DEFINITION OF FAMILY CONFUSES ISSUES: Maggie Gallagher

...What's wrong with this claim? J. Michael Bailey, a professor at Northwestern University who is an expert on gay fathers and their children, points out one problem with the Times' position: The studies it cites are small and not representative of gay parents at large. "You can't force families to participate, and there aren't that many of them out there to start with," he noted. "There is also a strong volunteer bias: The families who want to participate might be much more open about sexual orientation" and may be eager to report positive outcomes.

We just don't know very much about how kids fare raised by two same-gender parents compared with intact married families. It's a social experiment on children, the results of which are not yet in.

But here's the really big trick buried in the story reporting that kids with gay parents do just as well as kids in more "traditional" families: The vast majorities of these studies compare single lesbian moms to single heterosexual moms. They tell us nothing at all about how children raised by a same-sex couple fare when compared with children raised by their own married mom and dad.

One cannot help but notice that more than marriage is being redefined. What's a traditional family? At one point, it meant a family with a working dad and a stay-at-home mom, and children. As time went on, a "traditional family" became any intact married couple raising their kids together.

Now, in The New York Times nomenclature, a "traditional family" is any family that is not headed by a homosexual. Unwed mothers, rejoice!

more
posted by Eve at 6:58 PM | link

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home