Posted on 05/24/2011 3:57:02 PM PDT by NYer
Are children born to and raised by lesbians more likely to engage in same-sex sexual activity? Law professor Eugene Volokh reports on an interesting study that address that question:
There’s long been something of a debate about this question, and I thought I’d note an interesting and apparently quite credible article touching on it, Nanette K. Gartrell, Henny M. W. Bos & Naomi G. Goldberg, Adolescents of the U.S. National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study: Sexual Orientation, Sexual Behavior, and Sexual Risk Exposure, Archives of Sexual Behavior (2010). (I learned of it because one of the coauthors is affiliated with the Williams Institute for sexual orientation and the law here at UCLA School of Law.)
The study was part of an ongoing study that, at this stage, involved 77 families, “31 continuously-coupled, 40 separated-mother, and six single-mother families,” and 78 17-year-old children (one family had twins). Of the girls, nearly 50% described themselves as at least partly homosexual in orientation, though 30% out of that 50% were “predominantly heterosexual, incidentally homosexual.” (None of the girls, though, identified themselves as predominantly or exclusively lesbian.) Of the boys, a bit over 20% described themselves as at least partly homosexual in orientation, though 13% out of that 20% described themselves as “predominantly heterosexual, incidentally homosexual.” (Two of the boys identified themselves as predominantly or exclusively gay.) “The … Kinsey self-identifications [of the girls in the study] and lifetime sexual experiences were consistent with Stacey and Biblarz’s (2001) and Biblarz and Stacey’s (2010) theory that the offspring of lesbian and gay parents might be more open to homoerotic exploration and same-sex orientation.”
Nothing too surprising, but interesting to see it confirmed by an empirical study. Here’s a related data point from the study that is worth citing:
Of the 73 couples who were co-parenting when the index offspring were born, 56% had separated, and the average age of the index offspring at the time of their mothers’ separation was 6.97 years (SD=4.42 years). There was a significant difference between the parental divorce rate (36.3%) of the 17-year old adolescents in the 6th Cycle of the U.S. National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG) and the maternal relationship dissolution rate in the NLLFS (v2=12.32; p=.001).
In other words, all things being equal, a child born to a lesbian couple is 20% more likely to live in a broken home than a child born to heterosexual parents. Again, not a surprising finding. I’m not sure where the myth that lesbians “mate for life” originated, but it’s just that—a myth. As one study found, lesbian relationships are “not as likely to endure as relationships between heterosexuals, either married or cohabiting, or between gay men.”
Is that like “Mostly Dead”?
Did you get a new hat?
This is no surprise ..that is why they want families.. 2% of the population is not enough for them.. they want to “home grow” them
My wife used to work with a woman who was sexually active, and then thought she might be gay. She picked up a lesbian in a bar, and when they got busy she realized she wasn’t gay. To this day I laugh out loud when I think of what was going through her head after that epiphany (while still with the other woman): “I don’t want to be here anymore” “What the heck was I thinking?” “I really don’t want to be here anymore”...
Swing both ways, aka indulge in whatever sexual desire they have.
we have homosexuals playing families and in turn hurting kids.
This social experiment should cease ASAP and those shrinks long ago what said homosexuality is not a mental illness should have had their license taken away from them.
Since they said it was alright the homosexuals have used that as a platform to further their agenda and we need someone hwo has a mic ot speak up plus the public need to speak up instead of cowering when this subject comes up
Exactly.
I think that Andrew Dice Clay explained that.
The mental image cracks me up to this day.
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