Review: Same-Sex Parenting Research
by Frances Rabbitts, Prophecy Today:
In a week when a former magistrate has lost his appeal over his right to express (even in private) Christian views about same-sex adoption, it seems especially pertinent to review this 2018 book from Wilberforce Publications on academic understandings of gay marriage and parenting.
In the second of two gold standard studies commissioned by the Oxford Centre for Religion and Public Life (the first was published in 2014 as The Marriage Files), US Professor of applied family science Walter R. Schumm provides a comprehensive review of the academic social science literature on the politically charged issue of same-sex parenting. In so doing, he challenges the claim, presented so often as incontrovertible, that same-sex partnerships are no different to heterosexual partnerships when it comes to the raising of children.
Schumm sets out to ‘follow the evidence where it leads’, unwilling to accept brazen claims of absolute academic consensus on this issue at face value. Undeterred by the many powerful enemies this has made him, Schumm not only presents a fair-minded review; he also levels a devastating critique at academia’s co-option by LGBTQ+ dogma, leading one scholar to label the book the “social science parallel to Martin Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses being nailed to the Wittenberg Chapel door”.
Incorrect and Over-Blown Claims
The book is organised into 15 relatively short chapters grouped into six sections, making it easy to use for reference purposes. The main body of the research is contained in sections 2-5, with each chapter organised into ‘What has been claimed’, ‘What we know’, a critical assessment of the existing literature and a short conclusion. As the book progresses, a pattern quickly becomes evident: “the facts on the ground do not support many of the so-called ‘consensus’ claims” (p229) about the issue of same-sex parenting.
Part 1 is given to background information, including a summary of the LGBTQ+ challenge to traditional marriage, and social science theory on sexual morality, marriage and happiness. Part 2 starts with assessing the number of children raised by same-sex parents in the US. Here we gain an astonishing insight into the way academics can get their most basic facts wrong, rushing to echo wildly incorrect but convenient claims without due consideration: Schumm traces the oft-cited figure of 6-14 million children back to an unsubstantiated newspaper article, with the real figure more likely to be about 200,000.
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