Gay Parent Households Empathetic, Study Says
By The Associated Press
Originally published in The Palm Beach Post , June 17, 2001
NEW YORK (AP) — Psychologists sympathetic to gay rights have long asserted that children raised by same-sex parents are no different from other children. But two professors are now challenging that premise in a study that both pleases and worries gay activists.
Children with lesbian or gay parents show more empathy for social diversity, are less confined by gender stereotypes and are probably more likely to explore homosexual activity themselves, says the new study by two University of Southern California sociologists.
"We say there are some differences, and that people have shied away from acknowledging them for fear that this would inflame homophobia," said Judith Stacey, who co-authored the report with Timothy Biblarz.
Some gays worry that the report, in the latest issue of the American Sociological Review, will provide ammunition for opponents of adoption and foster-parenting by homosexuals.
However, leaders of national groups supporting gay families welcomed the article.
"I'm thrilled that they're tackling these issues," said Aimee Gelnaw, executive director of the Family Pride Coalition, who is raising a 16-year-old son and 5-year-old daughter with her lesbian partner in Oak Park, Ill.
Kate Kendall, head of the San Francisco-based National Center for Lesbian Rights, also is raising two children with her partner.
"There's only one response to a study that children raised by lesbian and gay parents may be somewhat more likely to reject notions of rigid sexual orientation—that response has to be elation," Kendall said.
She urged lesbians and gays to overcome uneasiness they might have about the report.
"If in fact our kids are somewhat more likely to identify as lesbian and gay—if we're ashamed of that outcome, it means we're ashamed of ourselves," Kendall said.
Stacey and Biblarz reevaluated 21 studies done between 1981 and 1998. The thrust of those studies was that children raised by same-sex parents were no different from those reared by heterosexual parents.
"Because anti-gay scholars seek evidence of harm, sympathetic researchers defensively stress its absence," Stacey and Biblarz wrote. Such researchers "tread gingerly around the terrain of differences."
In particular, researchers concluded there was no difference in sexual orientation or gender behavior, Stacey said in a telephone interview.
"We say that doesn't appear to be true," she said. "It's time to stop worrying about that and look at it with eyes wide open."
Stacey said nothing in their work justifies discrimination against gay families. She worried, however, that some family court judges might use the findings to reinforce decisions against gay parenting.
A family-law expert skeptical of gay parenting, Lynn Wardle of Brigham Young University's law school, was not surprised that Stacey and Biblarz found shortcomings in earlier research.
"This is a flashing yellow light that says before you legalize gay adoptions, you better think clearly," he said. "The social science doesn't support those kind of radical reforms."
Amy Desai, a policy analyst with the conservative group Focus on the Family, said the new report is "alarming" in its suggestions that children of gay parents might be more open to homosexual activity. "Kids do best when they have a married mother and a married father," she said.
Felicia Park-Rogers, whose parents came out as lesbian and gay when she was 3, is executive director of COLAGE (Children of Lesbians and Gays Everywhere). She agreed with Stacey that the vast majority of children with same-sex parents turn out to be heterosexual.
"The stereotype is that gay parents make their children gay, and want them to be gay," she said. "The reality is that gay parents allow being gay to be an option. They know there are still difficulties about it."
Gelnaw said her son, Zach, who is heterosexual, "is the kind of guy girls want to be friends with. He's incredibly empathetic. He doesn't have to put on that macho act."
Zach didn't dispute his mother's words, but he had some advice for the experts and ideologues. "The problem I have is with generalizations," he said. "All kids are different."
On the Net:
Stacey-Biblarz article: http://www.asanet.org/pubs/stacey.pdf
COLAGE: http://www.colage.org
