Study: children fare better in traditional mom-dad families

Originally posted by gate13
reply to post by kaylaluv

 

even poor kids know whats right and wrong and will not be confused from having two dads or two mums.

Hmmm, most criminals are people who grew up in poor environments. I haven't heard of too many rich criminals - have you? The truth is, children fare better in more affluent homes - therefore, we should only allow affluent people to raise children.

Originally posted by gate13
The day two gay people can have sex together and pop out a baby 9 months later will be the day i also turn gay and believe that two gay parents are just as good as MUM(female) and DAD(male).

if god or evolution or whatever intended two of the same sex to be able to have a child or raise a child then it would have been the case but its not.

i would love to see two gay males breast feed a chile that would be amazing.

Talk about confusing a poor child.

it is not right and it should not be happening.

Firstly, you cant just "turn" gay. Seriously.
No im not joking! its a fact!

Secondly, How would a child become confused by having 2 parents of the same gender?

Originally posted by wiser3
reply to post by MentorsRiddle

 

If people like you would quit "stigmatizing" homosexuals then the whole issue of the child feeling victimised etc would NOT EXIST!

Thats what you people don't get, YOU create the hate that is the root cause of the stress etc that the child is going through and then you blame the gays for the existence of the hate that you created and are perpetuating!

I so agree with you!

Originally posted by bokonon2010

D'oh! Sounds like novel scientific hypothesis?

Try a different approach other than sarcasm or mockery, in response to something that you disagree with. It makes it look as though you don't have the ability to refute it rationally.

There definately exceptions to the rule, I wonder how many disfunctional parents were included in this study. It doesn't matter what the couple are, but what they do. I was raised by disfunctional parents, and just because it was a traditional family, it didn't make it any better.

I find it sad that western society has come to this.
Is it because most of you didn't had a stable natural family, i wonder.
You don't know the distinctions of a mother and father and judging by the comments made by ladies here, they also are ignorant of motherhood.
Years of feminism and sexual gratifying has led you into spiritual blindness.
You don't see any matrialistic,biological,spiritual difference between a mother and father??? how apalling.

I honestly think that logic and common sense needs to prevail here. How well a child does, depends on a number of factors. Not just whether the kid has a mom and a dad.

There are lots of kids who grow up in a house with a mom and a dad who end up becoming awful people and there are lots of kids who grow up in gay homes who end up becoming wonderful people.

It is not and should not be as simple as the sex of the parents. Are the parents ( Male or female) abusive? Are they mentally unstable?

Are they there for the kid and do they have the kids best interest in mind? These are things that we should be looking at. Not the sexual orientation of the parents.

Your ability to be a good person and a good parent has nothing to do with who you are physically attracted to. Unless you have a habit of being attracted to abusive people or something....But abusive people are not just gay or straight. They come from all walks of life....

That is where I stand anyway. Popular or not.

reply to post by Kali74
Hrm, I bet it does play a role in this mess.

Problems with the APA-cited studies were their tiny size; dependence on wealthy, white, well-educated lesbian mothers; and a failure to examine common outcomes for children, such as their education, employment and risks for poverty, criminality, early childbearing, substance abuse and suicide.

Since there is enough studies on the well-being of children coming from more affluent homes vs. poor homes, it is very likely that the deficiencies on the Lesbian couple's kids are higher in a more balanced demographic--which sucks for women having kids without a man.

Now, some of this has to come from a lack of social tolerance. But I can't help but remember how nutters Rosie O'Donnell went after she had kids. No matter how bad life was that rabid behaviour was uncalled for--in fact she was told to tone that crap down before she was reinstated as a public figure.

reply to post by navy_vet_stg3
Messed up parents can go way above the standard norm with their kids. What should have been argued from the beginning is whether or not gays can raise a child above the norm of what a child gets from the foster care system.

reply to post by SeekerofTruth101
Can't hep but agree with most of this. It's still not the deepest root, for me, but this is much closer to the source than merely because one couple is gay.

reply to post by ownbestenemy
Not the study, but some of the replies to this point were along the lines of "About damn time!", and to sensitive people that is bashing.

reply to post by Unity_99
I wish more people would get like this.

reply to post by Komaratzi11
What bothers me most about it is when the pushing of this lifestyle comes from someone who has not lived it. At least when you have personally lived that lifestyle, you know what the kids are in for--as you were in for. But those who have not? They know nothing of it from a personal perspective.

reply to post by SearchLightsInc
Either that or they are trying to build up their flags and stars. Controversial issues can do that.

I forget how how a child needs penis and a vagina in its life, makes a huge difference eh?

No, not penis and vagina, but Testosterone-induced brain functions and Estrogen-induced brain functions. There is a huge difference in the way men think, and the way women think. For the overwhelming majority, even in gay couples, the women have a woman's brain and the men have a man's brain (maybe a bit modified). For instance, you have 2 women raising a boy, and they are not fully nuanced about how visual men usually are, they won't be able to tell the boy he is normal for being automatically turned on by jiggling womenflesh, and that this does not automatically make him a pervert, nor does he have to follow down the pervert's path in life. They likely don't have the personal experience to relate this to him. It can be alienating. This doesn't mean it's an automatic deal-breaker for same-sex parenting, but to deny that something that makes a penis a penis or a vagina a vagina as being important? That's off.

Originally posted by SearchLightsInc
By your logic, prostitutes, drug abusers, people who are in and out of prison all the time are also selfish for reproducing and letting there children inherit their social stigma. Glad we cleared that up.

Well, are they? I know of 1 study that shows if a father's not putting at least 70% of his income towards raising his child, that child is likely to have a worse future. Those who are in and out of prison don't have the luxury of 70% income, for one. Drug users are more likely to use 70% of their income on drugs. The only thing that makes it worse is that giving them over to the foster system doesn't always increase their chances.

But the only thing that this kind of reasoning ever lead to is abortion, and I'm not for that, even for mistakes or potential selfishness.

No one would willingly submit themselves to the stigma you know so well.

I did, in college. And to this day, some of the stuff still resonates with me...but I was never just one thing, so I had options.

I'm just a bit confused, because the study doesn't study gay parenting, it studies broken homes.

While Regnerus critiques "same-sex couples" raising kids, his study does not actually compare children raised by same-sex couples with those raised by different-sex couples. The criterion it uses is whether a parent "ever ha[d] a romantic relationship with someone of the same sex." In fact, only a small proportion of its sample spent more than a few years living in a household headed by a same-sex couple. Indeed, the study acknowledges that what it's really comparing with heterosexual families is not families headed by a same-sex couple but households in which parents broke up. "A failed heterosexual union," Regnerus writes in the study, "is clearly the modal method" — the most common characteristic for the group that he lumps in with same-sex-headed households. For example, most of the respondents who said their mothers had a lesbian relationship also endured the searing experience of having their mothers leave the household as the family collapsed.

In other words, Regnerus is concluding that when families endure a shattering separation, it is likely to shatter the lives of those in them. And this is news?

Not only is it not news, it keeps alive the mistaken impression that social science is on the side of anti-gay policy and law. Ever since same-sex marriage started to become a reality in the U.S., conservative groups such as the National Organization for Marriage and the Witherspoon Institute, which helped fund the Regnerus study, have cited research that — it's claimed — shows that gay parenting is a bad idea. In 2003, Maggie Gallagher, a co-founder of NOM, wrote in the Weekly Standard of "a consensus across ideological lines based on 20 years' worth of social science research" that children do better with a married mother and father. Writing in The Times in 2004, Pepperdine University professor Douglas Kmiec claimed that children who grow up in gay households "are more likely to be confused sexually" and to "face a heightened chance of being the victim of sexual abuse." Citing such research, opponents of same-sex marriage have settled on the talking point that "children need a mother and a father" to thrive.

The trouble is that no scholarly research, including the Regnerus paper, has ever compared children of stable same-sex couples to children of stable different-sex couples, in part because an adequate sample size is hard to come by. (Regnerus acknowledges he was unable to find an adequate sample size, but he went ahead and made the comparison anyway.) Like the Regnerus paper, all these studies show is that divorce and single-parenthood raise risks for kids. Indeed, the basis of the 20-year "consensus" is that two parents are better than one, not that parents have to be different genders.

www.latimes.com...

Originally posted by Daughter2
Even if she isn't you can't say who can and can't be a parent.

Each situation is different and people should be able to choose what's best for them in THEIR life.

I agree. I just think that maybe a list of pros and cons should be looked at? There's very little chance at an "oops" in a homosexual lifestyle. This means that they can weigh the pros and cons long before the stork arrives. It's when they don't, just because they have the right, that I'm bothered by it. Heck, I wish more heteros would do this.

reply to post by sweetstuff
What a way to take things out of context. Considering that you could do the same with your own beliefs/statements of only 10 years ago, it means nothing. (Perspective, everyone has opinions and beliefs that change, over a 10 year span. So if perspectives change, why would anyone care about somone's opinions or conclusions, ever?)

reply to post by jonnywhite
Re: Gay properly: So, we're going back to it meaning that someone is happy?

reply to post by Taupin Desciple
Have to applaud this. It's why I prefer double-blind studies. But, that is harder to do for the social sciences.

Originally posted by nakiel
-One cannot control a flock of sheep from within!

No, you control sheep by leading in front of them. You get behind cattle and drive them. Herding cats winds up coming from the middle--and is bloody.

reply to post by gate13
Humans haven't proven to be able to do it yet, but frogs and dolphins can change sexes, based upon what's written about them. For the dolphins, specifically, the homosexuality can induce the sex change.

reply to post by SearchLightsInc
Speaking from experience, I was not interested in the same sex until college. I made the decision to leave the same sex alone, after college, but the drive is still there. I am an example of 1. not being born that way, 2. being able to be something other than what my sex drive defines me as. If every gay person out there HAD to be like me, then the whole community is lying. Since they're not likely to be, I'd rather assume it takes all kinds. But I certainly as hell wouldn't limit myself by that assumption.

Originally posted by deepankarm
I find it sad that western society has come to this.
Is it because most of you didn't had a stable natural family, i wonder.
You don't know the distinctions of a mother and father and judging by the comments made by ladies here, they also are ignorant of motherhood.
Years of feminism and sexual gratifying has led you into spiritual blindness.
You don't see any matrialistic,biological,spiritual difference between a mother and father??? how apalling.

edit on 12-6-2012 by deepankarm because: (no reason given)

No we do see it, we just dont see things the way YOU want us to see it.

Times have changed, you either move with it or get left behind, simple really.

Originally posted by SearchLightsInc
No we do see it, we just dont see things the way YOU want us to see it.

Times have changed, you either move with it or get left behind, simple really.

While I agree with you that a 50s era society is not something we want to go back to, SLI, I think I would have used a different choice of words there, personally. There are certain ways in which mainstream society thinks it has "advanced," which I'm quite happy to have been "left behind," from, personally. Apple's iCrap is probably the single main example that comes to mind.

Originally posted by gate13
The day two gay people can have sex together and pop out a baby 9 months later will be the day i also turn gay and believe that two gay parents are just as good as MUM(female) and DAD(male).

if god or evolution or whatever intended two of the same sex to be able to have a child or raise a child then it would have been the case but its not.

i would love to see two gay males breast feed a chile that would be amazing.

Talk about confusing a poor child.

it is not right and it should not be happening.

Gay man impregnates gay woman.

Whoops! Loop hole!

Originally posted by RealSpoke
People are people, anyone can raise a successful family regardless of their orientation.

edit on 12-6-2012 by RealSpoke because: (no reason given)

Let's be fair about this. People are people, anyone can raise a dysfunctional family regardless of their orientation.

The Regnerus Study
I don't believe there can be a serious discussion on the issue now without consulting Regnerus.

Indeed a group of 18 sociologists from around the country wrote a letter praising the study for its sampling and construction, and criticized the media for giving so much weight to earlier, flawed studies.

[S]ociology professor Paul Amato, chair of the Family section of the American Sociological Association and president-elect of the National Council on Family Relations, wrote that the Regnerus study was “better situated than virtually all previous studies to detect differences between these [different family] groups in the population.”

www.baylorisr.org...

OK, so it's a good study. Why? First, they had a random, weighted sample of nearly 3000 people aged 18-39. Most studies have used less than a hundred or they weren't random, or both. Second, there has been little information on children who have entered adulthood and can reflect on their lives and their current situation.

Who did they look at? Children of eight different types of families: Intact biological families, Lesbian mother, Gay father, Adopted, divorced after the child was 18, Stepfamily, Single parent, and all others.

We've got a serious study of the issues, that has passed academic scrutiny, and has substantial validity. But what does the report actually say?

Abstract:

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.

Section 3.1 Results Please go look at the table, I don't know how to copy the whole thing here. But in words, and only comparing the Intact Biological Family to the Lesbian Mother, and Gay Father families, children from the intact biological family were more likely to be: Currently married, employed full-time, and identifies as entirely heterosexual.

Children from Intact Biological Families are less likely to be: currently cohabitating, from a family which received welfare, currently on public assistance, unemployed, someone who has thought about suicide, currently in therapy, in a same-sex relationship, someone who has had an affair while married or cohabitating, or has ever had a STI, ever been touched sexually by a parent or other adult, or ever forced to have sex against their will.

The next two tables (please go look at them) indicate, among other things, that the children of IBFs:

Are more educated, report better health, report more happiness, have higher income, report a better current relationship, use marijuana less frequently, smoke less, watch less TV, have been arrested less frequently, and have had fewer sex partners.

The report ends with these paragraphs:

Although the findings reported herein may be explicable in part by a variety of forces uniquely problematic for child development in lesbian and gay families—including a lack of social support for parents, stress exposure resulting from persistent stigma, and modest or absent legal security for their parental and romantic relationship statuses—the empirical claim that no notable differences exist must go. While it is certainly accurate to affirm that sexual orientation or parental sexual behavior need have nothing to do with the ability to be a good, effective parent, the data evaluated herein using population-based estimates drawn from a large, nationally-representative sample of young Americans suggest that it may affect the reality of family experiences among a significant number.

Do children need a married mother and father to turn out well as adults? No, if we observe the many anecdotal accounts with which all Americans are familiar. Moreover, there are many cases in the NFSS where respondents have proven resilient and prevailed as adults in spite of numerous transitions, be they death, divorce, additional or diverse romantic partners, or remarriage. But the NFSS also clearly reveals that children appear most apt to succeed well as adults—on multiple counts and across a variety of domains—when they spend their entire childhood with their married mother and father, and especially when the parents remain married to the present day. Insofar as the share of intact, biological mother/father families continues to shrink in the United States, as it has, this portends growing challenges within families, but also heightened dependence on public health organizations, federal and state public assistance, psychotherapeutic resources, substance use programs, and the criminal justice system.

Some truths are self-evident regardless of behaviors that we want to otherwise justify with the hammers of federal laws or religions. Just because a law exists in either does not mean it is represents Truth. Sometimes Truthes can be distasteful but it is caused by the relativity of the observer, not that the Truth is invalid nor wrong.

Originally posted by pierregustavetoutant
I'm glad we have these studies to tell us these things.
Because they aren't easily apparent by walking around with ones eyes open.

Star!

I would say more ..

but I think you said it all ...

reply to post by charles1952

But the NFSS also clearly reveals that children appear most apt to succeed well as adults—on multiple counts and across a variety of domains—when they spend their entire childhood with their married mother and father, and especially when the parents remain married to the present day.

that's the general rule.. however, being married to someone for 10 years that grew up a dysfunctional family is the exception ..