Science Says Same-Sex Parents Are Awesome

Both common sense and medical science say that same-sex parents are no better or worse than so-called "traditional" parents, but since the myth still refuses to die, it never hurts to keep disproving it until it does. Yet another study has confirmed that same-sex parenting has no negative impact on children. Interestingly, though, the study did reveal that same-sex parents are under more stress than opposite-sex parents, suggesting that the only real negative impact on such families is homophobia.

In a new study published in the Journal of Developmental Behavioral Pediatrics, researchers examined data from the 2011–2012 National Survey of Children's Health. They looked at data from 95 families with female same-sex parents who had been raising their children since infancy, and compared the health and development of the children to a sample of similar families with different-sex parents. And — surprise, surprise! — they found that the children of lesbian couples were just as well-adjusted and healthy as their peers raised by different-sex couples.

In fact, the only meaningful difference the researchers found between their two sample groups was that same-sex parents tend to be more stressed than parents in different-sex partnerships. The study theorizes, based on previous research, that this is most likely due to concerns about raising a child in a homophobic society. The study notes that lesbian parents often "feel more pressure to justify the quality of their parenting than their heterosexual counterparts" — possibly because people still like to claim that being raised by a same-sex couple is bad for children. It's enough pressure to make anyone's stress levels spike. But notably, the study finds that this stress only effects the same-sex parents; it doesn't appear to wind up affecting their kids.

"Our analyses reveal that although female same-sex parents acknowledge more parenting stress, their children demonstrate no differences in general health, emotional difficulties, coping behavior, and learning behavior from children reared in different-sex parent households," the authors of the study write.

Which is absolutely in line with the existing research on the subject. At least 74 previous studies have confirmed that children raised by same-sex parents are no worse off than children raised by different-sex couples. You can count the number that have found the opposite on one hand, and half have been discredited.

Basically, the idea that LGBTQA+ people shouldn't be raising kids "for the good of the children" is bigotry, plain and simple. Being raised by same-sex parents doesn't hurt kids — although homophobia does hurt their parents. So can that myth just die already?

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Image: Giphy