15 thoughts on “Lesbian families ARE abnormal”

  1. That’s great news, of course, but I can’t help the thought that it is somehow a bit disturbing that the absence of men around may have led to a 0% rate of child abuse. Is it that being in a heterosexual relationship is somehow more stressful for the parents, leading to more child abuse? Is it that men themselves abuse children more often than woman (probably the case anyway)? Let me be clear that none of this comes out of the article, it’s just my own ruminations, but I don’t like these implications at all, especially the first one. Something to think about, very seriously.

  2. 2Catarina: Knowing who do a disproportinate share of “adult” rape and of child sexual abuse (yes, unfortunately, that is people of my gender – males), I’d say it is quite probable that simple absence of potential perpetrators is responsible for the huge part of that difference between all families and lesbian families.

  3. Hi isya, thanks for the comment. It’s depressing though, that statistically, it seems better for children just to say away from men :(

  4. Am I the only one that noticed that this study only studied lesbian parents? They only gathered data on lesbian couples, not heterosexual couples or couples of gay men. There is a certain amount of comparison that can be made to data from other studies, but it needs to be taken with a grain of salt, especially given differing methodologies.

    I would particularly like to see a study that collects data on both lesbian and gay men couples before jumping to “it seems better for children just to say away from men”.

  5. Cessen, I completely agree with you that it would be very important to contrast the data gathered here with other groups, in particular couples of gay men. I would be not surprised if the rate of child abuse was lower in groups of male gay couples than in groups of heterosexual couples. For one reason, typically male gay couples have to go though a lot more trouble to become parents, so they are likely to be very positively invested in their role of parents. Nevertheless, there are robust data to the effect that, in the wide majority of cases (and of course, typically in heterosexual couples), men are the perpetrators of child abuse more often than women, as Isya mentioned.

  6. I would assume that many of the lesbian couples in this study are adoptive parents, and my guess would be that the rate of child abuse in general is lower among adoptive parents than among biological parents, just because of the rigorous selection process adoptive parents typically have to go through. Even so, it wouldn’t surprise me if one important reason why the lesbian couples in this study turned out to have _0%_ child abuse is the absence of men.

  9. @Catarina:
    Could you link to this data? I would be interested to read them. The only reasonably robust statistics I’ve found myself are here:
    http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cb/pubs/cm06/figtab3.htm

    Which suggest that the large majority of abuse is committed either by mothers or by both mother and father, rather than by just fathers.

    Admittedly, it’s entirely possible that most of the abuse committed by women falls under the “neglect” category (I can’t seem to find a chart on type of abuse by perpetrator’s gender), but without evidence that’s just falling into the “angelic women-on-a-pedestal” trope.

    Honestly and truly, I wish to see the data you are talking about. This isn’t intended as an “Oh reeeaaaallly???” challenge or some BS like that.

  10. 2Cessen:

    Here is a similar Canadian survey:

    http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/publicat/cisfr-ecirf/index-eng.php

    You want Table 4-4(a), p.49.

    >> Admittedly, it’s entirely possible that most of the abuse committed by women falls under the “neglect” category

    Yes, that is absolutely true, as the table referenced above shows.

    (When evaluating the Canadian data, bear in mind that it comes from welfare agencies data. So it is an estimate of what gets reported to such agencies, not of national incidence – e.g., direct reports to police only, not to mention cases which never get reported, are not included. Which means, I would say, the absolute incidence of more serious offences is actually higher.)

  11. Thanks Isya.

    Looking at the table, it looks like biological fathers and mothers are actually fairly comparable in rates of physical abuse. With emotional maltreatment, again comparable rates. The only areas with differences are sexual abuse and neglect. In the former case, it’s about 3/4 fathers and 1/4 mothers. In the latter it’s almost (not quite) the reverse of that.

    For step mothers and step fathers it gets more interesting, with step fathers committing a lot more abuse in every category. Although step parents make up a small amount of abuse in general compared to bio parents.

  12. And yes, of course the actual rates are going to differ from the reported rates. But it’s somewhat speculative to say by how much, in what direction, and why.

  13. > Admittedly, it’s entirely possible that most of the abuse committed by women falls under the “neglect” category

    That’s simply because there are much more bio-parents than step-parents. (The figures are not weighted.)

  14. isya:
    I assume you meant to respond to:
    “For step mothers and step fathers it gets more interesting, with step fathers committing a lot more abuse in every category. Although step parents make up a small amount of abuse in general compared to bio parents.”
    ?

    In any case, yes, of course. But it is still relevant in terms of how many children are impacted.

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