Kids Can Thrive wh Gay Parents | Psychology Today

Contents:

• WHY GAY PARENTS MAY BE THE BT PARENTS
• GAY PARENTS RAISG KIDS: HOW WILL THEY FARE?
• ARE GAY COUPL WORSE AT PARENTG?
• PARENTG A GAY CHILD
• KIDS CAN THRIVE WH GAY PARENTS
• CALIFORNIA SCHOOL BOARD ADOPTS SOCIAL STUDI TEXTBOOKS THAT CLU GAY RIGHTS AFTER WARNGS OM ERNOR
• HOW TO DEAL WH HAVG GAY PARENTS
• LBIAN AND GAY PARENTG

WHY GAY PARENTS MAY BE THE BT PARENTS

In fact, some ways, gay parents may brg talents to the table that straight parents don' parents "tend to be more motivated, more mted than heterosexual parents on average, bee they chose to be parents, " said Abbie Goldberg, a psychologist at Clark Universy Massachetts who rearch gay and lbian parentg. ) [5 Myths About Gay People Debunked]Adoptg the needitGay adoptn recently ed ntroversy Illois, where Catholic Chari adoptn servic cid November to cease offerg servic bee the state refed fundg unls the groups agreed not to discrimate agast gays and lbians.

GAY PARENTS RAISG KIDS: HOW WILL THEY FARE?

More than half of the kids adopted by gays and lbians had special report didn't pare the adoptn preferenc of gay upl directly wh those of heterosexual upl, said thor David Brodzsky, rearch director at the Instute and -edor of "Adoptn By Lbians and Gay Men: A New Dimensn of Fay Diversy" (Oxford Universy Prs, 2011).

ARE GAY COUPL WORSE AT PARENTG?

Part of that uld be their own preferenc, and part uld be bee of discrimatn by adoptn agenci that puts more difficult children wh what seworkers see as "ls sirable" matter how you slice , Brodzsky told LiveScience, gays and lbians are highly terted adoptn as a group. "When you thk about the 114, 000 children who are eed for adoptn who ntue to live foster re and who are not beg readily adopted, the goal is to crease the pool of available, terted and well-traed dividuals to parent the children, " Brodzsky addn, Brodzsky said, there's evince to suggt that gays and lbians are pecially acceptg of open adoptns, where the child retas some ntact wh his or her birth parents. "Intertgly, we fd that a small percentage, but enough to be noteworthy, [of birth mothers] make a nsc cisn to place wh gay men, so they n be the only mother their child's life, " Brodzsky parentgRearch has shown that the kids of same-sex upl — both adopted and blogil kids — fare no worse than the kids of straight upl on mental health, social functng, school performance and a variety of other life-succs a 2010 review of virtually every study on gay parentg, New York Universy soclogist Judh Stacey and Universy of Southern California soclogist Tim Biblarz found no differenc between children raised hom wh two heterosexual parents and children raised wh lbian parents.

PARENTG A GAY CHILD

"There's no doubt whatsoever om the rearch that children wh two lbian parents are growg up to be jt as well-adjted and succsful" as children wh a male and a female parent, " Stacey told is very ltle rearch on the children of gay men, so Stacey and Biblarz uldn't draw nclns on those fai. "The dividuals feel like their perspectiv on fay, on genr, on sexualy have largely been enhanced by growg up wh gay parents, " Goldberg 33-year-old man wh a lbian mother told Goldberg, "I feel I'm a more open, well-round person for havg been raised a nontradnal fay, and I thk those that know me would agree.

KIDS CAN THRIVE WH GAY PARENTS

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. Among the fdgs of the study to this pot have been:The children of gay and lbian parents are no more likely than their peers to intify as LGBT a nfintial survey, none of the children reported beg abed by their parentsThe children, most recently terviewed at age 17, are relatively high-achievg school, have close iends, and scribe their parents as good role crilly analyzg this study, I only had a few ncerns. But all all, the study seems to be about as prehensive as possible and fails to reject the null hypothis that orientatn has no effect on parentg Seigel acknowledg that a few studi have suggted that children of LGBT upl are fact negatively affected by their parents, but he believ those studi should be dismissed due to fallaci much like the on we discs Atralian study, "Children three ntexts: fay, tn and social velopment", surveyed teachers about the performance of stunts three tegori of fai - heterosexual married, heterosexual habg, and gay/lbian habg.

CALIFORNIA SCHOOL BOARD ADOPTS SOCIAL STUDI TEXTBOOKS THAT CLU GAY RIGHTS AFTER WARNGS OM ERNOR

Marriage uld potentially be an outsi variable that ntribut to the succs of children, which se the rearch would be makg a strong argument favor of legalizg gay marriage at the risk of harmg the children of gay is reason to believe that gay fai were stigmatized at the time of the rearch.

However, the real shocker this paper is s apparent disregard for ethil study sampled based on nvenience rather than a random, reprentative pool the fdgs seem to data is qutnable - some rponnts claimed to have lerally hundreds of sexual partners the prev than ask for mographic data on whether their parents were a gay relatnship, the study asked whether the rponnts' thought their parents had had sex, or been a relatnship wh a member of the same sex. " The paper has sparked a bate on the role of relign (Regnes is an Evangelil Christian) and polics (he also appears at events wh proment anti-equaly activists across Ameri) rearch, believg that his objectivy was promised an attempt to fluence this summer's DOMA and Proposn 8 Supreme Court back to gay parentg - I am cled to agree wh Dr. "The meetg me jt days after the board voted for a send time to block social studi curriculum that mentned issue first blew up at a meetg last month, when the school board majory qutned whether Milk, who was the first openly gay man to hold public office the state of California, should be clud supplemental materials when teachg civil rights to 4th gra ncern revolv around reports that Milk, when his 30s, had a relatnship wh a 16-year-old boy.

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).

HOW TO DEAL WH HAVG 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. An expert readg of the Sarantakos article reveals that certa characteristics of s methodology and sample are highly likely to have skewed the rults and renred them an valid ditor of the well-beg of children raised by gay and lbian parents at least three rpects:.

LBIAN AND GAY PARENTG

The children raised by gay and lbian parents experienced unually high levels of extreme social ostracism and overt hostily om other children and parents, which probably acunted for the former's lower levels of teractn and social tegratn wh peers (see pp. Some nonscientific anizatns have attempted to nvce urts that there is an actual scientific dispute this area by cg rearch performed by Pl Cameron as supportg the existence of fics gay and lbian parents or their children pared to heterosexual parents or their children. Three ncerns have historilly been associated wh judicial cisn makg ctody ligatn and public polici erng foster re and adoptn: the belief that lbians and gay men are mentally ill, that lbians are ls maternal than heterosexual women, and that lbians' and gay men's relatnships wh sexual partners leave ltle time for ongog parent-child teractns (ACLU Lbian and Gay Rights Project, 2002; Falk, 1989, 1994; Patterson et al., 2002; Patterson & Reddg, 1996).

Many years ago, the Amerin Psychiatric Associatn removed "homosexualy" om s list of mental disorrs, statg that "homosexualy per se impli no impairment judgment, stabily, reliabily, or general social or votnal pabili" (Amerin Psychiatric Associatn, 1974). The cisn to remove homosexual orientatn om the list of mental disorrs reflects extensive rearch nducted over three s showg that homosexual orientatn is not a psychologil maladjtment (Gonsrek, 1991; Hart, Roback, Ttler, Wez, Walston, & McKee, 1978; Reiss, 1980). There is no reliable evince that homosexual orientatn per se impairs psychologil functng, although the social and other circumstanc which lbians and gay men live, cludg exposure to wispread prejudice and discrimatn, often e acute distrs (Cochran, 2001; Freedman, 1971; Gonsrek, 1991; Hart et al., 1978; Hooker, 1957; Meyer, 2003; Reiss, 1980).

Beliefs that lbian and gay adults are not f parents likewise have no empiril foundatn (Anrssen, Amlie, & Ytteroy, 2002; Brewaeys & van Hall, 1997; Parks, 1998; Patterson, 2000; Patterson & Chan, 1996; Perr, 2002; Stacey & Biblarz, 2001; Tasker, 1999; Victor & Fish, 1995). A recent study of 256 lbian and gay parent fai found that, ntrast to patterns characterizg the majory of Amerin parents, very few lbian and gay parents reported any e of physil punishment (such as spankg) as a disciplary technique; stead, they were likely to report e of posive techniqu such as reasong (Johnson & O'Connor, 2002).