This, once explained, seems obvious:
Stephen Scott, director of research at the National Academy for Parenting Practitioners, has said his research shows children from lesbian couples do better in life than the offspring of heterosexual couples.
“Lesbians make better parents than a man and a women,” Mr Scott told a meeting for the launch of think tank Demos.
His controversial position draws backing from research that suggests children with two female parents are more aspirational than those with opposite-sex parents. Some studies also also shows children with lesbian parents are no more or less likely to have tendencies towards homosexuality.
Research at Birkbeck College, part of London University, and Clark University in Massachusetts suggests that same-sex couples make good parents because children cannot be conceived accidentally – parents must make an active decision to adopt or find a sperm donor.
Those who actively seek to be, who have to work hard at becoming, parents are, one would have thought, more likely to be good parents than those who might find themselves so after merely a drunken fumble.
It also doesn’t contradict what Anne Widdicombe says:
Ann Widdecombe, MP for Maidstone and the Weald, said: “This contradicts every other government study that has ever been done. These studies, which are quoted so often by the Government and the opposition, clearly show that children do better when they have both a mother and a father figure.”
The selection effect of those who really want to be parents might be (it is claimed that it is anyway) larger than the known beneficial effects of having both mother and father.
What would be terribly interesting is to see whether the other shoe drops. Are homosexual men even better parents than lesbians? The selection effect is after all going to be even larger: adoption might be as easy for either type of same sex couple but surrogate pregnancy is clearly hugely more expensive and difficult to organise than simply the collection of a sperm sample or two.
However, I have a feeling that (entirely unbuttressed by anything so jejeune as factual evidence) the population of homosexual couples who have had children while as such couples (ie, not carried along from previous heterosexual relationships nor adopted into the relationship) is so small as to make studies near impossible.
9 responses so far ↓
1 DocBud // Nov 16, 2009 at 10:14 am
What the study suggests is that people who work hard to become parents are better parents. Any researcher worth his or her salt would have then compared same-sex couples with heterosexual couples who also had to work hard to become parents through adoption or IVF.
2 John Meredith // Nov 16, 2009 at 12:01 pm
Hooray for a correct use ‘jejune’, even if you did spell it wrong. These sightings are getting rarer.
3 Lloyd Morgan // Nov 16, 2009 at 2:27 pm
As DocBud says, the next logical extension of this is to look at same-sex couples who have become parents through various assisted reproduction methods.
Indeed, this is currently being investigated by the Centre for Family Research at Cambridge University and it is a fascinating area of research.
Most of all I am intrigued by how the researchers are quantifying ‘well-being’ and including another variable in their research: whether or not the child has been informed of their genetic ‘whereabouts’ or not.
4 The Remittance Man // Nov 16, 2009 at 2:59 pm
This is hardly conclusive evidence but the most notorious case of child abuse in recent Kleinkudoeskop history was when a lesbian traffic cop beat her live-in-lover’s child to death for not calling her “papa”.
Just sayin’.
5 AntiCitizenOne // Nov 16, 2009 at 8:59 pm
Competing against this
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/lancashire/8362815.stm
in the motherhood stakes can’t be difficult.
6 Effects of Single Parenting | Parenting help in Oregon // Nov 17, 2009 at 5:28 am
[...] Lesbians make better parents. [...]
7 Relating to a Spouse When a Child is Born | Parenting Help in Your State // Nov 17, 2009 at 8:33 am
[...] Lesbians make better parents. [...]
8 How to bond with your family | Parenting Help in Arizona // Nov 17, 2009 at 3:52 pm
[...] Lesbians make better parents. [...]
9 Jennifer Roback Morse // Nov 17, 2009 at 6:18 pm
I have been looking around the web for the study that backs up Prof. Scott’s remarks. His comments were evidently off the cuff, and not based on any particularly new research. However, the media reported this as if there were some brand new study we should all know about. If I’m mistaken and there is some brand new study, Can anyone at Demos post a link to the actual study?
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