How many children in the U.S. have an LGBT parent? A new study gives us fresh answers — but we need to be careful how we quote them.
The “LGB Families and Relationships” study from UCLA’s Williams Institute is an analysis of the 2013 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), a survey conducted by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) since 1957. Last year was the first time it included a question about sexual orientation.
The study, by demographer and Williams Distinguished Scholar Dr. Gary Gates, found that in 2013, the estimated 690,000 same-sex couples in the U.S. were raising an estimated 200,000 children under age 18. Of those couples, 124,000 were married, and 30,000 children are being raised by these married same-sex parents.
But wait, you may say. I read somewhere that we were raising millions of children in total. What’s going on?
This is where we must read carefully and think inclusively. Gates also found that LGBT individuals who are not part of a couple are raising between 1.2 and 2 million children, depending on which of two numbers (from the NHIS or Gallup, respectively) is used to estimate the proportion of adults who are LGB or LGBT. (This is why I always try to be very careful about not using “same-sex parents” as synonymous with “LGBT parents.”)
Additionally, he reminds us, “it is important to consider that some LGB parents are raising children as part of a different-sex couple. This is particularly true for bisexual parents.” Here are the numbers:
Among bisexual adults with children, 51% were married with a different-sex spouse, 11% had a different-sex unmarried partner, and 4% had a same-sex spouse or partner. Among adults who identified as gay or lesbian and were raising children, 18% had a different-sex married spouse and 4% had a different-sex unmarried partner.
Adding it all up, then, and we find that between 1.2 and 2.2 million LGBT adults are raising between 2.0 and 3.7 million children.
Additionally, it’s worth nothing that the above is the figure for those with minor children. A study by Gates from February 2013, using the 2010 Census and various other national data sources, however, looked not only at children under 18, but also at adults with LGBT parents. It estimated that “as many as 6 million American children and adults have an LGBT parent.”
That means, of course, that between 4 and 2.3 million U.S. adults have been raised by an LGBT parent. And if we weren’t good at it, on the whole, there would be a whole lot more maladjusted adults running around, and someone would have noticed their common thread of LGBT parents. There aren’t. Take that, all those who say LGBT parents are an unproven social experiment.