Is there really no difference between straight and gay parenting?
by Michael Cook, MercatorNet:
The consensus is flawed by small-scale studies, badly framed questions and poorly understood data.
Much of the jousting over same-sex marriage, same-sex parenting and transgender issues takes place in a fact-free arena. Fortunately, there has been a pushback from academics dismayed by the lack of academic rigour. Recently we reviewed an essay published in The New Atlantis by two experts from Johns Hopkins University and yesterday a critique of Australia’s Safe Schools program by University of Sydney law professor Patrick Parkinson. Today, we report on a just-published paper by Walter Schumm, of Kansas State University about same-sex parenting.
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Is having same-sex parents a disadvantage for a child? The conventional wisdom says that there is no difference from having heterosexual parents. Politicians, journalists, academics, governments, and courts seem to have reached a consensus on the issue. Questioning this orthodoxy results in accusations of irrational bias and homophobia.
This belief has taken deep root in academia. One recent study concluded that “there is a clear consensus in the social science literature” that children with same-sex parents fare just as well – or even better. And Susan Golombok, of the University of Cambridge, one of the leading researchers in family studies, said bluntly last year that “much of this debate has been founded upon myths and false assumptions about the deleterious consequences of new family forms for the children who grow up in them, rather than the findings of empirical research”.
However, Walter R. Schumm, of Kansas State University, insists that the “no differences” issue is far from settled. As he documents in his 120-page article, “A Review and Critique of Research on Same-Sex Parenting and Adoption” in the most recent issue of the journal Psychological Reports, most studies are flawed, inconclusive, or small-scale. And many troubling issues surface which never reach the media or the courts.
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