In the first prospective cohort study of its kind, these children were found to have better social, academic, and overall competence and significantly fewer social problems than typical American children, according to Nanette Gartrell, MD, of the University of California, San Francisco, and Henry Bos, PhD, of the University of California, Los Angeles.
“We didn’t expect to find ‘better,’” Gartrell told MedPage Today. “We expected to find ‘as good as.’
Seems like these Dr’s went into this study with a bias.
“What I do know from working with these families in depth, is that these were planned families, and the mothers strongly desired to have children,” she said. “That impacts well-being. They had other [qualities] that go with good outcomes, like love, nurture, and good resources to provide for them .Studies have estimated that 270,313 American children were living in homes headed by same-sex couples in 2005, and twice as many are raised by a single gay or lesbian parent.So to assess that adjustment the researchers enrolled 154 lesbian mothers who conceived through donor insemination in the U.S. National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study between 1986 and 1992.”Their 78 offspring were interviewed and completed questionnaires when they were 10 and 17 years old. Their parents were interviewed and completed checklists at the same time”.
There is estimated to be around 810,000 children in lesbian and gay families and these Dr”s sampled only 78 children and 154 lesbian adults or .0000893 % of the estimated total. Maybe these parents were hand picked by the Dr”s for the study to cook the study, I don”t trust these people.
“She and Bos found that lesbian mothers rated their 17-year-old children significantly higher in social, academic, and total competence than typical American children, as compared with Achenbach’s normative sample of American youth. They also had significantly fewer social problems, and less rule-breaking, aggressive, and externalizing problem behavior than their age-matched counterparts, the researchers wrote”.
The children and parents rated themselves, maybe self serving over rating themselves and children?
“And the lower levels of externalizing problems may be explained by disciplinary styles, they added. The mothers used verbal limit-setting, and studies have shown they use less corporal punishment and less power assertion than heterosexual fathers”.
Damn fathers we need to get rid of all of them except for sperm collection, because they are the problem you know.
“Growing up in households with less power assertion and more parental involvement has been shown to be associated with healthier psychological adjustment,” the researchers wrote. That’s right let the little darlings make their own rules
The study was limited in that it was not a random sample, and was not controlled for race, ethnicity, or other demographic factors.
Oh really.
I know nothing about doing scientific studies but this one seems skewed to generate desired results and is rubbish..
There was more to the study but my eyes are starting to cross and I need to get some sleep.
The study compares the gay parented children to ‘typical children’ in the US. And then you highlighted this quote:
“The study was limited in that it was not a random sample, and was not controlled for race, ethnicity, or other demographic factors.”
Does this mean that the children of the gay parents, with higher amounts of commitment and resources to get through the IVF process and therefore at a markedly higher socioeconomic level (which usually excludes minorities, immigrants, unplanned pregnancies), were compared with ‘typical children’ from a broad strata of socioeconomic levels? And doesn’t this mean that IVF children were compared with non-IVF children, because ‘typical kids’ in the US today are often the result of unwanted pregnancies? And doesn’t this mean that the sample compared those whose families have the resources to live in San Francisco and pay for IVF with those who may live in more blighted areas and may be on food stamps and are struggling to learn English?
Great!
Thanks!!!!!