Study reveals no difference between kids raised by gay or straight parents

[andy]

[img2=left]http://www.gayspeak.com/forum/images/news/gayparents.jpg[/img2]A study of adoptive parents has found "no significant difference" in emotional problems experienced by children brought up by gay adoptive parents.

The US research, published in this month's Adoption Quarterly, surveyed 1,384 couples, 155 of whom were gay.

All were asked about their family structures, the child's history before being adopted, his or her current emotional state and family interactions.

While sexual orientation of parents was not found to be a factor in emotional problems, age and pre-adoptive sexual abuse were found to be the most likely indicators of distress.

The research was authored by Scott Ryan, the new dean of the University of Texas School of Social Work, and Paige Averett and Blace Nalavany, assistant professors of social work at East Carolina University.

Ryan commented: "Our research shows that there is no difference in children raised by gay or lesbian parents and heterosexual parents. People are people."

He added that Florida has the only adoption system that specifically prohibits gay and lesbian persons from adopting children and asks all adoptive parents to sign an affidavit stating they are not gay. Yet gay and lesbian couples can be foster parents there, he said.

Texas allows gay and lesbian couples to adopt.

Averett said: "There are implications for social work educators, adoption professionals, and policy makers in this and other recent studies.

"We must pay attention to the data indicating that gay and lesbian parents are as fit as heterosexual parents to adopt, because at least 130,000 children are depending on us to act as informed advocates on their behalf."

The factors which were found to increase a child's happiness were a rise in annual income and parental satisfaction with the help received during the adoption process.

[marshlander]

Say it loud!!!

[fjp999]

[COLOR="Purple"]I never understood this argument.

Lords knows how horrible a female/male head of household family can turn out :eek: [/COLOR]

[spirito_gab]

hahaha. i think the whole argument about this issue is a bit naff sometime. n it really started with the stereotype in the first place.

[marshlander]

And we're still debating ...

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Children raised by gay and lesbian couples develop just as well as those brought up by traditional couples, a British child psychologist on Friday told a U.S. federal court considering whether a California ban on gay marriage denies constitutional rights.

Lawyer David Thompson, defending the ban, jousted with Michael Lamb, head of the Social and Developmental Psychology Department at Cambridge University, about whether a child growing up without a father or without a mother would face developmental problems.

Two gay men and two lesbian women are asking the federal court to rule the right to marry has no exceptions under the U.S. Constitution, a fight they hope to take all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court in a bid to overturn bans on same-sex marriage in 40 states.

A key question in the case is whether government, and U.S. voters, have a reasonable justification for denying same-sex couples the right to marry, such as promoting healthier families, or if the bans reflect discrimination and hate.

The record of evidence gathered by Federal District Chief Judge Vaughn Walker, including the issue of whether gays are good parents, may be relied on heavily by appeals courts, which generally do not have as much time to review a case as in the original trial.

Lamb, a witness for the same-sex couples, argued that the gender of parents was not the main criterion of success for raising children.

The quality of the relationship between the child and the parents, the relationship between the parents, and the economic resources available to the family, were the top issues for healthy children, he said.

Kids had no trouble with their own sexual identity or other development due to growing up with same-sex parents, he argued, and the ways fathers and mothers interacted with kids was not as important as having two parents, he said.

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[peterinmalaga]

I am surprised at these findings. I would have thought that gay parents would generally be better than heterosexuals. Many heterosexuals become parents simply by accident and some make little attempt to inform themselves about the implications which this change of status has for them.

[fredv3b]

Pete, pregnancy takes nine months for a reason. It gives heterosexuals time to prepare. In any case I think a lot of being a parent is dealing with the unexpected, so there is a limit to the benefits of planning.

In any case I would not lean to heavily on this study, it was a simple of survey of adoptive couples asking about emotional problems in their adoptive children. I would be interested to know how long after adoption the parents were surveyed, if it was only, say, 6 months then frankly gay couples would have to be pretty bad parents if they made a significant difference in 6 months compared to the child's previous life (he/she needed to be adopted for a reason). More importantly however the survey seems to be based on parental assessment of emotional problems, and frankly, just because a couple don't think their child has emotional problems doesn't mean their good parents.

Not that I think that gay couples make worse parents, just that we shouldn't rely on this particular study as solid evidence that we are just as good as gay couples.