WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT THE EFFECTS OF SAME-SEX PARENTING?: Ann Hulbert

...What's surprising is that both camps have converged lately on a very basic point: The existing science is methodologically flawed and ideologically skewed. Don't count on that consensus, however, to dampen the feud.

You wouldn't guess from the current "expert" position on homosexual child-rearing that the data are in any doubt. Two years ago, the American Academy of Pediatrics put its imprimatur on the stance adopted by the American Psychiatric Association in 2000. An article in Pediatrics pronounced that "a growing body of scientific literature demonstrates that children who grow up with 1 or 2 gay and/or lesbian parents fare as well in emotional, cognitive, social, and sexual functioning as do children whose parents are heterosexual."

But behind the scenes, skeptics have emerged--and from an unexpected quarter. ...Who would have predicted this camp would come up with the most incisive critique of the claim that research has proved there are no differences between kids raised by gay and straight parents?

Whenever advocates shoot down findings that work in their favor, the result carries extra credibility. In this case it helps, too, that the professor stepping forth to do so, Judith Stacey, is a well-known sociologist whose strident advocacy of "alternative" families has made her a nemesis of traditionalists. Stacey's stringent assessment of 21 of the better studies on gay child-rearing, in an article titled "(How) Does the Sexual Orientation of Parents Matter?" cut through the ideological static that such a charged area of research almost inevitably generates. (Co-authored with Timothy J. Biblarz, it appeared in the American Sociological Review in 2001.) ...

But wait: All the evidence--as both sides acknowledge--is seriously flawed and doesn't begin to supply anything like solid support for either the hopes of gay family harmony or the fears about scarred children and skewed parenting. And until gay couples are allowed to marry, there can't possibly be decent studies of whether the honorable estate confers the same benefits on kids whose parents are the same sex as it does on those who have a mom and a dad. In the meantime, it's quite clear that the absence of good science won't--and shouldn't--settle a fraught debate. What will help clarify it are experiences like mine, watching my sister and her partner sharing the hard work and the happiness of raising their daughter. I can't think of a better argument for gay marriage than that.

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[Elizabeth Marquardt has a brief response here.]
posted by Eve at 6:33 PM | link

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