study has found children of lesbian or gay parents to be disadvantaged in any significant respect relative to children of heterosexual parents.”

That conclusion turns out to be ... questionable.

See here:

Two peer-reviewed articles published Sunday in a scholarly journal cast doubt on a core assumption used to advance same-sex marriage.
...
Yesterday the academic journal Social Science Research published a detailed methodological review of the research on which the APA bases its conclusion—a study that questions the validity of the “no difference” assertion. Conducted by a Louisiana State University family scholar, the article concludes:

[N]ot one of the 59 studies referenced in the 2005 APA Brief compares a large, random, representative sample of lesbian or gay parents and their children with a large, random, representative sample of married parents and their children. The available data, which are drawn primarily from small convenience samples, are insufficient to support a strong generalizable claim either way. Such a statement would not be grounded in science. To make a generalizable claim, representative, large-sample studies are needed—many of them.

A large representative sample is supplied in a second new study, conducted by a University of Texas–Austin sociologist and published in the same journal. The New Family Structures Study (NFSS), under the direction of Dr. Mark Regnerus, provides the most representative picture to date of young adults whose parents had same-sex relationships. NFSS is a large, random, nationally representative sample.
...
As Professor Paul Amato of Penn State University notes in his critique of the study, published in the same issue, “The New Family Structures Study is probably the best that we can hope for, at least in the near future.”

So how does same-sex parenting fare in the NFSS study as compared to traditional parenting?

Not so good (bolded/underlined emphases added):

According to NFSS, just 1.7 percent of young adults ages 18 to 39 reported having a parent who has had a same-sex romantic relationship. The experience of long-term stability in same-sex households is rarer still. Among those who reported having a mother who had a same-sex relationship, 91 percent said they lived with their mothers when they were in the relationship. Fifty-seven percent reported living with their mother and her partner for more than four months, and 23 percent for at least three years. Among young adults whose fathers had a same-sex relationship, 42 percent said they lived with them during the relationship; 24 percent said they lived with their fathers and fathers’ partners for more than four months; and less than 2 percent for at least three years.

Only two respondents whose mothers had a same-sex relationship reported that this living arrangement lasted all 18 years of their childhood. No respondents with fathers who had a same-sex relationship reported such longevity.

The NFSS surveyed young adult respondents about their own relationship history and quality, economic and employment status, health outcomes, abuse history, educational attainment, relationship with parents, psychological and emotional well-being, substance use, and sexual behaviors and outcomes.

Compared to young adults in traditional, intact families, young adults whose mothers had a same-sex relationship tended to fare worse than their peers in intact biological families on 24 of the 40 outcomes examined. For example, they were far more likely to report being sexually victimized, to be on welfare, or to be currently unemployed.


Young adults whose fathers had a same-sex relationship showed significant differences from their peers in intact families on 19 of the outcomes. For example, they were significantly more likely to have contemplated suicide, to have a sexually transmitted infection, or to have been forced to have sex against their will.

These differences take into account the respondent’s age, race/ethnicity, gender, mother’s education, perceived family of origin’s income, whether or not the respondent was ever bullied, and the legal status of same-sex relationships in the respondent’s current state of residence. In other words, the study compared respondents who were identical on these characteristics, except for parental relationship status.

Wow.  The APA's credibility seems a bit tainted, eh?

One last bit:

NFSS project director Dr. Mark Regnerus concludes in a piece running on Slate today that “the stable, two-parent biological married model [is] the far more common and accomplished workhorse of the American household, and still—according to the data, at least—the safest place for a kid.”

In other words, the LDS Church's 1995 "The Family - A Proclamation to the World" was pretty much right on the money.

Thoughts?

-Smac

Edited by smac97, 11 June 2012 - 05:15 PM.

[Log]

smac97, on 11 June 2012 - 05:13 PM, said:

Thoughts?

-Smac

"Don't even need to read the post or the citations to predict the ****storm that's a-brewin'."

[selek1]

Indeed.  

The usual suspects will be lining up to either whinge "I don;t believe it, but I'm not prepared to discuss it here" or that it's just "a private religious belief", or militating that the moderators shut it down as "political".

Others will attempt to dispute the validity of the studies, attacking the messengers for being the bearers of bad news.

But, as always, there are those who just don't want to hear or address facts that contradict their cherished private orthodoxy.

Edited by selek1, 11 June 2012 - 05:42 PM.

[smac97]

Here are some blurbs from the Slate article referenced in the OP:

Even after including controls for age, race, gender, and things like being bullied as a youth, or the gay-friendliness of the state in which they live, such respondents were more apt to report being unemployed, less healthy, more depressed, more likely to have cheated on a spouse or partner, smoke more pot, had trouble with the law, report more male and female sex partners, more sexual victimization, and were more likely to reflect negatively on their childhood family life, among other things. Why such dramatic differences? I can only speculate, since the data are not poised to pinpoint causes. One notable theme among the adult children of same-sex parents, however, is household instability, and plenty of it. The children of fathers who have had same-sex relationships fare a bit better, but they seldom reported living with their father for very long, and never with his partner for more than three years.

...

The differences, it turns out, were numerous. For instance, 28 percent of the adult children of women who’ve had same-sex relationships are currently unemployed, compared to 8 percent of those from married mom-and-dad families. Forty percent of the former admit to having had an affair while married or cohabiting, compared to 13 percent of the latter. Nineteen percent of the former said they were currently or recently in psychotherapy for problems connected with anxiety, depression, or relationships, compared with 8 percent of the latter. And those are just three of the 25 differences I noted.

...

While we know that good things tend to happen—both in the short-term and over the long run—when people provide households that last, parents in the NFSS who had same-sex relationships were the least likely to exhibit such stability. The young-adult children of women in lesbian relationships reported the highest incidence of time spent in foster care (at 14 percent of total, compared to 2 percent among the rest of the sample). Forty percent spent time living with their grandparents (compared to 10 percent of the rest); 19 percent spent time living on their own before age 18 (compared to 4 percent among everyone else). In fact, less than 2 percent of all respondents who said their mother had a same-sex relationship reported living with their mother and her partner for all 18 years of their childhood.

...

The political take-home message of the NFSS study is unclear, however. On the one hand, the instability detected in the NFSS could translate into a call for extending the relative security afforded by marriage to gay and lesbian couples. On the other hand, it may suggest that the household instability that the NFSS reveals is just too common among same-sex couples to take the social gamble of spending significant political and economic capital to esteem and support this new (but tiny) family form while Americans continue to flee the stable, two-parent biological married model, the far more common and accomplished workhorse of the American household, and still—according to the data, at least—the safest place for a kid.

Thanks,

-Smac

[thesometimesaint]

thoughts..

Sampling sizing is always a factor. Plus the study needs to be replicated.

[Pahoran]

This is an excellent topic for discussion.

Incidentally, there is another thread on the same topic on the "In the News" forum.  Perhaps the mods should consider combining them.

Where I live, there is a significant social problem where very small children are being battered to death.  I noticed a long time ago (when many here were muttering that the problem was associated with families of a certain ethnicity -- but quietly, for reasons of political correctness) that all  of those families had certain traits in common:

• Mum and dad weren't married.
  
• The male in the house (who was usually the guilty party in the child-beatings) was not working.
  
• The battering male was not the biological parent of the abused child(ren).
  
• In a surprising number of cases, other adults, not related to the abused child(ren) were present in the home.
  
• In a minority of cases, the battering adult was not male, but in those cases she was usually not the biological parent.
  
• The family was largely dependant upon welfare.
  
• Drink and/or drugs were a factor.

Note that this is not a "same sex" issue.  But take the emotionally/politically charged "same sex" factor out of it, and we find many of the same factors at work in households involving same sex pairings.  In all of those cases, any children are going to be living with at least one adult with whom they have no biological connection.

Regards,
Pahoran

[cacheman]

Pahoran, on 11 June 2012 - 05:45 PM, said:

This is an excellent topic for discussion.

Incidentally, there is another thread on the same topic on the "In the News" forum.  Perhaps the mods should consider combining them.

Where I live, there is a significant social problem where very small children are being battered to death.  I noticed a long time ago (when many here were muttering that the problem was associated with families of a certain ethnicity -- but quietly, for reasons of political correctness) that all  of those families had certain traits in common:

• Mum and dad weren't married.
  
• The male in the house (who was usually the guilty party in the child-beatings) was not working.
  
• The battering male was not the biological parent of the abused child(ren).
  
• In a surprising number of cases, other adults, not related to the abused child(ren) were present in the home.
  
• In a minority of cases, the battering adult was not male, but in those cases she was usually not the biological parent.
  
• The family was largely dependant upon welfare.
  
• Drink and/or drugs were a factor.

Note that this is not a "same sex" issue.  But take the emotionally/politically charged "same sex" factor out of it, and we find many of the same factors at work in households involving same sex pairings. In all of those cases, any children are going to be living with at least one adult with whom they have no biological connection.

Regards,
Pahoran

As well as homes in which children are adopted.

[Pahoran]

cacheman, on 11 June 2012 - 05:51 PM, said:

As well as homes in which children are adopted.

This is true.  However, it seems that in homes where the parents are prepared to make the commitment entailed in a complete and formal adoption -- and similarly in those homes where a stepfather is prepared to make the commitment entailed in marrying the mother of his stepchildren and shouldering the burden of supporting them by his own efforts instead of government welfare -- the commitment mitigates the lack of biological connection to a significant degree.

Regards,
Pahoran
Adoptive parent.

[Log]

Specific counterexamples notwithstanding.  

Regards,
Log
Adopted child

Edited by Log, 11 June 2012 - 06:29 PM.

[cacheman]

Pahoran, on 11 June 2012 - 06:22 PM, said:

This is true.  However, it seems that in homes where the parents are prepared to make the commitment entailed in a complete and formal adoption -- and similarly in those homes where a stepfather is prepared to make the commitment entailed in marrying the mother of his stepchildren and shouldering the burden of supporting them by his own efforts instead of government welfare -- the commitment mitigates the lack of biological connection to a significant degree.

Regards,
Pahoran
Adoptive parent

100% agreement!  As an adoptive parent msyelf, I am grateful that I was able to legally commit to marriage to my wife and parenthood to our son.  Not all parents have that opportunity.

cacheman

[selek1]

Another take on the SSR articles:

http://www.nationalr...art-1-ed-whelan

[mfbukowski]

AUGH!   Don't confuse us with the facts!  This is clearly not politically correct and therefore is cruel to people and therefore must be suppressed.

Freedom of speech must go because evil people say mean things that hurt people's feelings.

(Lest anyone not know me- that is sarcasm)
http://thirdway.eu/2...e-and-foucault/

Quote

So in Political Correctness we have a world where there is a continuum drawn from the early thoughts and writing of Lenin through Mao and the cultural revolution to the sixties and seventies New Left (in the Western World) to be deposited in the citadels once of free-speech and debate; the modern universities. Here academics are able to plant their intellectual spores into the young and outwards into society. And the academics Ellis identifies are those he sees poisoning the world with their political correctness.
Here’s a Soviet maxim: If you don’t know we’ll teach you, if you don’t want to know we’ll force you. Or let’s consider Harry Wu (a prisoner of the Chinese concentration camps: laogai) who saw political correctness in its Chinese manifestation as a mental form of feet binding. Thought, like the toes of a Chinese woman, must be bound rigid into an ideological shoe – tight, constricting and compulsory. He called this Chinese Gulag the Auschwitz of the Mind. The connection with modern day political correctness and Lenin is all about theory. Lenin: without a theory there can be no revolutionary movement. And only with a theory could the revolutionary movement maintain its correct path. And the theory underpinning this revolutionary movement is one of superior wisdom. This is of course very un-pc! But the New Left safely camped inside the Ivory Forts of universities knew that the old Marxist control of the means of production had now become control and regulation of the means of expression – language.

Language is all we have and we must fight tooth and nail to stop this tide of political correctness.  Freedom of speech is freedom of thought and that translates directly into cultural and therefore political freedom....

Quote

....Writers in the Soviet Union had to learn (or be ‘instructed’) on how to be correct. Censorship of all writing was fully justified to obtain: the correct thoughts in the correct mind and the correct words in the correct writings. Writers were regarded as the “engineers of human souls”. Control the means of expression and…well in Modern Britain and the Anglo-Saxon Diaspora publishing houses, editors and (most obligingly) writers themselves conform to modern pc ideals. And if these willing agents dissent then although they don’t (necessarily) get murdered or locked away (though some do – pace an editor during the Rushdie affair and David Irving) they do get marginalised, over-looked, un-reviewed – kept out of reach. Un-published. Un-read. Un-influential.An Un-writer.
As Ellis points out though the concept of correctness was (and is) not confined to literature: by the time of Lenin’s death in 1924 [or certainly by the late twenties] the concept of correctness was pervasive in ideology, politics, education, literature, history, jurisprudence, culture and economics…Krupskaya, Lenin’s wife, for example, stressed the need for “hygiene, personal and social” in education. (Sounds like modern British education.) And she went on to attack literature that was not social-realism but rather harked back to the old’ as functioning “as a kind of poison”. Protection from such literature is necessary. All of this bespeaks the importance of the correct application of the teaching of literature in our schools.

Hey- I've got a good idea!   Let's ban soda!

Edited by mfbukowski, 11 June 2012 - 08:21 PM.

[thesometimesaint]

Godwin's Law alert.

[ERayR]

mfbukowski, on 11 June 2012 - 08:14 PM, said:

AUGH!   Don't confuse us with the facts!  This is clearly not politically correct and therefore is cruel to people and therefore must be suppressed.

Freedom of speech must go because evil people say mean things that hurt people's feelings.

(Lest anyone not know me- that is sarcasm)
http://thirdway.eu/2...e-and-foucault/


Language is all we have and we must fight tooth and nail to stop this tide of political correctness.  Freedom of speech is freedom of thought and that translates directly into cultural and therefore political freedom....




Hey- I've got a good idea!   Let's ban soda!

I can guarantee you there are those on this forum that do not understand sarcasm.  Hasn't someone already banned soda.  No but New York City mayor Bloomberg has proposed it.

[mfbukowski]

ERayR, on 11 June 2012 - 09:05 PM, said:

I can guarantee you there are those on this forum that do not understand sarcasm.  Hasn't someone already banned soda.  No but New York City mayor Bloomberg has proposed it.

Yes, that was my point
Yes it was sarcasm.

And no one has mentioned the H word, nor is it even relevant.

[daz2]

Yet another take on the study.  http://www.slate.com...iage_good_.html

[Cobalt-70]

Pahoran, on 11 June 2012 - 06:22 PM, said:

This is true.  However, it seems that in homes where the parents are prepared to make the commitment entailed in a complete and formal adoption -- and similarly in those homes where a stepfather is prepared to make the commitment entailed in marrying the mother of his stepchildren and shouldering the burden of supporting them by his own efforts instead of government welfare -- the commitment mitigates the lack of biological connection to a significant degree.

It seems like that is an argument in favor of expanding adoption and marital rights to same sex couples, which will encourage the stability and long-term commitments within these families.

My take on all this research is that you really have to compare apples with apples. You have to compare unmarried same-sex couple families where the child is biologically related to only one parent with unmarried different-sex couple families where the child is biologically related to only one parent. If you are comparing unmarried gay families to married straight families, that is not a fair comparison, because we know (or at least can expect) that marriage probably fosters stability and nurture within the family.

[Log]

Please notice the subtlety with which Cobalt-70's post was phrased.

[ERayR]

Cobalt-70, on 12 June 2012 - 03:47 PM, said:

It seems like that is an argument in favor of expanding adoption and marital rights to same sex couples, which will encourage the stability and long-term commitments within these families.

My take on all this research is that you really have to compare apples with apples. You have to compare unmarried same-sex couple families where the child is biologically related to only one parent with unmarried different-sex couple families where the child is biologically related to only one parent. If you are comparing unmarried gay families to married straight families, that is not a fair comparison, because we know (or at least can expect) that marriage probably fosters stability and nurture within the family.

Wrong!!!  The stability and long-term commitment comes first.  You don't use a child to mend bad relationships.  I don't see any evidence that homosexual marriage really adds any stability to their relationship.

[Cobalt-70]

ERayR, on 12 June 2012 - 04:34 PM, said:

Wrong!!!  The stability and long-term commitment comes first.  You don't use a child to mend bad relationships.  I don't see any evidence that homosexual marriage really adds any stability to their relationship.

It's just that most of us believe that marriage and adoption add to the stability of straight families. It seems like not too unreasonable a hypothesis, within studies like this, to factor in the possibility that the same thing could be true for gay families.