Same Sex Parenting No Different From Opposite Sex Parenting: Study

A new study regarding same-sex parents explains that there is "no significant difference" between their children or those of opposite-sex parents. It compared families who were similarly situated.

Hence, in the Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics children of same-sex parents are found to be just as healthy emotionally and physically as children of different-sex parents.

Dr. Nanette Gartrell, one of the study's authors, said that they have been targeting cases that are based on populations, and which are like comparing apples to apples. "It is the only study to compare same-sex and different-sex parent households with stable, continuously coupled parents and their biological offspring," said Gartrell.

Hence, by recruiting same-sex parent families, they managed to make valid comparisons. "It's been a goal of ours to do a nationally representative survey in which we could do this very carefully matched study," she said.

The National Survey of Children's Health took matches of 95 same-sex female parent households to 95 different-sex parents.

The study discovered that children were not showing any significant differences in health, emotional problems, coping or learning.

However, some differences were found in the relationships between the parents, the parents and children, and stress.

Gartell also explained that earlier studies were flawed, as they did not compare children from same-sex couples who did not remain coupled. They were drawn from same-sex families who underwent stresses such as divorce, adoption or foster care and then pitted them against children who belonged to stable families with different-sex parents.

As a writer puts it: "The Regnerus study, the one bigots rely on to show how terrible same-sex parents are, had two primary flaws. First, it did not actually study same-sex parenting situations at all. In its sample, it defined any situation where one of the parents had ever had any same-sex experience at all to be a same-sex led family. Second, it compared children from broken families (divorce) to intact two-parent same-sex households. And it controlled for none of the factors that this study controls for. That study is a joke. This one is considerably better."

However, the theory posited by Regnerus is exactly the opposite: ""People think I have it in for the LGBT community(ies)," Regnerus concluded. "I do not. I have it in for a science that refuses to proceed honestly, and instead shelters privileged groups - as it currently is doing - with a protective shell of administrators, grant-makers, and editors. Hence, the Regnerus bashing will continue until further notice. So be it. I may be unpopular - there are more important things in life than that - but about the comparative advantages of stable-married households with mom, dad, and children, I am not wrong. It will take more than smoke, mirrors, and shifty rhetoric to undo the robust empirical truth."

Hence, while no study can have the final word, both sides of the line have swords drawn.