A new report out today dives into detail on the extra economic hardships that children of LGBT parents may face because of discrimination against their families. The report, “Strengthening Economic Security for Children Living in LGBT Families,” is a companion to the “All Children Matter” report that came out last October and detailed the demographics of and legal issues faced by LGBT families (about which more here). It was co-authored by the Movement Advancement Project, the Family Equality Council, and the Center for American Progress, in partnership with the National Association of Social Workers.

Some of the extra economic burdens include:

• Lack of legal protections. Because same-sex couples cannot marry, children in LGBT families often have legal ties to only one parent. Althouh legal documents can help create some protections, they are costly and usually inadequate.
• Higher taxes. LGBT families cannot file joint federal tax returns and are often denied child-related tax deductions and credits. As a result, many LGBT families pay higher taxes.
• Reduced access to health benefits. Because employers are not required to extend coverage to children without legal ties to their parents, LGBT families may be forced to buy coverage privately for their children or go without.
• Lack of access to safety net programs. Programs designed to support families during difficult economic times often treat LGBT families inconsistently or exclude them completely. As a result, children fall through the safety net when they most need help, including when a parent dies or becomes disabled.

The report recommends addressing these issues by: 

• Strengthening the legal ties of the entire family by legalizing and federally recognizing same-sex marriage.
• Allowing joint adoption by LGBT parents, and recognizing LGBT parents through other avenues such as second-parent adoption and de facto parenting that allow children to gain full legal ties to their parents.
• Revising the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) tax code to provide equitable treatment for LGBT families.
• Equal access to health insurance.
• Modernizing archaic wrongful death and intestacy statutes.

The report also suggests a number of steps that governmental agencies, community-based organizations, advocates, and funders can take to assist LGBT families, including low-income families, those living in poverty, and those in crisis, such as:

• Expanding outreach to, and documenting the unmet needs of, low-income LGBT families, including LGBT families of color and LGBT families living in rural communities.
• Expanding training to organizations serving low-income LGBT families, including adoption agencies, child welfare and government agency workers, judges, and schools.
• Creating guidebooks to help LGBT families navigate the economic hurdles they face and, if needed, help them access safety net programs.

At a time when economic fairness is a big part of our national conversation, this is a timely and important report.

Bernard writes in “How to File” that “the amount and type of aid provided to students uses a formula that takes the entire family unit into account—including the parents and students’ marital status. And the Department of Education said it relies on the federal definition of marriage (one man, one woman).”

Bernard provides a number of tips from financial aid expert Mark Kantrowitz, who describes what to do if you have: a) two legal parents; b) two legal parents who are no longer together; c) only one legal parent; or if you are: d) a student married to a same-sex partner; and e) a gay or lesbian student whose parents refuse to provide support.

The piece goes along with her more descriptive “None of the Above,” which describes in more detail how the current financial aid process impacts children of same-sex parents.

Go read them both, especially if you have kids approaching college age.

Good morning Dana!

I wanted to reach out and thank you for posting your thoughts and comments about TD Bank’s new financial literacy survey. We feel financial literacy is a topic that MUST be addressed in every household in the U.S. in order to make sure our kids are financial fit once they become adults.

In regards to your comments as to why we didn’t include same-sex families in our poll, please note that this survey wasn’t put together to study different families, instead it was to study how genders teach their kids financial literacy skills. However, this is not our first poll on this subject and it probably won’t be our last. We feel you gave us a potential good idea for our next poll and studying how different families teach their kids financial literacy skills might be worth looking into. So I wanted to reach out and thank you for the suggestion.

Please feel free to contact us with any questions on this matter or anything else you think we may be able to help you with.

Cheers,

Jimmy Hernandez
TD Bank
856-397-5550

I appreciate the speedy response. I’d still argue that any survey purporting to study “how genders teach their kids financial literacy skills” should include the LGBT community, whose conceptions of gender sometimes vary—but I don’t believe it was TD Bank’s intention to slight the LGBT community. In that vein, I should also note that a senior vice president of TD Bank, Robert Pompey, was one of a number of business leaders to convene in San Francisco today under the auspices of Out & Equal, the LGBT workplace advocacy organization, to “strategize around issues of workplace equality.”

Here are the key findings:

Dads are found to be nearly 10% more financially confident than moms. Despite these findings, 66% of dads also report they wish they had more conversations with their children about money.

Moreover, while moms perceive themselves to be less financially confident, 52% report feeling they take all or most of the responsibility when teaching their children about financial matters….

Moms are more likely to engage in everyday financial conversations:

• Teaching children how to count money (81%)
• Teaching money matters while shopping (70%)
• Saving money in a piggy bank (70%)

Dads, on the other hand, are more likely to focus on the tangible aspects of money:

• Providing an allowance (52%)
• Setting a savings goal (32%)

You’re probably way ahead of me already: What about same-sex parents?  Do the roles of parents with regard to teaching their children financial literacy vary in same-sex couples, too? Does one parent—say, the primary caregiver—tend to take a larger role than the other? And do the financial confidence and aptitudes of LGBT people vary by gender in the same way they do for non-LGBT people? I would have thought that TD Bank, with a perfect 100 on the HRC Corporate Equality Index, might have looked at this, but alas, no.

One might conclude from the study that children of lesbians moms get a different financial education than children of gay dads, and that both get a less balanced financial education than children of opposite-sex parents—but I can’t quite bring myself to believe that’s true. LGBT people tend to break gender stereotypes, and I’m not sure we can expect findings about gender roles among non-LGBT people to apply in exactly the same way.

What are your thoughts about gender and financial literacy? How do you (and your co-parent, if you have one) teach your kids about finance?

Full press release after the jump:

Mom Versus Dad: TD Bank Financial Literacy Poll Reveals the Role of Parents in a Fiscally Fit Family

Parents Share Similar Attitudes toward Financial Literacy; Approach Differs

CHERRY HILL, N.J., and PORTLAND, Maine – March 28, 2011 – According to the TD Bank Financial Literacy Poll released today by TD Bank, America’s Most Convenient Bank®, 62 percent of all parents agree they should start teaching their children about money by 12 years of age. While mothers and fathers generally agree on when to start money-related conversations, the survey reveals they differ when it comes to their own financial confidence and how they teach their children financial literacy.

TD Bank surveyed 1,637 consumers within the Northeast as well as Florida and Washington, DC to better understand their financial literacy and attitudes, specifically examining the role of the parent and how this can differ between mothers and fathers.

“The survey shows that each parent contributes different money-related lessons when it comes to a child’s financial education,” says Suzanne Poole, executive vice president, retail sales strategy, TD Bank. “This indicates that it’s important for moms and dads to combine efforts to ensure that their children learn all aspects of financial literacy from monthly budgets to everyday spending.”

Mom vs. Dad: Financial Confidence

According to the survey, 34% of respondents rated their financial knowledge as “good” or better. From that, dads are found to be nearly 10% more financially confident than moms. Despite these findings, 66% of dads also report they wish they had more conversations with their children about money.

Moreover, while moms perceive themselves to be less financially confident, 52% report feeling they take all or most of the responsibility when teaching their children about financial matters.

Mom vs. Dad: Budgeting

Despite evidence that better budgeting can contribute to a more financially fit family, 43% of families surveyed still are not creating or following a monthly budget. Even more interesting are the parental disparities in the reasons why they don’t budget:

• 35% of dads versus 22% of moms feel they do not need a budget
• 19% of moms versus 12% of dads feel they find budgets too complicated and don’t know how to create one

Moms vs. Dads: Financial Education Actions

When it comes to the actions taken by individual parents toward their child’s financial education, moms are more likely to engage in everyday financial conversations:

• Teaching children how to count money (81%)
• Teaching money matters while shopping (70%)
• Saving money in a piggy bank (70%)

Dads, on the other hand, are more likely to focus on the tangible aspects of money:

• Providing an allowance (52%)
• Setting a savings goal (32%)

Other Key Findings From the Survey Include:

• Given the recession, 55% of families say they are talking to their children more often about money
• 30% of families feel they are being more proactive and having conversations with their children before matters arise
• Only 1-in-3 parents are setting a savings goal

Note:  Please contact us for additional data points and specifics from New England, Mid-Atlantic, Washington, DC and Florida.

Survey Methodology

The study was conducted among consumers in the New England census division, Middle Atlantic census division, Florida and Washington DC from January 5-12; 2011.TD polled 1,637 consumers from Maine to Florida: 718 in New England, 689 in Middle Atlantic and Washington, DC, and 230 in Florida. The sample size of 1,637 has a margin of error of +/- 2.4%. The survey was hosted by global research company Angus Reid Public Opinion.

About Angus Reid Public Opinion
Angus Reid Public Opinion is the Public Affairs practice of Vision Critical—a global research company. Vision Critical is a leader in the use of the Internet and rich media technology to collect high-quality, in-depth insights for a wide array of clients.

About TD Bank, America’s Most Convenient Bank^®
TD Bank, America’s Most Convenient Bank, is one of the 10 largest banks in the United States, providing customers with a full range of financial products and services at more than 1,250 convenient locations from Maine to Florida. On September 30, 2010, The South Financial Group, Inc. was acquired by TD Bank Group, and its subsidiary Carolina First Bank merged with TD Bank. Carolina First Bank will continue to operate under the trade names Carolina First Bank in North and South Carolina and Mercantile Bank in Florida until conversion and rebranding in June 2011. TD Bank is headquartered in Cherry Hill, N.J., and Portland, Maine. Carolina First Bank and Mercantile Bank are trade names of TD Bank, N.A. For more information, visit www.tdbank.com. TD Bank, America’s Most Convenient Bank, is a member of TD Bank Group and a subsidiary of The Toronto-Dominion Bank of Toronto, Canada, a top 10 financial services company in North America and one of the few banks in the world rated Aaa by Moody’s. The Toronto-Dominion Bank trades on the New York and Toronto stock exchanges under the ticker symbol “TD.” To learn more, visit www.td.com.

It’s worth a read—and if you’re like me, your blood boils regularly this time of year as you fill out your tax forms and think about the financial inequities we face. I’ll note, though, that unlike the couple in the example, some couples (Helen and me, in fact) would actually pay more in taxes if the federal government recognized our marriage. That doesn’t mean we’re against marriage equality, of course. With rights come responsibility, and we’d be more than willing to pay up if we also gained access to all of the other benefits (financial and otherwise) of legal recognition.

It’s great that the NYT is covering the topic—but I feel obliged to point out that the couple in Michigan is white, and one mom is a commercial litigator. Even though the other mom is staying home with the kids, I’m guessing they’re doing all right financially. With recent data showing same-sex parents are more common in the South than elsewhere, and Black or Latino same-sex couples are twice as likely as white ones to be raising children, I’d love to see more coverage of the legal and financial hurdles for same-sex couples of color in southern states—couples who, statistically speaking, are also more likely to be struggling financially. The NYT touched on these topics in a piece they did back in January that helped bring the demographics to light. I hope they dig further into the subject.

(Thanks to RealLifeUnplugd, whose tweet alerted me to the article.)

Why donate through them? Doing so means your money is counted as LGBT-and-allies money, raising our community’s visibility and showing us as caring members of the larger world community. RWF says that over the last seven years, it has donated $3 million in humanitarian aid on behalf of the LGBT community to communities in need around the world.

In an e-mail to supporters, Executive Director Jeff Cotter wrote:

RWF has many direct ties with Japan through our annual World Tree of Hope project which is a collaboration between RWF and members of the Japanese American community. We are in contact with the Consul General of Japan in San Francisco to see how to best coordinate our efforts. . . .

RWF is all volunteer run, 100% of funds raised will go to help survivors. . . .

To make a donation to help the survivors please specify “Japan” when donating.
Donate online at http://www.rainbowfund.org/donate

Donate by check by mailing to Rainbow World Fund, 4111 – 18th Street, Suite 5, San Francisco, CA 94114.

If the events in Japan have made you think about your own family’s disaster preparedness, you may want to check out the information and resources from the LGBT-friendly American Academy of Pediatrics, as well as preparedness information from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). FEMA even has an activity page just for kids. (FEMA has had its faults, no doubt, but its site does seem to offer useful advice for individuals and families.)

In a guest post at the New York Times site, Amy and Marc Vachon, who wrote Equally Shared Parenting, take a closer look at the study and speak with one of the co-authors, Sarah Schoppe-Sullivan.

Schoppe-Sullivan told them:

To parent effectively in equal partnership takes a willingness by both partners to completely remake scripted gender roles. Mothers must separate their worth from their parenting prowess; fathers must redefine masculine success as far more than providing.

I’m sure you’re way ahead of me here. What about same-sex parents and how we define our roles, not to mention the impact of gender identity? The few studies that have been done on this seem to indicate that lesbian moms tend to divide household and childcare work evenly, and that gay dads tend to focus on parenting over career, at least when their children are young. Obviously, much more work could be done in this area to determine the effects of socioeconomic status, geography, race, and various other factors. The indications are, however, that perhaps same-sex couples do balance their roles more than traditional male-female couples.

The Vachons conclude their critique of the study by saying, “Perhaps for parents who are both happy to maintain separate family roles—typically Mom as caregiver and Dad as breadwinner—getting along can be relatively easy. For those of us who want something different, however, halfway to heaven is a tough place to stop.”

It just might be that studies of same-sex couples, aside from their value in understanding same-sex parents ourselves, will help opposite-sex couples who want that “something different” learn how it’s done.

On a related note, a recent study from Vanderbilt University found that children of opposite-sex parents who perceived that their fathers did not spend much time with them were more likely to show bullying behavior. The author, Andre Christie-Mizell, said, “What this research shows is that while it’s equally important for kids to spend time with both parents, fathers need to make an extra effort.” He suggests fathers should make sure to schedule time with kids rather than leave their time together to chance.

I’m just waiting for the first right-wing group to use this as evidence that kids need both a mother and a father—and then to say that if LGBT groups are serious about stopping bullying, we need to realize this. My take on it, however, is that children need to have time with both parents (if they have two), regardless of the gender of those parents. Parental inattention seems damaging no matter what.

Your thoughts?

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Yes, that’s right—same-sex couples have concerns other than “gay” ones, and LGBT people are able to speak out about any number of things having nothing to do with orientation, identity, or LGBT rights. It may seem obvious to us, but it’s a rare bit of media coverage that includes same-sex couples (other than famous ones like Ellen and Portia) in anything other than “gay” articles.

At the same time, author Robert Gavin acknowledges the fact that the women face an additional hurdle in retirement because federal law does not let one get Social Security survivor benefits from the other. He’s not avoiding the “gay” issues; he’s simply showing the couple as well rounded people.

Bravo.

Go read—Cora talks about growing up with a working mom, being a working mom, making her way in a male-dominated field, meeting Julia Child, coming out, and creating her family through shared egg donation and IVF with Jennifer (similar to what Helen and I did, though we stopped after one child).

Kudos to Working Mother for a great profile of a lesbian mom. Not every mainstream publication can do it in such an informative and balanced way, neither shying away from her orientation nor making it seem like the primary focus of her life.