Mark Regnerus must be having a bad week. The University of Texas at Austin sociologist’s study of same-sex parents was further discredited by a new study that uses the same data but comes to vastly different conclusions.
Regnerus’ original study concluded 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.”
But “Measurement, Methods, and Divergent Patterns: Reassessing the Effects of Same-Sex Parents” (forthcoming in Social Science Research, the same journal that published Regnerus’ paper) by Simon Cheng of the University of Connecticut and Brian Powell of Indiana University reanalyzed the data from Regnerus’ New Family Structures Study to show that “a large number of the people studied in the Regnerus study likely were misclassified as living with gay/lesbian parents. Regnerus’ results are due to these misclassifications and other questionable methodological choices,” according to the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR) and “Their reanalysis finds that differences between young adults who were raised by gay and lesbian parents and young adults who were raised by heterosexual parents are very small.”
NCLR also points out some highlights from Cheng and Powell’s study:
- Of the 236 people Regnerus defined as being raised by a “lesbian mother” or “gay father” 24 (10%) reported that they actually never lived with that parent.
- An additional 34 (14%) reported that they lived with that parent for a year of less. In other words, approximately one-fourth of the young adults allegedly raised by a same-sex parent reported either never living with the parent or living for a year of less.
- The 236 people include some questionable responses that call into question the seriousness of the person completing the survey. The most notable example is a “25 year-old man who reports that his father had a romantic relationship with another man, but also reports that he (the respondent) was 7-feet 8-inches tall, weighed 88 pounds, was married 8 times and had 8 children.” Another person claims to have been arrested at age 1. While most serious researchers will look closely at these types of cases, Regnerus apparently did not and kept them in his analysis.
- The 236 people also include responses that at best are inconsistent and illogical. For example, one person reports “having always lived alone but also claims to have always lived with the mother, father and two grandparents.”
- Cheng and Powell demonstrate that at least one-third (34.7%) of the responses—and up to over two-fifths (43.6%) were miscounted by Regnerus as having been raised by gay or lesbian parents.
- Cheng and Powell also point to serious mistakes that Regnerus made in his statistical analysis and modeling.
- Once these miscoding and modeling mistakes are taken into account, nearly all of the alleged differences that Regnerus reported disappear. In other words, the differences between people who were raised by gay and lesbian parents and people who were raised by heterosexual parents are very small.
Regnerus’ work has already been called “entirely unbelievable and not worthy of serious consideration,” by a Reagan-appointed federal judge. His ties to conservative funding sources as well as his methods have been criticized by LGBTQ organizations and public policy experts. Having his work carefully invalidated by fellow scholars will, I hope, put his study to rest for the last time.
As I’ve said before, though, no matter what scholars say about our families, we know their true worth. We aren’t perfect, but we’re no less perfect than any others.