Feminist Philosophers

News feminist philosophers can use

Lesbian parenting June 9, 2010

Filed under: glbt — Monkey @ 1:45 pm

A long-term study of children born into lesbian families that discovered they grow up to be psychologically well-adjusted teenagers has been published in the journal Pediatrics. You can download the study from this site. The study was funded by various queer rights advocacy groups, which of course has led to criticism from some quarters. It’s worth remembering that many studies – including medical studies – are paid for by institutions that have a vested interest in the results. But this does not automatically mean that the results are biased.

 

6 Responses to “Lesbian parenting”

  1. Matt Drabek Says:
    June 9, 2010 at 3:39 pm

    Thanks for posting this! If we tossed every study that was paid for by a group that isn’t entirely neutral, we’d toss (more or less) every study. So, I’m not worried about that. There is one concern I do have with these types of studies, and the concern is that the children in the study are being compared to the average American youth. But isn’t it at least plausible to suppose that the sort of folks who would volunteer for this sort of study are the sort of folks who are more likely to raise well-adjusted children? I would think a better comparison would be to heterosexual-raised children who *also* participated in a study. This isn’t so much an objection as it is a suggestion for how these sorts of studies might be improved. My guess is that children raised in homosexual families are, if anything, more well-adjusted than heterosexual-raised children (because of the relatively higher bar to child-raising faced by homosexual couples).

  2. Andrew Says:
    June 9, 2010 at 3:42 pm

    David D. Friedman has a few interesting notes about this study on his blog (link omitted to bypass spam filter)

    In particular: “But the conclusion about how well adjusted the children were was based entirely on the reports of ther mothers. A more accurate, if less punchy, headline would have read: “Lesbian Mothers Think Better of Their Kids than Heterosexual Mothers Do.”"

  3. Monkey Says:
    June 9, 2010 at 4:14 pm

    Matt Drabek – the authors do control for that by comparing children raised in lesbian families with children from similar socioeconomic brackets raised in hetero families. They state that a limitation of the study is that they couldn’t control for ethnicity and region.

    Andrew – interviews with the mothers was just one of the tools that were used in the study. It wasn’t the only one.

  4. Shona Says:
    June 10, 2010 at 9:02 am

    It’s unfortunate that I read about this story on the same day (these are not the kind of people who take part in studies):

    http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/2010/06/10/lesbian-couple-jailed-over-methadone-on-baby-s-dummy-separated-after-prison-catfight-86908-22323651/

  5. josie mzrtin Says:
    June 12, 2010 at 7:44 pm

    I would like to say hogwash….But I have only been a lesbian for 72 years…so what do i know?

  6. extendedlp Says:
    June 13, 2010 at 6:07 am

    josie, ‘hogwash’ to which?
    i have to say, the whole self-report aspect of this (worse: *mum*-report!) worries me. and it worries me esp because poorly-designed study on this topic seems potentially worse than no study at all, socio-political facts as they are…


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