Pediatrics Academy Joins Crusade for ‘Gay Parenting’     2/7/2002

Pediatrics Academy Joins Crusade for ‘Gay Parenting’
Study Ignores Research Showing Differences
By Robert Knight

Pediatricians Come Out for Homosexual Adoption

The American Academy of Pediatrics issued a report on Monday praising Vermont for creating homosexual “civil unions” and declaring that children in homosexual households turn out exactly the same as children with a mother and father who are married.

The Academy, which is a professional association for doctors for children, called on lawmakers to remove all obstacles to homosexual parenting. The statement was largely based on a paper written by pro-homosexual researcher Ellen C. Perrin, M.D.

Citing a handful of studies done mostly by lesbian researchers, the paper, “Technical Report: Coparent or Second-Parent Adoption by Same-Sex Parents,” Pediatrics Vol. 109, No. 2, February 2002, pp. 341-344, says that “prevalent heterosexism and stigmatization” might lead to problems for children, but that homosexual households are no different for children and might even be more beneficial in some cases.

Steven Drizin, an attorney with Northwestern University’s Children and Family Justice Center, told USA Today that the academy’s stance will greatly impact legal battles over gay adoption.

“The stamp of approval from a widely respected and mainstream organization … will go a long way to further the movement throughout courts and legislatures,” Drizin said.

The AAP report uses a “broad estimate” that 1 to 9 million children in the United States “have at least 1 parent who is lesbian or gay.” Given that there are about 80 million children under 18 in the United States, and from 2.7 to 5.2 million homosexuals (1 to 2 percent of the population), the high-end estimate of 9 million would mean that every single homosexual in America, regardless of age, is a parent to 2 to 4 children.

The Perrin study states: “Stereotypes and laws that maintain discriminatory practices are based on the assumption that lesbian mothers and gay fathers are different from heterosexual parents in ways that are important to their children’s well-being.”

The report fails to cite thousands of studies showing the superiority of mother-father, married households for the welfare of children. Nearly all the cited studies compare children in homosexual households to those in single-parent households, usually of divorced mothers or fathers.

Sometimes, the report cites studies whose findings indicate the opposite of what is claimed. For example: “Similar proportions of young adults who had homosexual parents and those who had heterosexual parents have reported feelings of attraction toward someone of the same sex.” Yet Perrin cites a 1997 book by two pro-gay authors (Golombok and Tasker), which includes their own study that concludes the opposite of what she claims. Golombok and Tasker compared lesbian households to homes with single, heterosexual mothers and found that several children from lesbian households had gender identity problems or acted out homosexually, while none of the children from the “straight” households did so.

A 2001 article in the American Sociological Review, by University of Southern California researchers Judith Stacey and Timothy Biblarz, which looked at 21 gay parenting studies, concluded that, contrary to published reports, research indicated many differences between children in homosexual households and those raised in heterosexual households. The pro-homosexual authors, who stated that they saw nothing amiss with children becoming homosexuals, said that they understood the fears of the researchers of publicizing such findings, due to society’s “homophobia,” but felt that scientists should honestly acknowledge what is obvious from the data.

Among the differences Stacey and Biblarz found in various studies:

• A higher proportion of young-adult children raised by lesbian mothers say they tried homosexuality themselves or would be open to trying it;

• Girls raised by lesbians are more likely to be sexually adventurous, while boys raised by lesbians are more passive and less masculine than boys raised in heterosexual homes;

• Girls from lesbian homes are less likely to conform to “cultural norms,” gravitating to traditionally masculine activities, such as playing with trucks and guns and dressing in more masculine clothing.

The authors of the review concluded “it is difficult to conceive of a credible theory of sexual development that would not expect the adult children of lesbigay [lesbian, bisexual and gay] parents to display somewhat higher incidence of homoerotic desire, behavior, and identity than children of heterosexual parents.”

In the book No Basis: What the Studies Don’t Tell Us about Same-Sex Parenting — produced by the Marriage Law Project based at Catholic University — Dr. Robert Lerner and Dr. Althea Nagai examined 49 empirical studies on “gay parenting,” many of which are cited frequently in court cases and in legislative reports to promote “gay” adoption and custody. They found all of the studies flawed, and said: “Do these 49 studies offer conclusive proof that there is ‘no difference’ between heterosexual and homosexual households? We believe that these studies offer no basis for that conclusion — because they are so deeply flawed pieces of research.”

Flaws include researcher bias, small sample sizes, control group disparities, biased recruitment of subjects, omission of key data, generalizing specific groups to larger populations, ignoring significant differences in variables between groups (such as education level or income) and making assumptions based on data not suited for such conclusions.

For instance, Lerner and Nagai found that some researchers compare children in lesbian households of professional careerists with statistics for children from the national average, a flawed comparison because the latter are from a lower educational strata. The child in the lesbian household might score higher in standardized tests. But the child might also have emotional or identity problems that go uncharted. Yet the researchers will report “no difference” in the households, or even say that the child is better off in the lesbian household.

[Editor’s note: to order the book by Lerner and Nagai, call the Marriage Law Project at 202-319-6215; it is also downloadable on PDF from the Ethics & Public Policy Center Web site. (The downloadable Lerner and Nagai book is 478kb. It requires Adobe Acrobat Reader.).]

One of the most cited studies was done by R. Green, et al, in 1986 in Archives of Sexual Behavior. The researchers looked at nearly 100 children (58 from lesbian households and 43 raised by divorced heterosexual mothers) and concluded, “It is clear that boys and girls raised from early childhood by a homosexual mother without an adult male in the household for about 4 years do not appear appreciably different on parameters of psychosexual and psychosocial development from children raised by heterosexual mothers. … These data … have practical considerations when courts become battlegrounds for child custody. … The mother’s sexual orientation per se should not enter this judicial calculus.”

A July 2001 article in Psychological Reports by Paul Cameron, Kirk Cameron and Thomas Landess examined the Green, et al, study and found numerous discrepancies and omissions: “The inconsistencies between the published accounts are substantive and numerous enough to recommend that the authors issue a complete and detailed report of the study.” Specifically, Green and his colleagues conducted two earlier studies and reported some differences, yet omitted them from their compilation in 1986. Methodological flaws such as using “pairing” data in mismatched cohorts (i.e., making false comparisons) also cast doubt on the validity of the researchers’ conclusions. The Psychological Reports authors also note that Stacey and Biblarz, in American Sociological Review, found “at least 15 intriguing, statistically significant differences in gender behavior and preferences among children … in lesbian and heterosexual single-mother homes” in the Green study.

In 1993, the Journal of Divorce & Remarriage examined numerous “gay parenting” studies (many of which are cited in the Perrin article) and found that they were all flawed. Many of the studies reflected the bias of the researchers and had methodological flaws, the authors said. As for the Green study, the authors criticized it for acknowledging gender identity differences among girls in lesbian households while still reporting “while there is less adherence to traditionally sex-typed symbols, they are still similar to other same-age girls.”

REFERENCES

Perrin, Ellen C., “Technical Report: Coparent or Second-Parent Adoption by Same-Sex Parents” Pediatrics Vol. 109, No. 2, February 2002, pp. 341-344.

Tasker, F.L., Golombok, S., Growing Up in a Lesbian Family: Effects on Child Development (New York: Guilford Press, 1997).

Stacey, J., and Biblarz, T.J., “(How) Does the Sexual Orientation of Parents Matter?,” American Sociological Review, 2001, 66, pp. 159-183.

Lerner, R., and Nagai, A., No Basis: What the Studies Don’t Tell Us about Same-Sex Parenting, Marriage Law Project, Washington, D.C.: Ethics and Public Policy Center, 2001.

Green, R., Mandel, J.B., Hotvedt, M.E., Gray, J. & Smith, L., “Lesbian mothers and their children: a comparison with solo parent heterosexual mothers and their children,” Archives of Sexual Behavior, 1986, 15, pp. 167-184.

Cameron, P., Cameron, K., & Landess, T., “Green, Mandel, Hotvedt, Gray and Smith’s Study of 50 Lesbian Mothers and Their Children: Inconsistencies in Four Published Reports of the Data,” Psychological Reports, 2001, 88, pp. 1223-1234.

Belcastro, P.A., Gramlich, T., Nicholson, T., Price, J., & Wilson, R., “A review of data based studies addressing the effects of homosexual parenting on children’s sexual and social functioning,” Journal of Divorce & Remarriage, 1993, 20, pp. 105-122.

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