Tag Archives: gay parents

Attitudes shift on gay adoption

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Gay dads in the woods

Young Americans increasingly favor adoption rights for gays and lesbians, with three-quarters of females and two-thirds of males now voicing support, according to a new government report.

These statistics from the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics reflect a steady rise from 2002, and a significant shift in attitudes across the nation among people 15 to 44 years old.

The report doesn’t explore the reasons for this change. But one gay dad who studies sexuality believes familiarity with gays and lesbians has fostered growingacceptance of gay families.

“We have more visibility, and more people see us as individuals who live nearby, which contributes to more favorable attitudes,” said Sean Massey, an associate professor of women, gender & sexuality studies at Binghamton University in New York. Massey and his husband adopted a son, now 13, in 2002.

The report, released March 17, is based on ongoing surveys about U.S. attitudes regarding marriage, childbearing and sex. About 45,000 people aged 15 to 44 were questioned in 2002, 2006-2010 and 2011-2013.

Source:  – CBS News

Foster kids do equally well when adopted by gay, lesbian or heterosexual parents, study suggests

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High-risk children adopted from foster care do equally well when placed with gay, lesbian or heterosexual parents, UCLA psychologists report in the first multi-year study of children adopted by these three groups of parents. The psychologists looked at 82 high-risk children adopted from foster care in Los Angeles County.

Of those children, 60 were placed with heterosexual parents and 22 were placed with gay or lesbian parents (15 with gay male parents and seven with lesbian parents).

Source:  — ScienceDaily

Children’s Charity Barnardo’s Chief Joins Gay Marriage Row

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THE head of Scotland’s largest children’s charity has waded into the row over gay marriage, saying “love and care” – not a couple’s marital status – is the critical factor in raising youngsters.

Martin Crew, director of Barnardo’s Scotland, said good parenting was not linked to sexual orientation or whether a couple are married but to providing “emotional security and being a good role model”.

Research conducted by Ipsos Mori on behalf of the Equality Network, LGBT Youth Scotland and the Scottish Youth Parliament found 64% of people supported same-sex marriage, although 26% opposed same-sex marriage in places of worship.

However, the Catholic Church, the Church of Scotland, the Council of Glasgow Imams and the Episcopalian Church have registered objections to the legislation, arguing that marriage should be only between a man and a woman. The Humanists, the Unitarians, the United Reformed Church and the Quakers are among the groups who have no objection.

Mr Crew said he supports an equal right to marriage because it removed “yet another unhelpful distinction” between straight, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender families.

However, he said that as part of the debate, opponents of gay marriage seemed to suggest a marriage between a man and a woman automatically made for the “optimal situation” to raise children.

He added: “However, the reality is that most children in Scotland are not now born to married couples. To insist that being married and heterosexual is best does a great disservice to the large numbers of parents doing a great job of raising their children in loving, stable, but varied, circumstances.”

The Barnardo’s Scotland director said: “Raising children is about providing emotional security and being a good role model. It is about encouraging good communication and challenging bad behaviour. Children need these things whether their parents are gay or straight, married or unmarried, lone parents or couples.”

Martin Williams
Senior News Reporter

-full post at  Herald Scotland

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Gay marriage Not thinking about the children

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THOSE who oppose gay marriage often argue that having gay parents is hard on children. This has been a hard argument to make, because there simply isn’t that much data about the effects of growing up with gay parents, and what little there is—such as the 2010 study that found a 0% rate of child abuse in lesbian households—tends to undermine it. Some will believe that has changed this week with the publication of a new study by Mark Regnerus, a sociologist at the University of Texas, on “adult children of parents who have same-sex relationships.” As Mr Regnerus explains, in an accompanying essay at Slate, there are significant differences between that group and those who grew up in intact biological families (ie, a mother and a father, no adoption, no divorce). “On 25 of 40 different outcomes evaluated, the children of women who’ve had same-sex relationships fare quite differently than those in stable, biologically-intact mom-and-pop families,” he writes, “displaying numbers more comparable to those from heterosexual stepfamilies and single parents.”

The study has been greeted with fierce criticism, and for good reason. Mr Regnerus’s methodology stacked the deck against gay parents. There aren’t that many young adults around who grew up with openly gay parents, so he drew a bigger circle. Anyone who reported that either of their parents had a same-sex relationship while they were growing up was put into the “lesbian mothers” or “gay fathers” category, regardless of whether their parents had been married or divorced, whether the kids were adopted or biological, whether the parents seemed happy or not, whether the same-sex affair was a one-time encounter or the basis of the household, and so on. (By this silly standard, the number of children growing up with a gay parent is about to skyrocket.)

-more at Economist

As I read the study, it’s not remotely comparing gay parents with straight parents – it’s comparing parents who are faithful to their spouses, with those who are not. To draw a comparison between gay and straight parents from his sample, he should have compared parents who had a same-sex extra-marital affair, with those who had an opposite- sex extra-marital affair. This he has not done, but the chances area there would have been minimal difference.

The real lesson, as the Economist points out in their conculuding paragraph, is that children need stable families. For those who are being raised by same- sex parents, that probably means we should support gay marriage – for the sake of the children.

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Does a new study indict gay parenthood or make a case for gay marriage?

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Is same-sex marriage a good idea? Or is an intact biological family the best environment for raising a child? The answer may turn out to be yes and yes.

That’s the curious implication of a study reported yesterday in Social Science Research andoutlined in Slate today by its principal investigator, sociologist Mark Regnerus. The study, which found inferior economic, educational, social, and psychological outcomes among children of gay parents, comes across as evidence that homosexuals are unfit to raise kids. But the study doesn’t document the failure of same-sex marriage. It documents the failure of the closeted, broken, and unstable households that preceded same-sex marriage.

-full analysis as Slate

 

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