The Australian Study of Child Health in Same-Sex Families is the world’s largest attempt to study how children raised by same-sex couples compare to children raised by heterosexual couples. According to a preliminary report on the study of 500 children across the country of Australia, these young people are not only thriving, but also have higher rates of family cohesion than other families:
An interim report found there was no statistical difference between children of same-sex couples and the rest of the population on indicators including self-esteem, emotional behaviour and the amount of time spent with parents.
However, children of same-sex couples scored higher than the national average for overall health and family cohesion, measuring how well a family gets along. World’s Largest Study Of Same-Sex Parenting Finds That Children Are Thriving
Children raised by same-sex couples appear to do as well as those raised by parents of both sexes, suggests an international research review that challenges the long-ingrained belief that children need male and female parents for healthy adjustment.
"It's more about the quality of the parenting than the gender of the parents," says Judith Stacey of New York University, co-author of the comprehensive review. It will be published Friday in the Journal of Marriage and Family.
Same-sex couples can be effective parents, researchers find - USATODAY.com
A sampling of recent studies of same-sex parenting:
Studies of same-sex parenting
1997-APR: Three 3 recent studies from the US, Britain and the Netherlands were presented at the national meeting of the Society for Research on Child Development during 1997-APR .
Charlotte Patterson, a research psychologist at the University of Virginia and author of one of the new studies, said "When you look at kids with standard psychological assessments, you can't tell who has a lesbian parent and who has a heterosexual parent...That's really the main finding from these studies." She agreed that the studies to date are relatively few and open to criticism.
There may be indications that children benefit from having two lesbian parents. Fiona Tasker of Birkbeck College in the Netherlands, "...found that the non-biological lesbian parent was usually more involved with the children than are the fathers of heterosexual couples." There is also anecdotal evidence that children of gay or lesbian parents tend to be less prejudiced.
1999-APR: Researcher Fiona Tasker at Birkbeck College, UK, published an article in Clinical Child Psychology and Psychiatry. A summary reads: "There are an increasing number of children who are being brought up in lesbian-led families. Research on non-clinical samples of children raised in lesbian-led families formed after parental divorce, together with studies of children raised in families planned by a single lesbian mother or lesbian couple, suggest that growing up in a lesbian-led family does not have negative effects on key developmental outcomes. In many ways family life for children growing up in lesbian-led families is similar to that experienced by children in heterosexual families. In other respects there are important distinctions, such as different types of family forms and the impact of social stigma on the family, that may influence how clinicians approach therapeutic work with children in lesbian mother families." 14
2001-APR: Researchers Judith Stacey and Timothy Biblarz of the University of Southern California studied sexual orientation and parenting. They reported their findings in the American Sociological Review, a peer-reviewed journal.
1 They
iscussed "...limitations in the definitions, samples and analyses of the studies to date."
Examined 21 studies which "almost uniformly reports findings of no notable differences between children reared by heterosexual parents and those reared by lesbian and gay parents..."
