Are Children with Same Sex Parents at a Disadvantage?

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Quotes from leading scholarly summaries of this research:

• “An extensive body of research tells us that children do best when they grow up with both biological parents. … Thus, it is not simply the presence of two parents, as some have assumed, but the presence of two biological parents that seems to support child development.” 

(Kristin Anderson Moore, et al., “Marriage From a Child’s Perspective: How Does Family Structure Affect Children, and What Can We Do about It?” Child Trends Research Brief (June 2002): 1.)

• “Most researchers now agree that together these studies support the notion that, on average, children do best when raised by their two married, biological parents.”

(Mary Parke, “Are Married Parents Really Better for Children?” Center for Law and Social Policy, Policy Brief (May 2003): 1)
 

• “Overall, father love appears to be as heavily implicated as mother love in offsprings’ psychological well-being and health.”

(Ronald P. Rohner and Robert A. Veneziano, “The Importance of Father Love: History and Contemporary Evidence,” Review of General Psychology 5.4 (2001): 382-405)

• Health scores are 20 to 35 percent higher for children living with both biological parents, compared with those living in single or stepfamilies.

(Deborah A. Dawson, "Family Structure and Children's Health and Well-being: Data from the National Health Interview Survey on Child Health," Journal of Marriage and the Family, 53 (1991): 573 -584)


• “When young boys have primary caretakers of both sexes, they are less likely as adults to engage in woman-devaluing activities and in self-aggrandizing, cruel or overly competitive male cults.”

(Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen, My Brother’s Keeper: What the Social Sciences Do (and Don’t) Tell Us About Masculinity, (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2002), p. 121)


• “We should disavow the notion that ‘mommies can make good daddies,’ just as we should disavow the popular notion of radical feminists that ‘daddies can make good mommies.’ …The two sexes are different to the core, and each is necessary – culturally and biologically – for the optimal development of a human being.”

(David Popenoe, Life Without Father: Compelling New Evidence That Fatherhood and Marriage are Indispensable of the Good of Children and Society, (New York: The Free Press, 1996), p. 197)

Sara McLanahan of Princeton University, one of the world’s leading scholars on how family form impacts child well-being, explains from her extensive investigations:

•    “If we were asked to design a system for making sure that children’s basic needs were met, we would probably come up with something quite similar to the two-parent family ideal. Such a design, in theory, would not only ensure that children had access to the time and money of two adults, it would provide a system of checks and balances that promote quality parenting. The fact that both adults have a biological connection to the child would increase the likelihood that the parents would identify with the child and be willing to sacrifice for that child and it would reduce the likelihood that either parent would abuse the child.”

(Sara McLanahan and Gary Sandefur, Growing Up with a Single Parent: What Hurts, What Helps, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994), p. 38)