The world’s largest study of children with same-sex parents, from the University of Melbourne in Australia, has released initial findings that show the children are doing just as well as any others—and better on some indicators. Before you dismiss this with an “I could have told them that,” read on for why this is important, and why we must use it with caution.
The Australian Study of Child Health in Same-Sex Families (ACHESS) surveyed 500 children aged 0-17 years from 315 parents. It found, “On measures of general health and family cohesion children aged 5 to 17 years with same-sex attracted parents showed a significantly better score when compared to Australian children from all backgrounds and family contexts. For all other health measures there were no statistically significant differences.” These additional measures included “self-esteem, emotional behaviour and the amount of time spent with parents,” according to coverage of the study by The Age newspaper.
Data like this matters. However obvious the conclusions may seem to us, legitimate studies of LGBT families provide critical evidence for politicians, policy makers, and health professionals in dealing with our families and legislation that impacts us. As The Age reports, former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd said the wellbeing of children had been ”the sole remaining obstacle” to his support for same-sex marriage. In a blog post a few weeks ago, he announced his support for marriage equality, and cited a number of American studies on children with same-sex parents, including the National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study (about which more here and here), as motivation for his change of heart. Studies like this also provide evidence to counter not-so-legitimate ones.
The ACHESS study adds to that data, even though it has some limitations. For 80 percent of the children, a female parent completed the survey, for 18 percent, a male parent did, and for 2 percent, an other gendered parent did. As the authors note in an earlier paper laying out the goal and methods for the study, most research on same-sex parents has focused on lesbian moms, with much less on gay dads [and even less on bisexual and transgender parents]. ACHESS still skews towards the female side, even as it also gives us a fairly good number of gay-dad families. It is unclear from the current results how many participants identify as bisexual and/or transgender. Future results may also tell us more about the method of family creation and socioeconomic status of the families, and will also draw on surveys completed by the children themselves (at least those more than 10 years old).
Another word of caution: Yes, the children in the study seemed to excel in a few measures—but let’s not use this to proclaim that LGB parents are “better” than others, as I’ve railed about before. Even more, let’s not use this to pressure our children (overtly or covertly) to excel and/or hide any signs of less than perfect health and mental health in order to “prove” we are good parents. Yes, it’s great to see stories like this one about twins of lesbian moms who were just named valedictorian and salutatorian of Key West High School in Florida, but it’s unrealistic to expect all of our children will do similarly well.
Still, it’s wonderful to see articles about the positive well-being of children with LGBT parents. Good on ya, ACHESS. I think I’ll have a Foster’s to celebrate (which would be appropriate in more ways than one this week).