Is Gay Parenting Bad for the Kids?

[eternalrest]

Children of gay couples are disadvantaged -- because of family instability.
By Charles C. W. Cooke

In search of his answers, Regnerus screened 15,088 people. From these, researchers found 175 people who had been raised for some of their childhood by a mother who was in a lesbian relationship, and 73 people who had been raised for some of their childhood by a father who was in a gay relationship — still a relatively small group.
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Regnerus found that children in the study rarely spent their entire childhoods in the households of their gay parent and partner. Only two of the 175 subjects who reported having a mother in a lesbian relationship spent their whole childhood with the couple, and no children studied spent their entire childhood with two gay males. The numbers drop off pretty sharply as time progressed, too: For example, 57 percent of children spent more than four months with lesbian parents, but only 23 percent spent more than three years. This is interesting in and of itself, but it has serious implications for the study — implications to which I will later return.

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Ultimately, Mark Regnerus set out to answer the question of whether children who have parents in a same-sex relationship experience disadvantages when compared with children raised by their biological, married parents. The answer, contra the zeitgeist, appears to be a resounding yes. Children with a parent in a same-sex relationship “underperform” in almost every category. Some of these differences may be relatively benign — whether one voted in the last presidential election, for example — but most are decidedly not. One deficit is particularly worrying: Less than 2 percent of children from intact, biological families reported experiencing sexual abuse of some nature, but that figure for children of same-sex couples is 23 percent. Similarly disturbing is that 14 percent of children from same-sex couples have spent some time in foster care, compared with around 2 percent of the American population at large. Arrest, drug experimentation, and unemployment rates were all higher among children from same-sex families.

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Regnerus’s study is a success insofar as it answers the fundamental question of whether children raised by same-sex couples end up differently: Clearly they do, and it does not require a conservative viewpoint to see that “differently” very often means “worse.” It is debatable, though, whether this is an indictment of same-sex households or of instability. Indeed, the major takeaway from the report is less an indictment that same-sex households are a negative thing and more an affirmation that intact, biological households are a positive thing. Put simply, if you want to give your children the best start in life, you should have children inside of wedlock and stay together for the duration. But then, we already knew that.

http://www.nationalreview.com/articl...ble-rich-lowry

[JimG]

I would say, of course it's bad for the kids, without even needing a study.

[eternalrest]

Link to article: http://www.nationalreview.com/articl...rles-c-w-cooke

[Robert Bay]

Opinion, not a news article

National Review is an opinion site. Sometimes it links to news articles, not in this case.