It’s the rallying cry for opponents of same-sex marriage: “Every child deserves a mom or a dad.” But a major new study finds that kids raised by same-sex couples actually do a bit better “than the general population on measures of general health and family cohesion.”
The study, conducted in Australia by University of Melbourne researchers “surveyed 315 same-sex parents and 500 children.” The children in the study scored about six percent higher than Australian kids in the general population. The advantages held up “when controlling for a number sociodemographic factors such as parent education and household income.” The study was the largest of its kind in the world.
The lead researcher, Dr. Simon Crouch, noted that in same-sex couples parents have to “take on roles that are suited to their skill sets rather than falling into those gender stereotypes.” According to Crouch, this leads to a “more harmonious family unit and therefore feeding on to better health and well being.”
The findings were in line with “existing international research undertaken with smaller sample sizes.”
Family Voice Australia, a group that opposes same-sex marriage, said the study should be discounted because it does not consider “what happens when the child reaches adulthood.”
In the United States, opponents of same-sex marriage routinely claim that children raised by same-sex couple fare worse. The most commonly cited study, conducted by sociologist Mark Regnerus, did not actually study children raised by same-sex couples. Indeed, “most of the subjects in the study grew up in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, long before marriage equality was available or adoption rights were codified in many states”. Instead, Regnerus studied children raised in “failed heterosexual unions” where one parent had a “romantic relationship with someone of the same sex.” It has been condemned by the American Sociological Association. Other frequently cited studies have similar methodological problems.
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