Kids Can Thrive wh Gay Parents | Psychology Today

Contents:

• GAY PARENTS RAISG KIDS: HOW WILL THEY FARE?
• KIDS OF GAY PARENTS FARE WORSE, STUDY FDS, BUT REARCH DRAWS FIRE OM EXPERTS
• KIDS CAN THRIVE WH GAY PARENTS
• MANY PARENTS STGGLE TO ADJT AFTER LEARNG CHILD IS GAY, STUDY FDS
• LBIAN AND GAY PARENTG
• GAY PARENTS AS GOOD AS STRAIGHT ON
• GAY PARENTS

GAY PARENTS RAISG KIDS: HOW WILL THEY FARE?

Children wh gay, lbian, transgenr or other sexual mory parents fare as well as, or better than, children wh parents of the oppose sex, acrdg to rearch published Monday BMJ Global Health, further unrmg a mon but unsupported argument agast equal marriage and adoptn as a growg number of stat enact laws curtailg LGBT+ rights. Dpe numero attempts to bias the rults favour of the null hypothis and allowg for up to 20 (of 63, 32%) dg errors, Cameron's (2006) hypothis that gay and lbian parents would be more likely to have gay, lbian, bisexual or unsure (of sexual orientatn) sons and dghters was nfirmed.

KIDS OF GAY PARENTS FARE WORSE, STUDY FDS, BUT REARCH DRAWS FIRE OM EXPERTS

The days, gay parents are no novelty: We see them strollg through our neighborhoods, participatg our PTA meetgs, and, perhaps most notably, appearg on our TV screens: Mchell and Cam, fathers to Lily, on the ratgs smash Morn Fay; Glee’s Sue Sylvter, expectant mom to a baby nceived wh an as-yet-unrevealed sperm donor, and Rachel’s dads, played wh humor and grace by Jeff Goldblum and Brian Stok. Though this media mastreamifitn of gay parentg is a relatively new phenomenon, for s, gay parents have had children all sorts of fay nfiguratns—whether through adoptn, prev heterosexual relatnships, or, creasgly, by choosg to have blogil offsprg g vro, surrogate, and other methods.

Earlier this month, when Print Obama announced his support for same sex marriage days after North Carola voted to ban , he changed the nversatn nsirably by argug that ncern for children is a reason to support, rather than oppose, gay marriage.

” His support for gay marriage was self a landmark turn, but jt as notable was s direct affirmatn of gay upl as parents, which served to rebut the standard argument agast gay marriage—namely, that risks the well-beg of children and the fay.

KIDS CAN THRIVE WH GAY PARENTS

Much of the ncern for the children of gay parents has centered specifilly on boys, who as a group have seemed, pecially recent years, prey to nfn, rentment, and stctivens—somethg creded to the risg proportn of mal beg reared fatherls hom. But science tells the fears are January, rearchers om the Columbia Law School examed 76 studi published after 1985 and found that only four of them nclud that children raised by gay upl faced addnal adversy as a rult of havg same-sex parents.

In fact, studi have shown that while the emotnal and mental health of children raised by heterosexual upl is sentially the same as those raised by gay parents, children of same-sex upl are more open-md and empathetic, more self-aware, more apt at munitg their feelgs.

MANY PARENTS STGGLE TO ADJT AFTER LEARNG CHILD IS GAY, STUDY FDS

In a jot statement om the Fay Equaly Council, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), Freedom to Marry, and the Gay and Lbian Alliance agast Defamatn (GLAAD), advot lled the study a "flawed, misleadg, and scientifilly unsound paper that seeks to disparage lbian and gay parents. The Amerin Psychologil Associatn (APA) reported on gay parentg, wh Loren Marks, associate profsor at the School of Human Elogy at Louisiana State Universy, statg that “Not a sgle study has found children of lbian or gay parents to be disadvantaged any signifint rpect relative to children of heterosexual parents” (Marks 2012).

This study uld jt be a rult of chance, as the numbers of children wh homosexual parents were low, or other factors uld go to the negative rults of the 40 unknown “tegori” such as the stcture of the way the tegori are word or set up, which uld be due to Regnes’s own personal bias.

LBIAN AND GAY PARENTG

A new study nducted by rearchers at Gee Washgton Universy found that most parents of lbian, gay, and bisexual youth have difficulty adjtg after their kids e study says is one of the first to systematilly exame the experience of parents raisg lbian, gay and bisexual children. ”The study found that Ain Amerin and Lato parents have a harr time acceptg their lbian, gay and bisexual children, as do the parents of children who e out at a later study, which surveyed a much larger sample size than prev studi, nfirmed smaller studi that showed parents’ negative reactns tend to ease over time; the first two years are the harst for were no signifint differenc reactns between mother and father, the age of the parent, or the genr of the child. The prev edn, which was tled Lbian and Gay Parentg: A Rource for Psychologists (1995) was the succsor to a publitn tled Lbian Parents and Their Children: A Rource Paper for Psychologists that was jotly produced by CLGBC and CWP 1991.

GAY PARENTS AS GOOD AS STRAIGHT ON

Unlike heterosexual parents and their children, however, lbian and gay parents and their children are often subject to prejudice bee of their sexual orientatn that n turn judg, legislators, profsnals, and the public agast them, sometim rultg negative out, such as loss of physil ctody, rtrictns on visatn, and prohibns agast adoptn (ACLU Lbian and Gay Rights Project, 2002; Appell, 2003; Patterson, Fulcher, & Waright, 2002). As this summary will show, the rults of existg rearch parg lbian and gay parents to heterosexual parents and children of lbian and gay parents to children of heterosexual parents are que clear: Common stereotyp are not supported by the data.

GAY PARENTS

The relevance of this cricism has been greatly rced as rearch has expand to explore life a wir array of lbian mother and gay father fai (many of which have never lived through the divorce of a heterosexual uple), and as newer studi beg to clu a wir array of ntrol groups.