LOOKING STRAIGHT AT GAY PARENTS: From USA Today

When Kim Musheno, 39, gives birth to her second son next month, her lesbian partner will be in the birthing room.

If their current plan holds up, Victor Zaborsky, 38, the gay man who is the baby's biological father, will be there, too. And so will Joseph Price, 32, Zaborsky's gay partner. Price is the biological father of Musheno's first child, now 3. ...

As with most things in the debate over gay parenting, just how many gay families there are is hard to pin down. Gary Gates, a demographer with the Urban Institute, has analyzed 2000 Census data and estimates that there are 100,000 female same-sex couples and 67,000 male same-sex couples with at least one child under 18 in the home. In his book due in April, The Gay and Lesbian Atlas, he estimates that 250,000 children are being raised by same-sex couples. ...

There is precious little research on the children of gay families compared with that done on the children from heterosexual unions. The studies are often small, conflicting and controversial. One of the most cited overviews of research was done by two University of Southern California sociologists. Peers reviewed their article for 18 months before its publication in the American Sociological Review in 2001.

In terms of most measures of child well-being, such as mental health and cognitive development, the study overall found results "at least as positive as children with heterosexual parents," says co-author Judith Stacey. But the report also challenges "the predominant claim that the sexual orientation of parents does not matter at all."

"Only a handful of studies track children to adulthood," cautions Stacey, now at New York University. One small British study found children raised by lesbians were no more likely to identify themselves as homosexual than those brought up in heterosexual households.

The analysis touches on the third rail of gay parenting research: sexual behavior. The British study said young girls raised by lesbians were more apt to be sexually adventurous than those raised by heterosexual parents and more likely to have had intimacy with a same-sex partner. Boys raised by lesbians, however, were less sexually adventurous than those raised in straight households.

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