Affects of gay marriage on parenting

The result was a family that endured added stress and often disruption or family breakup. The results demonstrate no differences on any measures between the heterosexual and homosexual parents regarding parenting styles, emotional adjustment, and sexual orientation of the child ren.

We identified four studies concluding that children of gay or lesbian parents face added disadvantages. It is important to note, moreover, that some of the research that finds no differences among children with same-sex parents does use large, representative data.

Since all four took their samples from children who endured family break-ups, a cohort known to face added risks, these studies have been criticized by many scholars as unreliable assessments of the well-being of LGB-headed households. Click here for a printer-friendly PDF of this overview report.

Social Science Research, 53, While the US Supreme Court was considering two related cases involving the constitutionality of same-sex marriage, one major question informing that decision was whether scientific research had achieved consensus regarding how children of same-sex couples fare.

Visit Source Website Allen, M. Comparing the impact of homosexual and heterosexual parents on children: meta-analysis of existing research. At most a handful of the children who were studied were actually raised by same-sex parents; the rest came from families in which opposite-sex parents raised their children for a period of time, but in which, often, one or more parent s subsequently came out as gay or lesbian and left the family or had a same-sex relationship.

Controlling for family disruptions, those children showed no significant differences from their peers in school outcomes. Taken together, this research forms an overwhelming scholarly consensus, based on over three decades of peer-reviewed research, that having a gay or lesbian parent does not harm children.

Visit Source Website Adams, J. Scientific consensus, the law, and same sex parenting outcomes. Another study drew on nationally representative, longitudinal data using a sampling pool of over 20, children, of which lived in a same-sex parent household. Authors of these outlier studies argue that, nevertheless, such configurations often represent families with gay or lesbian parents, and hence it is reasonable to count them as indicators of what happens when children live with one or more gay parent s.

The analyses examine parenting practices, the emotional well-being of the child, and the sexual orientation of the child. Of those studies, 75 concluded that children of gay or lesbian parents fare no worse than other children. The evidence demonstrates that children’s well-being is affected much more by their relationships with their parents, their parents’ sense of competence and security, and the presence of social and economic support than by the gender or the sexual orientation of parents.

Visit Source Website Anderssen, N. Click here to view our methodology. According to the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy, studies estimate that there are approximately , same-sex partner households, with about 27% of those households having children. Journal of Homosexuality, 32 2 , Should the sexual orientation of the parent play a part in the determination of custody or visitation in order to protect the child?

Determining the extent of consensus has become a key aspect of how social science evidence and testimony is accepted by the courts. This meta-analysis summa- rizes the available quantitative literature comparing the impact of heterosexual and homosexual parents, using a variety of measures, on the child ren.

In contrast to most studies on children of same-sex parents, a new national study called the New Family Structures Survey (NFSS) offers the most representative picture to date of outcomes for. Patterns of clustering within these citation networks reveal whether and when consensus arises within a scientific field.

In other words, the data fail to support the continuation of a bias against homosexual parents by any court. While many of the sample sizes were small, and some studies lacked a control group, researchers regard such studies as providing the best available knowledge about child adjustment, and do not view large, representative samples as essential.

Here, we show how a method of analyzing temporal patterns in citation networks can be used to assess the state of social scientific literature as a means to inform just such a question. Yet within the field, convenience sampling is not considered a methodological flaw, but simply a limitation to generalizability.

Overview: We identified 79 scholarly studies that met our criteria for adding to knowledge about the well-being of children with gay or lesbian parents. Within sociology and especially psychology, small, qualitative and longitudinal studies are considered to have certain advantages over probability studies: Such data can allow investigators to notice and analyze subtleties and texture in child development over time that large, statistical studies often miss.

Three key findings stood out in this study: children of married, opposite-sex parents have a high graduation rate compared to the others; children of lesbian families have a very low graduation rate compared to the others; and children in the other four types of living arrangements (common law marriage, gay couple, single mother, and single.

A study by Stanford researcher Michael Rosenfeld used census data to examine the school advancement of 3, children with same-sex parents, finding no significant differences between households headed by same-sex and opposite-sex parents when controlling for family background.