World Slowly Discovers That Good Parents Are Good Parents, Gay Or Straight
LatestGet this: parental stress levels and skills matter more to their adopted kids’ development than the parents’ sexuality. Meanwhile, the fictional lesbian parents on The Kids Are All Right are pissing some people off.
A recent study found that the children of lesbian parents may actually be better-adjusted despite their tragic lack of a male parent. Now comes another, wide-ranging study of 106 adoptive families, roughly half of which were gay or lesbian parented, involved input from teachers as well as parents — a relatively new data source in such studies. The result:
Measures of children’s adjustment, parenting approaches, parenting stress, and couple relationship adjustment were not significantly associated with parental sexual orientation. However, several family process variables—parenting stress, parenting approaches, and couple relationship adjustment—were found to be significantly associated with children’s adjustment, regardless of parental sexual orientation.
In other words, the evidence suggests that potential adoptive parents should be evaluated on the basis of whether they might make good parents, not whether or not they are into opposite marriage. Seems simple, right?