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Sunday, June 17, 2012

Mike Butler: Same-sex parenting bad for kids

Is same-sex parenting bad for kids, and, if so, how? Sociologist Mark Regnerus posed the question: “How different are the adult children of parents who have same-sex relationships?” for new Social Science Journal study. Regnerus screened 15,088 people in the United States to find 175 who had been raised for some of their childhood by a mother who was in a lesbian relationship, and 73 who had been raised for some of their childhood by a father in a gay relationship.

Regnerus found that only two of the 175 subjects who reported having a mother in a same-sex relationship spent their whole childhood with the couple, and no children studied spent their entire childhood with two homosexual males. Of that, 57 percent of children spent more than four months with lesbian parents, but only 23 percent spent more than three years.

Regnerus asked whether children who have parents in a same-sex relationship experience disadvantages when compared with children raised by their biological, married parents. The answer, a resounding yes.

Children with a parent in a same-sex relationship “under-perform” in almost every category; fewer than 2 percent of children from intact, biological families reported experiencing sexual abuse of some nature, but that figure for children of same-sex couples is 23 percent.

Similarly disturbing is that 14 percent of children from same-sex couples have spent some time in foster care, compared with around 2 percent of the American population at large. Arrest, drug experimentation, and unemployment rates were all higher among children from same-sex families.

A question that may be asked is whether this study was an analysis of homosexual parenting versus heterosexual parenting, or of childhood stability versus instability, since by definition, any child raised by two members of the same sex is going to be missing at least one of their biological parents and would probably have experienced some instability in moving from the biological parents to whatever arrangement replaced it.

The main takeaway from the data Regnerus revealed is that if you want to give your children the best start in life, you should have children inside of wedlock and stay together for the duration.

Source: Is Gay Parenting Bad for the Kids? http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/302319/gay-parenting-bad-kids-charles-c-w-cooke?pg=1

Comments on this issue are now closed.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Let's connect a few statistics.

Some 30 - 40 percent (depending on the study cited) of all reported child sexual abuse is male adult molests minor male child.

Some 1 - 3 percent of the population (lose the demonstrably false Kinsey claims of one in ten) is homosexual.

Leaving aside suggestions that boys tend to internalise distessing events, and thus under-report sexual abuse, this means we know that the 1 - 3 percent of the male population which prefers its own gender sexually is responsible for 30 - 40 percent of all reported child sexual abuse.

Conclusion: gay males are dispropotionately likely to sexually abuse boys. In fact, many of them linked their subsequent homosexuality to their own boyhood victimisation experience, and claimed this was what made them attracted to boys, themselves.

One shudders to imagine two gay adult male with pedophile inclinations going down to the adoption centre to pick themselves out a boy.

Even if two gay males are themselves exemplary parents, there will undoubtedly be those in their social circle who will have no compunction in abusing a boy given the opportunity.

Clearly, not all gay males are pedophiles. But a hugely disproportionate number are, and in the best interests of the child, we should be safe not sorry, and prevent gay male adoptions.

Anonymous said...

As for lesbians, I have encountered many over the course of my life.

None have presented as particulary well-adjusted individuals.

Misandrist (anti-male) attitudes, whether overt or barely concealed, are the observable norm.

Growing up in such an environment undoubtedly has a strong, undesirable impact on a child's perception of gender relations, irrespective of whether the child is a boy or girl.

For example, two US lesbians who had adopted a boy presented him aged 10 years for pre-gender reassignment surgery counselling.

They said he'd insisted he was a girl from around two years of age. Hardly surprising. Any male child growing up in at atmosphere in which maleness was routinely denigrated would soon end up psychologically emasculated in order to please his adoptive parents.

In the immortal words of the Who's Pete Townshend: "I'm a boy/I'm a boy but my ma won't admit it/I'm a boy/I'm a boy/But if I say I am I get it."

How much more damaging and debilitating to be subjected to a two-pronged [now THAT'S very Freudian] attack!

Anonymous said...

There is a raft of statistical evidence about the adverse effect of divorce on children.

Over the last three decades, straights scarcely have a stellar record for marital longevity, but gay and lesbian relationships are notorious for their instability.

A number of studies of gay male relationships have established that over five years the cheating rate approaches 100 percent, and that of the relationships lasting longer than this, all had made some provision for outside sexual activity.

Is this the kind of example kids should be growing up with?

And what of the effect of the second, third, fourth and subsequent divorces on a child?

Then there is the issue of mental stability. Again, a number of studies have shown that gays and lesbians present with far higher rates of mental illness, substance abuse, and relational instability than the population at large.

Gay activists will assert that this is the result of society's innate homophobia, and these problems would vanish if society could only be compelled to be more accepting of alternative sexualities.

Yet the same patterns of mental instability, substance abuse, and relational instability are evident in extremely gay-friendly societies such as Holland and Denmark, so it would appear there's something in the gay lifestle and psychological makeup of gays and lesbians predisposes them to such problems.

Again, is it in the best interests of the child to place it into such an environment?

Anonymous said...

I agree that the ideal is for the child to have fully functional mum and dad, but we should be comparing same-sex parenting with the actualities of child raising. Many kids have only a functioning mother, or a mother plus unsympathetic boyfriend, and many heterosexual couples have warped views on life which they communicate to their children, e.g. obsession with education solely as a means to material success. Clearly there are heaps of undesirable parents out there, but we can’t legislate against them having children. Obviously gay couples may turn out undesirable parents, but it is wrong to legislate against them since there is nothing in principle wrong with gay parenting any more than with solo parenting. I happen to know a lesbian couple who are raising their boy in an exemplary fashion and without misandrism, as far as I can see. True, they are irritatingly PC, but that is insufficient grounds for forbidding them the right to parent. Of course, you can’t generalise from one couple, but at least it shows that you have to legislate on the underlying principle.

Anonymous said...

So self-actualisation for adults should trump the best interests of the child. That's logical. Not!