“Children of same-sex couples are as likely to make normal progress through school as the children of most other family structures. . . . To the extent that normal progress through primary school is a useful and valid measure of child development, the results confirm that children of same-sex couples appear to have no inherent developmental disadvantage.”
Many of us have suspected as much, but Stanford University Associate Professor of Sociology Michael Rosenfeld has proven it, using U.S. census data to perform “the first ever large sample nationally representative tests of outcomes for children raised by same-sex couples.”
There was no statistical different between children of same-sex couples and those of opposite-sex couples in terms of normal progress through school vs. grade retention (being “kept back” a year). Opposite-sex couples have a very slightly lower rate of grade retention, but this can be explained by their generally higher socioeconomic status (SES): “Heterosexual married couples are the most economically prosperous, the most likely to be white, and the most legally advantaged type of parents. When one controls for parental SES and characteristics of the students,” Rosenfeld writes, “children of same-sex couples cannot be distinguished with statistical certainty from children of heterosexual married couples.” [On a side note: This directly contradicts the image many have of same-sex parents as white, suburban lesbians moms who went through rounds of expensive IVF or hip urban gay dads with a child adopted from overseas. We’re not all white and well off.]
Rosenfeld also found that children living in family homes do much better in school than those in group homes: “Children of all non-group quarters family types, including households headed by same-sex couples, are dramatically more likely to make normal progress through school than students living in group quarters.”
What does this mean for public policy?
Any policy that would deny gay and lesbian parents the right to adopt or foster children would force some children to remain in group quarters. A longer stay in group quarters would seem to be contrary to the best interest of the children. In recent years scholars have arrived at a consensus that moving children out of group homes and into adoptive families should be the goal of public policy. Families, even suboptimal families, are better equipped than the state to raise children. . . .
Historical restrictions against interracial adoption in the United States represent one relevant historical precedent for the current debate over the adoption rights of same-sex couples. Randall Kennedy (2003) argues that even though restrictions against interracial adoption have been proposed as a way of protecting children, such restrictions have victimized children by taking them away from loving homes or by forcing children to remain in group quarters for too long. Policies which limit the kinds of families that can adopt or foster children ignore the enormous advantages of personal attention that families have (even single parents and other nontraditional family types) over the state in raising children well.
Lawyer Nan Hunter, whose post alerted me to this study, notes, “These findings have enormous potential to make important evidentiary contributions in marriage challenges, family law cases, and challenges to laws that bar same-sex couples from adopting.” Let’s hope so.
A prepublication copy of Rosenfeld’s paper, “Nontraditional Families and Childhood Progress Through School,” is on his Web site. It has the full multivariate analysis and all the other details for your demography geeks.