Scientific research consistently shows that gay and lesbian parents are as fit and capable as heterosexual parents, and their children are as psychologically healthy and well-adjusted as those reared by heterosexual parents. Major associations of mental health professionals in the U.S., Canada, and Australia have not identified credible empirical research that suggests otherwise. In the United States, studies on the effect of gay and lesbian parenting on children were first conducted in the 1970s, and expanded through the 1980s in the context of increasing numbers of gay and lesbian parents seeking legal custody of their biological children. Children and young adults with LGBT parents are uniquely defined by the fact that they typically identify as heterosexual, but as a function of their membership in an LGBT-parent family, they are exposed to minority stress and experience the effects of adulthood. Thus, a central question in this study is, How do young adults with LGBT parents explain their sense of connection to or disconnection from the LGBT community, both as children (while growing up with LGBT parents) and as young adults? Regarding the transmission of gender roles, LGBT parents are caught between two contrasting images: "they are portrayed as either inherently different from, or essentially the same as, heterosexual families". Lesbians are either seen as a threat to heteronormativity because they are militant, anti-male feminists, or as especially safe caregivers because they are two loving, nurturing women, who are unlikely to be sexually abusive. Gay men are also caught between these two contrasting images. On one hand they do not have women’s ability to breastfeed children, are perceived as sexually (over)active and potentially predatory and, like lesbians, too political; on the other hand they are more maternal and more feminine than heterosexual men. The underlying assumption is that gay men and lesbians are different in some essential way from heterosexual people, and this difference implicates their aberrant gender expression. Therefore, they are unable to model appropriate gender behavior to their children, for example, the assumption that gay fathers are unable to bathe their daughters or discuss puberty and menstruation. Fitzgerald's 1999 analysis explained some methodological difficulties: Many of these studies suffer from similar limitations and weaknesses, with the main obstacle being the difficulty in acquiring representative, random samples on a virtually invisible population. Many lesbian and gay parents are not open about their sexual orientation due to real fears of discrimination, homophobia, and threats of losing custody of their children. Those who do participate in this type of research are usually relatively open about their homosexuality and, therefore, may bias the research towards a particular group of gay and lesbian parents. Because of the inevitable use of convenience samples, sample sizes are usually very small and the majority of the research participants end up looking quite homogeneous—e.g. white, middle-class, urban, and well-educated. Another pattern is the wide discrepancy between the number of studies conducted with children of gay fathers and those with lesbian mothers... Another potential factor of importance is the possibility of social desirability bias when research subjects respond in ways that present themselves and their families in the most desirable light possible. Such a phenomenon does seem possible due to the desire of this population to offset and reverse negative images and discrimination. Consequently, the findings of these studies may be patterned by self-presentation bias. In more recent studies, many of these issues have been resolved due to factors such as the changing social climate for LGBT people. Herek's 2006 paper in
American Psychologist stated: The overall methodological sophistication and quality of studies in this domain have increased over the years, as would be expected for any new area of empirical inquiry. More recent research has reported data from probability and community-based convenience samples, has used more rigorous assessment techniques, and has been published in highly respected and widely cited developmental psychology journals, including
Child Development and Developmental Psychology. Data are increasingly available from prospective studies. In addition, whereas early study samples consisted mainly of children originally born into heterosexual relationships that subsequently dissolved when one parent came out as gay or lesbian, recent samples are more likely to include children conceived within a same-sex relationship or adopted in infancy by a same-sex couple. Thus, they are less likely to confound the effects of having a sexual minority parent with the consequences of divorce. In a 2009 affidavit filed in the case
Gill v. Office of Personnel Management,
Michael Lamb, a professor of
psychology and head of Department of
Social and
Developmental Psychology at
Cambridge University, stated: The methodologies used in the major studies of same-sex parenting meet the standards for research in the field of developmental psychology and psychology generally. The studies specific to same-sex parenting were published in leading journals in the field of child and adolescent development, such as Child Development, published by the Society for Research in Child Development,
Developmental Psychology, published by the American Psychological Association, and The Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, the flagship peer-review journals in the field of child development. Most of the studies appeared in these (or similar) rigorously peer-reviewed and highly selective journals, whose standards represent expert consensus on generally accepted social scientific standards for research on child and adolescent development. Prior to publication in these journals, these studies were required to go through a rigorous peer-review process, and as a result, they constitute the type of research that members of the respective professions consider reliable. The body of research on same-sex families is consistent with standards in the relevant fields and produces reliable conclusions." Gartrell and Bos note that the study's limitations included utilizing a non-random sample, and the lesbian group and control group were not matched for race or area of residence. According to a 2005 brief by the American Psychological Association: In 2010 American Psychological Association, The California Psychological Association, The American Psychiatric Association, and the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy stated: A significant increase in methodological rigor was achieved in a 2020 study by Deni Mazrekaj at
University of Oxford, Kristof De Witte and Sofie Cabus at
KU Leuven published in the
American Sociological Review. The range of these studies allows for conclusions to be drawn beyond any narrow spectrum of a child's well-being, and the literature further indicates that parents' financial, psychological and physical well-being is enhanced by marriage and that children benefit from being raised by two parents within a legally recognized union. There is evidence that nuclear families with homosexual parents are more egalitarian in their distribution of home and childcare activities, and thus less likely to embrace traditional gender roles. Nonetheless, the
American Academy of Pediatrics reports that there are no differences in the interests and hobbies between children with homosexual versus heterosexual parents. Since the 1970s, it has become increasingly clear that it is family processes (such as the quality of parenting, the psychosocial well-being of parents, the quality of and satisfaction with relationships within the family, and the level of co-operation and harmony between parents) that contribute to determining children's well-being and outcomes rather than family structures, per se, such as the number, gender, sexuality and cohabitation status of parents. Since the end of the 1980s, as a result, it has been well established that children and adolescents can be as well-adjusted in nontraditional settings as in traditional settings. These organizations include the American Academy of Pediatrics, the
American Psychiatric Association, the
American Psychological Association, the
American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy, the
American Psychoanalytic Association, the
National Association of Social Workers, the North American Council on Adoptable Children, and
Canadian Psychological Association. In 2006,
Gregory M. Herek stated in
American Psychologist: "If gay, lesbian, or bisexual parents were inherently less capable than otherwise comparable heterosexual parents, their children would evidence problems regardless of the type of sample. This pattern clearly has not been observed. Given the consistent failures in this research literature to disprove the
null hypothesis, the burden of empirical proof is on those who argue that the children of sexual minority parents fare worse than the children of heterosexual parents." and a 2008 meta-analysis reached similar conclusions. In June 2010, the results of a 25-year ongoing longitudinal study by
Nanette Gartrell of the
University of California and Henny Bos of the
University of Amsterdam were released. Gartrell and Bos studied 78 children conceived through donor
insemination and raised by lesbian mothers. Mothers were interviewed and given clinical questionnaires during pregnancy and when their children were 2, 5, 10, and 17 years of age. In the abstract of the report, the authors stated: "According to their mothers' reports, the 17-year-old daughters and sons of lesbian mothers were rated significantly higher in social, school/academic, and total competence and significantly lower in social problems, rule-breaking, aggressive, and externalizing problem behavior than their age-matched counterparts in Achenbach's normative sample of American youth." Analysis of extensive
social science literature into the question of children's psychological outcomes of being raised by same-sex parents by the
Australian Institute of Family Studies in 2013 concluded that "there is now strong evidence that same-sex parented families constitute supportive environments in which to raise children" and that with regard to lesbian parenting "...clear benefits appear to exist with regard to: the quality of parenting children experience in comparison to their peers parented in heterosexual couple families; children's and young adults' greater tolerance of sexual and gender diversity; and gender flexibility displayed by children, particularly sons".
Sexual orientation and gender role Reviews of data from studies thus far suggest that children reared by non-heterosexual parents have outcomes similar to those of children reared by heterosexual parents with respect to sexual orientation. According to the
U.S. census, 80% of the children being raised by same-sex couples in the United States are their biological children. Regarding biological children of non-heterosexuals, a 2016 review led by
J. Michael Bailey states "We would expect, for example, that homosexual parents should be more likely than heterosexual parents to have homosexual children on the basis of genetics alone", as there is a modest heritability to sexual orientation. A 2005 review by
Charlotte J. Patterson for the
American Psychological Association found that the available data did not suggest higher rates of homosexuality among the children of lesbian or gay parents. There are many risks and challenges that can occur for children of LGBT families and their parents in North America, including those in the individual domain, family domain, and community/school domain. Hegemonic social norms can lead some children to struggle in all or several domains. Social interactions at school, extracurricular activities, and religious organizations can promote negative attitudes towards their parents and themselves based on gender and sexuality. The forms of harm and violence that LGBT young people can experience include physical harm and harassment, cyber harassment, assault, bullying, micro-aggressions and beyond. Due to the increased risk of harm experienced, children of LGBT parents and LGBT students can also experience increased levels of stress, anxiety, and self-esteem issues. Practicing and developing supportive networks within schools and working towards resilience skills can assist in creating safe environments for students and parents. questions the value of trying to establish that lesbian or gay parents are defective or suitable. He argues such positions are flawed because they are informed by ideologies that either oppose or support such families. In Hicks' view:
Representation in media Historically, same-sex couples have been absent, or misrepresented, in cultural representation resources such as advertisements, television shows, books, and films, since the institution of the
Hays Code. The restriction has extended to same-sex parenting and queer families, whose presence was deemed unsuitable for public consumption The release of American sitcom
Modern Family in 2009 represented a turning point in popular media for representation of same-sex parents. Popular entertainment media however has been criticized for the limited range of same-sex parenthood modalities and identities, as well as notions of
assimilationism and
homonormativity. In addition to the lack of varied cultural narratives, same-sex parents have expressed the overrepresentation of same-sex male parents and traditionally feminine same-sex female parents, and ongoing issues with visibility Ingraham interviewed Mia Cathell, who wrote an extensive multipart report about the case for the right-wing website
Townhall, with Cathell saying that the problem that the story show(ed) was that "a same-sex couple was able to receive services" from an adoption agency.
Misrepresentation by opponents In a 2006 statement, the Canadian Psychological Association released an updated statement on their 2003 and 2005 conclusions, saying, "The CPA recognizes and appreciates that persons and institutions are entitled to their opinions and positions on this issue. However, CPA is concerned that some persons and institutions are misinterpreting the findings of psychological research to support their positions when their positions are more accurately based on other systems of belief or values." In
Perry v. Brown, Judge
Vaughn Walker found that the available studies on stepchildren, which opponents of same-sex marriage cited to support their position that it is best for a child to be raised by its biological mother and father, do not isolate "the genetic relationship between a parent and a child as a variable to be tested" and only compare "children raised by married, biological parents with children raised by single parents, unmarried mothers, step families and cohabiting parents", and thus "compare various family structures and do not emphasize biology".
Perry also cited studies showing that "adopted children or children conceived using sperm or egg donors are just as likely to be well-adjusted as children raised by their biological parents." ==See also==