Posted: Jun 13, 2012 3:02 am
A study was released recently by a sociology professor at the University of Texas in Austin purportedly concerning this question. The abstract is as follows:
Here is the study itself: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar ... 9X12000610
The main irony in this study is that the author claims methogological superiority. In this article he states "So why did this study come up with such different results than previous work in the field? And why should one study alter so much previous sentiment? Basically, better methods" (page 2, paragraph 1). This mirrors what he says in subsection 1.2 of the study's introduction, to wit: "small sample sizes can contribute to 'no differences' conclusions. It is not surprising that statistically-significant differences would not emerge in studies employing as few as 18 or 33 or 44 cases of respondents with same-sex parents" (subsection 1.2, paragraph 6; author's italics). One might deduce that he amassed an impressive sample size of stable same-sex parents. Well, one would be wrong. As it turns out, the author's sample size is a whole one couple. He found one lesbian couple with children. The rest? Well, they are parents who respondents have said were in at least one same-sex relationship during their childhood.Talk about methodological superiority.
The author writes, in his introduction, that he "focus[es] on how respondents who said their mother had a same-sex relationship with another woman—or their father did so with another man—compare with still-intact, two-parent heterosexual married families using nationally-representative data collected from a large probability sample of American young adults" (section 1, paragraph 1). So he does, but he seems to suffer some delusions as to what the entails. He believes himself to be mounting a robust defence of the stable, monogamous heterosexual family, assailed by its homosexual counterpart. In truth, he is focusing on the merits of stable, monogamous relationships in comparison to a single parent who engages in romantic relationships intermittently. It is well established that children in the latter situation fare worse than those in the former. Whether one or the other is heterosexual or homosexual is wholly irrelevant; what the author is really saying is "I focus on how banging a hammer on my head compares with laying it on a pillow."
That's not to even delve into the mystical world of what qualifies as a negative outcome, among which the author includes marijuana use and having more sexual partners. The entire study reeks of confirmation bias and an oblivious outlook on the methodology. All in all, it seems the man is a best a heterosexist immune to the failures in his own reasoning and methods, and at worst a homophobe with political motives. One this is for sure: this study will be flaunted by the political right, who are desperate to cling to the delusion that same-sex marriage and other measures to improve social equality are decadent and will negatively impact society.
The New Family Structures Study (NFSS) is a social-science data-collection project that fielded a survey to a large, random sample of American young adults (ages 18–39) who were raised in different types of family arrangements. In this debut article of the NFSS, I compare how the young-adult children of a parent who has had a same-sex romantic relationship fare on 40 different social, emotional, and relational outcome variables when compared with six other family-of-origin types. The results reveal numerous, consistent differences, especially between the children of women who have had a lesbian relationship and those with still-married (heterosexual) biological parents. The results are typically robust in multivariate contexts as well, suggesting far greater diversity in lesbian-parent household experiences than convenience-sample studies of lesbian families have revealed. The NFSS proves to be an illuminating, versatile dataset that can assist family scholars in understanding the long reach of family structure and transitions.
Here is the study itself: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar ... 9X12000610
The main irony in this study is that the author claims methogological superiority. In this article he states "So why did this study come up with such different results than previous work in the field? And why should one study alter so much previous sentiment? Basically, better methods" (page 2, paragraph 1). This mirrors what he says in subsection 1.2 of the study's introduction, to wit: "small sample sizes can contribute to 'no differences' conclusions. It is not surprising that statistically-significant differences would not emerge in studies employing as few as 18 or 33 or 44 cases of respondents with same-sex parents" (subsection 1.2, paragraph 6; author's italics). One might deduce that he amassed an impressive sample size of stable same-sex parents. Well, one would be wrong. As it turns out, the author's sample size is a whole one couple. He found one lesbian couple with children. The rest? Well, they are parents who respondents have said were in at least one same-sex relationship during their childhood.Talk about methodological superiority.
The author writes, in his introduction, that he "focus[es] on how respondents who said their mother had a same-sex relationship with another woman—or their father did so with another man—compare with still-intact, two-parent heterosexual married families using nationally-representative data collected from a large probability sample of American young adults" (section 1, paragraph 1). So he does, but he seems to suffer some delusions as to what the entails. He believes himself to be mounting a robust defence of the stable, monogamous heterosexual family, assailed by its homosexual counterpart. In truth, he is focusing on the merits of stable, monogamous relationships in comparison to a single parent who engages in romantic relationships intermittently. It is well established that children in the latter situation fare worse than those in the former. Whether one or the other is heterosexual or homosexual is wholly irrelevant; what the author is really saying is "I focus on how banging a hammer on my head compares with laying it on a pillow."
That's not to even delve into the mystical world of what qualifies as a negative outcome, among which the author includes marijuana use and having more sexual partners. The entire study reeks of confirmation bias and an oblivious outlook on the methodology. All in all, it seems the man is a best a heterosexist immune to the failures in his own reasoning and methods, and at worst a homophobe with political motives. One this is for sure: this study will be flaunted by the political right, who are desperate to cling to the delusion that same-sex marriage and other measures to improve social equality are decadent and will negatively impact society.