These days, gay parents are no novelty: We see them strolling through our neighborhoods, participating in our PTA meetings, and, perhaps most notably, appearing on our TV screens: Mitchell and Cam, fathers to Lily, on the ratings smash Modern Family; Glee's Sue Sylvester, expectant mom to a baby conceived with an as-yet-unrevealed sperm donor, and Rachel's dads, played with humor and grace by Jeff Goldblum and Brian Stokes. Last year, Annette Bening was nominated for multiple awards, including an Oscar, for her portrayal of a lesbian mother to two teens -- and Julianne Moore's better half -- in hit indie movie The Kids Are All Right. These Hollywood examples are important in that they've helped present gay parenting as not unlike straight parenting: challenging, joyful, complicated, and most of all, entirely normal.
Though this media "mainstreamification" of gay parenting is a relatively new phenomenon, for decades, gay parents have had children in all sorts of family configurations -- whether through adoption, previous heterosexual relationships, or, increasingly, by choosing to have biological offspring using in vitro, surrogate, and other methods. According to the 2010 census, a quarter of same-sex American households are raising children, gaining ground on heterosexual couples, who parent at a rate of just under 50 percent. Just as these families have appeared front and center in the opening credits of the American sitcom, so too have they shouldered themselves front and center in the group photo of the real life American family. Turns out "alternative families" aren't so alternative anymore.
And yet their existence continues to provoke social and political outrage. In January, then-presidential hopeful Rick Santorum told a New Hampshire audience that children are better off with a father in jail than being raised by lesbian parents, while Pope Benedict cited the need for children to live in heterosexual homes as a way to, essentially, preserve humanity. Last November in Illinois, Catholic Charities ceased its adoption services after the state refused funding unless the groups agreed not to discriminate against gays and lesbians. Although gay and lesbian parents are a powerful resource for kids in need of adoption -- at least half of adoptive gay parents are supporting foster children -- Catholic Charities simply quit the business rather than comply.
Earlier this month, when President Obama announced his support for same-sex marriage days after North Carolina voted to ban it, he changed the conversation considerably by arguing that concern for children is a reason to support, rather than oppose, gay marriage. He cited gay couples in his own life, "same-sex couples who are as committed, as monogamous, as responsible, as loving a group of parents as any heterosexual couple that I know," he said. "And in some cases, more so." His support for gay marriage was itself a landmark turn, but just as notable was its indirect affirmation of gay couples as parents, which served to rebut the standard argument against gay marriage -- namely, that it risks the well-being of children and the family.
But still many are left wondering. They want to know: How will these children of gay parents fare? Can kids raised in homosexual homes turn out (gasp) okay?
The answer is yes -- and resoundingly so.
Throughout many years of working with families, I've studied the lives of gay parents raising sons and daughters. In general, gay parents tend to be more motivated, more committed, and more thoughtful parents than heterosexual couples. That's because they usually have to work very hard, and plan very far in advance, to become parents, and so rarely do so by accident.
The children, meanwhile, show few differences in achievement. They perform as well in school, at sports, and in extracurriculars as peers with heterosexual parents. At the same time, they are more self-aware, more adept at communicating their feelings, and exhibit more empathy for people different from themselves. They learn early how to negotiate the outside environment, gauge other people's motives, and assess how open they dare to be in specific situations. They are strong. In my work, I routinely saw how, with enough support from their families, children of gay parents developed skills at thinking independently and standing up for what they believed which distinguished them from many children with straight parents. In my study boys of two-moms families spent more time with a parent than the boys of mom and dad couples who more readily relegated childcare responsibilities to babysitters.
Much of the concern for the children of two-mom families has centered specifically on boys. The thinking goes if one mom raising a boy is trouble, two moms must be double trouble. Unfortunately boys on average have seemed, especially in recent years, prey to confusion, resentment, and destructiveness -- something credited to the rising proportion of males being reared in fatherless homes. If only fathers were more fatherly, we are told, boys would learn to be good men, a subject I explored in my book Raising Boys Without Men. People want to know: How will boys learn to become men? Where will they find their role models? Will they grow up to be gay?
Here's the truth: "Boyness" is inherent. It doesn't have to be instilled, or taught. The boys I encountered in my work devised boyhoods using not just social cues, but what seemed like innate male-identity-building talents. They rode skateboards, they turned sticks into swords, toast into guns, they were leaders on sports teams. No one taught them to do these things. They just had it in them. And, in fact, all the research has reported children of gay parents feel less bound, less restricted, by gender stereotypes than those raised in straight households. They were freer to pursue a wide range of interests. There were no "boy things," no "girl things." Just kid things. That's key.
But kids of gay parents do often face discrimination, and it's not always the easiest childhood (though show me one that is). Still, challenges are not defeats. Perhaps as a by-product of the discrimination they sometimes face, children of gay parents tend to be more sensitive to others and to the positive and negative feelings in themselves. The boys I've worked with tend to be more thoughtful and measured in how they exert themselves in the world. And they have no greater chance of "turning gay" than the child with the straight parents next door. Science has proven that homosexuality has biological roots, and if we believe that it is neither a choice nor an unlucky orientation, then we can relax and trust that these young men and women will find out what possibility comes naturally to them. As one boy, 10-year-old Kenny, told me matter-of-factly, "I'll know if I'm gay or straight when I'm older."
Of course, children of gay parents may ponder their sexual orientation at an early age, and establish the terms of their sexuality with more self-consciousness than most other young adults. But most children of gay parents will ultimately grow up to be straight, if only because most children grow up to be straight -- period. They will then relate to those who are not straight with great respect and openness.
In a 2007 paper published in the American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 28 out of 46 adults with at least one gay parent spontaneously offered that they felt more open-minded and empathetic than people not raised in their situation. My work and other research with the children of gay parents supports this finding.
The children I studied, and those growing up around us now -- those kids being raised by gay moms and dads in loving, nurturing homes -- promise to offer, as adults, the best characteristics of men and women. They are emotionally literate. They are socially evolved. Growing up without ingrained, preordained ideas of gender roles, nothing is beyond their reach -- including the prospect of exploring life with generosity and creativity. They represent not the worst-case scenario, but the best.
Follow Dr. Peggy Drexler on Twitter: www.twitter.com/drpeggydrexler
This will be difficult to watch. You will not know whether to laugh or cry.
Just as it’s impossible for males to fully comprehend the childbirth experience or the bond mothers share with their children, the same can be said about females comprehending the relationship between boys and their fathers. Unfortunately, it’s one of those cases when I must declare that your gender precludes you from fully understanding that bond and that relationship, and how it helps facilitate the transition from boy to man.
Are you seriously attributing this alleged phenomenon on boys who were raised by lesbians? That's insane. Hetero parents, in my experience, contribute to our society the vast majority of men who behave like boys. Your homophobic fear that the GLBT community is destroying "manliness" (of which there is no empirical, unified definition) is laughable and insulting to the millions of women who have done an exceptional job at raising boys into men for a millenia.
Character makes a boy a man and it must come from within. Each of us either finds it or not based on more than such simplistic nonsense.
You also said "Character makes a boy a man and it must come from within." On that I have to disagree. The natural state of males is to stay boys – to seek fun and sexual conquest, indefinitely. To become a “Man” must be learned, either from a father or father figure or another strong male role model.
You hinted at something but never fully addressed it: boys raised by lesbians growing up to be men. I agree “’boyness’ is inherent” and that boys will exhibit boy-like characteristics regardless of who their parents are. The problem is that boys can remain “boys” even into adulthood. In other words, “manliness” is NOT inherent. You may laugh at that, but indeed, it is a big problem in our society. Just ask any of your single female (hetero) friends who hope to get married. I assure you many will complain that a lot of single guys out there behave like boys. Their priority in life is to have fun, not to commit to a woman and support a family.
I know about your book, “Raising Boys Without Men”, so it’s clear how invested you are in your theory. However, even the Publishers Weekly review on Amazon admits you are “curiously cagey on numbers”. But even studies with lots of data can be manipulated to present a certain point of view, in either direction. At a certain point, I trust common sense and history over studies.
Continued…
I'm very disappointed in her now!
I read a statistic one time that said that about half the pregnancies in the United States are unplanned. I found that astounding and that brought a lot of perspective to the gay adoption/gays raising kids issue, for me. Straight people are so against gays having kids yet they can't even raise their own kids all that well. Straight people's kids have all kinds of weird emotional issues (from what I've noticed) from their parents either being in their lives too much or too little. And that's not even to mention all the financial problems that come along with providing for kids you didn't plan. And the resentment issues. So I think it's *wonderful* that gay parents are both adopting and having kids. They're probably going to be more stable, better people as a result. :)
Our jails are full to overflowing with males without a father in the home and female incarceration is on the rise.
Children fair better in every category with fathers and mothers in the home. U.S.Dept of Human Services data and all other data support that fact.
Feminists have been toting fatherless families for a long time and look what we have today.
Children without fathers in the home are most likely to be raised in poverty, act out, commit crime, not finish school, and a plethora of other problems.
According to the logic in the commentary, children really don’t need parents as a guide because they just naturally know how to be. Studies do not support that conclusion.
Young males need fathers in their lives just as females need mothers in their lives and both sexes do better with the example of both mother and father in the home.
A female can no more be a male than a male can be a female. Their minds and bodies are wired, designed and function different. Appearance and outside manipulation of gender does not change the hard wiring of the internal. Psychology is the study on environmental influence on human behavior. Brain imagining shows the physical changes in the brain by what we see & hear.
Another experiment with our children?
http://fatherhood.hhs.gov/Parenting/influence.shtml
Most people should not have kids, but they do anyway.
Stop blaming the victims.
Economic opportunity is not overshadowed by morality and taking responsibility. The jails are overflowing in a nation where even the poor have more opportunity and things than any past generation.
http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2011/09/understanding-poverty-in-the-united-states-surprising-facts-about-americas-poor
Your economic opportunities are pretty limited when you are functionally illiterate, a drop-out, and extremely limited as an ex-convict.
No, sex itself didn't enter into my mind, but I knew that I liked girls, not boys.
Just so you know I am heterosexual. Our special circumstances was that my husband and I were of two different ethnic groups. And yes, this was still a huge issue 33 years ago. Your gender, race, sexual preferences or religion is not where strong, healthy, well adjusted kids come from.
I didn't need a doctor to tell me this. Common sense did. No disrespect to Dr. Drexler intended. What she is saying needs to be said because there are still people who don't know or understand.
Suffice it to say, I would have GLADDLY traded all of my heterosexual parents - all 8 of them - for a loving, committed same sex couple.
People like Santorum who would rather see children raised in a horible hetero-household rather than in a loving and committed two parent home just make me sick. Seriously Rick... I spent 6 years of my life PRAYING that my step-father would end UP in prison but instead what I got was 6 years of emotional, physical, and yes, sexual abuse.
A LOVING home with any number of moms and or dads trumps an abusive and brutal heterosexual upbringing any day.
1) LOVE
2) ATTENTION
That's it, if they can get both of those, they will grow up well, period!
It doesn't exist and you are making things up to fit your twisted pychosis.
Many I know have gotten their children through adoption from the foster care system after the biological parents have had their rights severed because they were either abusive, neglectful, or on substance.