Adoption for homosexual couples

[C Elegans]

Originally posted by Sailor Saturn
I'm interested in knowing more about these studies. How long is "long-term"? How much diversity in the specific types of people observed for the studies was there? How long have these studies been going on? Even if they've been going on for 20 years, I wonder if that's really enough time to know anything relevant enough to predict what's likely to happen in the next 30-40 years of their life. How much was the social situation taken into consideration(i.e., interaction with peers at school, etc)? While parents play a large role, there's a lot more that affects a child's development than just the parents she has.

Studies of this type has been going on since the 1970's. They typically include children between age 3 to early adulthood, but some studies have investigated adult (ie in their 20's or 30's) children to gay parents. "Long term" in the case fo psychology studies, usually means several years, as opposed to short term which ia few months or so. Like Nippy points out, when a person leaves home and starts its own life, the parents influence decreases and other factors play a larger and larger role, so it is regarded as a high priority to investigate further after this point. However, longitudinal studies when you follow people over many, many years (we have one in Sweden on a group that is not over 40 years old) would be very interesting to carry out and I hope we will see more such studies in the future. A problem with longitudinal studies is that they are very expensive and difficult to administrate since people often quit participation in the studies becasue they move or just get fed up with being "human guniea pigs".

A majority of the studies have focused on children to lesbian mothers, which is a lack. However, the fewer studies of children to gay fathers show no differences compared to non-gay fathers. Studies include both single gay parents and gay couples.

Many studies has included investigations of the social situation of the child, since one of the hypothesised risks with having gay parents was that the child would suffer socially. There has so far not been any support for this hypothesis, instead, children to gay parents do not differ from other children in popularity, peer-relations, school functioning and other social measures.

The American Psychological Association, APA, has made a compilation of the results of some 50 studies. It's free on the net, and includes many references at the end of the text.
http://www.apa.org/pi/parent.html

Here is a review article:
http://www.ibiblio.org/gaylaw/issue6/Mcneill.htm

Some few hundred studies have been carried out since the 1970's, and that is not very much in a scientific perspective. From these studies, it can be concluded that there are no differences between children to gay or straight parents in cognitive functioning, psychosocial functioning, sexual identity, peer-relations, school functioning, emotional measures, psychiatric disorders etc, etc., just as there is no differences between children living with single parents or two parents.

[Sailor Saturn]

Originally posted by Nippy


You cannot define how long-term a study will be. Once a child leaves home they are generally not really effected by thier parents because they have more indepenence. They cannot be 30-40 years of study because that is too long, a 'child' could be 45 then! How can a 60-70 year old parents change what a 45 year old or whatever age it is, thinks?

Who raised the child, and how the child was raised, affects the decisions that person makes later on in life, even if you don't realize it. Thus, something that doesn't seem to cause any problems early in life may come back to haunt them, so to speak, sometime in the future.

[Sailor Saturn]

Originally posted by C Elegans


Studies of this type has been going on since the 1970's. They typically include children between age 3 to early adulthood, but some studies have investigated adult (ie in their 20's or 30's) children to gay parents. "Long term" in the case fo psychology studies, usually means several years, as opposed to short term which ia few months or so. Like Nippy points out, when a person leaves home and starts its own life, the parents influence decreases and other factors play a larger and larger role, so it is regarded as a high priority to investigate further after this point. However, longitudinal studies when you follow people over many, many years (we have one in Sweden on a group that is not over 40 years old) would be very interesting to carry out and I hope we will see more such studies in the future. A problem with longitudinal studies is that they are very expensive and difficult to administrate since people often quit participation in the studies becasue they move or just get fed up with being "human guniea pigs".

A majority of the studies have focused on children to lesbian mothers, which is a lack. However, the fewer studies of children to gay fathers show no differences compared to non-gay fathers. Studies include both single gay parents and gay couples.

Many studies has included investigations of the social situation of the child, since one of the hypothesised risks with having gay parents was that the child would suffer socially. There has so far not been any support for this hypothesis, instead, children to gay parents do not differ from other children in popularity, peer-relations, school functioning and other social measures.

The American Psychological Association, APA, has made a compilation of the results of some 50 studies. It's free on the net, and includes many references at the end of the text.
http://www.apa.org/pi/parent.html

Here is a review article:
http://www.ibiblio.org/gaylaw/issue6/Mcneill.htm

Some few hundred studies have been carried out since the 1970's, and that is not very much in a scientific perspective. From these studies, it can be concluded that there are no differences between children to gay or straight parents in cognitive functioning, psychosocial functioning, sexual identity, peer-relations, school functioning, emotional measures, psychiatric disorders etc, etc., just as there is no differences between children living with single parents or two parents.

Thanks for the information, CE. I'll check out the links later today after school.

[HighLordDave]

When doing comparative studies, I think it is also important to keep an apples to apples comparison. For instance, if you're going to examine the effects of having homosexual parents on adopted children, your control group must also be of adopted children in a traditional household.

It is my experience that adopted kids suffer from higher rates of depression, separation anxiety and low self-esteem than kids who were not adopted. I think this stems from rejection issues and other questions young adopted kids have regarding why they don't live with their birth parents anymore.

In a scientific study without this control, it could reasonably be shown that children adopted by homosexual parents show signs of clinical depression at higher rates than other children, many of whom perhaps lived with their biological parents. This is a nitpick, but I think it is important when considering and comparing evidence.

We live in an environment (at least in the United States) where there are more children waiting to be adopted (especially black and hispanic children) than there are parents willing to adopt. It is my opinion that the people who want to stop homosexual couples from adopting children do not have the interests of children at heart; they are more concerned with quelling the gay rights movement and are willing to beat them down on any issue, including adoption, even when they have no scientific evidence upon which to base their claims.

[Witch King]

Have you folks heard the recent story about the deaf lesbian couple who wanted a child?

Ok, now that you've filled in your own punchline...

It's crazy, this couple wanted a deaf child. They went to various clinics, but clinics don't accept sperm donations from deaf donors, so they went to a deaf friend of theirs, and he complied. So, the woman conceived a deaf daughter. Then they did it again and got a 75% deaf son. It seems that they percieve deafness not as a handicap, but as a lifestyle, and considered a child to be a blessing, but a deaf child to be a better blessing.

[Sailor Saturn]

Originally posted by C Elegans


Studies of this type has been going on since the 1970's. They typically include children between age 3 to early adulthood, but some studies have investigated adult (ie in their 20's or 30's) children to gay parents. "Long term" in the case fo psychology studies, usually means several years, as opposed to short term which ia few months or so. Like Nippy points out, when a person leaves home and starts its own life, the parents influence decreases and other factors play a larger and larger role, so it is regarded as a high priority to investigate further after this point. However, longitudinal studies when you follow people over many, many years (we have one in Sweden on a group that is not over 40 years old) would be very interesting to carry out and I hope we will see more such studies in the future. A problem with longitudinal studies is that they are very expensive and difficult to administrate since people often quit participation in the studies becasue they move or just get fed up with being "human guniea pigs".

A majority of the studies have focused on children to lesbian mothers, which is a lack. However, the fewer studies of children to gay fathers show no differences compared to non-gay fathers. Studies include both single gay parents and gay couples.

Many studies has included investigations of the social situation of the child, since one of the hypothesised risks with having gay parents was that the child would suffer socially. There has so far not been any support for this hypothesis, instead, children to gay parents do not differ from other children in popularity, peer-relations, school functioning and other social measures.

The American Psychological Association, APA, has made a compilation of the results of some 50 studies. It's free on the net, and includes many references at the end of the text.
http://www.apa.org/pi/parent.html

Here is a review article:
http://www.ibiblio.org/gaylaw/issue6/Mcneill.htm

Some few hundred studies have been carried out since the 1970's, and that is not very much in a scientific perspective. From these studies, it can be concluded that there are no differences between children to gay or straight parents in cognitive functioning, psychosocial functioning, sexual identity, peer-relations, school functioning, emotional measures, psychiatric disorders etc, etc., just as there is no differences between children living with single parents or two parents.

I've read through the first article, but haven't gotten to the second article yet. It was...interesting. I'm curious. How does all of this affect bisexual parents? Do the studies of homosexual and heterosexual couples include bisexuals?

[Witch King]

Adoption For Homosexuals

I'm all for it. I tried to adopt a pair of 18-year old blond lesbians one, but they wouldn't let me. I felt my rights had been violated- I was seeking only to provide for them and protect the.

[Word]

yes they should be able to. i believe that the problem is that the anti-adoption lobby feels that this will produce more gays and therefore corrupt society further with sin and vice.
This is a basic assumption that gays are sinful IMHO

However always find this funny because in most Christian religions sex without marriage is sinful and the only difference with gays is the gender of the mate so is it extra sinful or something

[EMINEM]

Here's an interesting article that casts doubt on the reliability of "studies" used to back up the claim that homosexual parents are no different from heterosexual ones:

Click Here

Some of Lerner's high lights:

"The research that purports to show that the sexual orientation of parents' makes no difference in child outcome is flawed in so many different ways that space prohibits listing them all. Here's a quick summary:

The same-sex parent studies:

— Completely misconstrue and thus blatantly misuse the standard logic of statistical hypothesis testing (e.g., they attempt to affirm the null hypothesis, which is wrong; one can only fail to reject the null hypothesis)

— Fail to use proper or even any control groups (e.g. Charlotte Patterson's Bay Area study)

— Use wildly unrepresentative non-random samples

— Use far too few cases to draw any valid conclusions

— Fail to control for essential variables when presenting their findings

— There is only one study that has any kind of follow-up. This particular study misanalyses its own data, which in fact show that the daughters of lesbian couples are more likely to engage in lesbian sexual experimentation as adults than are the daughters of heterosexual couples. This effect is probably understated since the authors lump together heterosexuals who are married with those who are cohabiting

— The above study is the only one which included adult data; findings based on young children are inadequate for talking about the development of adult behavior and identity

— None of the studies in question is a study of gay adoption; the children studied are either the natural children of one partner or result from artificial insemination. This limits the reliability of the studies, even assuming they were valid otherwise."

[Sailor Saturn]

Of those two articles CE posted, the first one addresses some stuff you mention from the article you posted, EMINEM.

Originally posted by EMINEM
— Completely misconstrue and thus blatantly misuse the standard logic of statistical hypothesis testing (e.g., they attempt to affirm the null hypothesis, which is wrong; one can only fail to reject the null hypothesis)

— Fail to use proper or even any control groups (e.g. Charlotte Patterson's Bay Area study)

— Use wildly unrepresentative non-random samples

— Use far too few cases to draw any valid conclusions

— Fail to control for essential variables when presenting their findings

— There is only one study that has any kind of follow-up. This particular study misanalyses its own data, which in fact show that the daughters of lesbian couples are more likely to engage in lesbian sexual experimentation as adults than are the daughters of heterosexual couples. This effect is probably understated since the authors lump together heterosexuals who are married with those who are cohabiting

— The above study is the only one which included adult data; findings based on young children are inadequate for talking about the development of adult behavior and identity

— None of the studies in question is a study of gay adoption; the children studied are either the natural children of one partner or result from artificial insemination. This limits the reliability of the studies, even assuming they were valid otherwise."

—One criticism of this body of research (Belcastro et al., 1993) has been that the research lacks external validity because it may not be representative of the larger population of lesbian and gay parents. This criticism is not justified, because nobody knows the actual composition of the entire population of lesbian mothers, gay fathers, or their children (many of whom choose to remain hidden) and hence researchers cannot possible evaluate the degree to which particular samples do or do not represent the population. In the long run, it is not the results obtained from any one specific sample, but the accumulation of findings from many different samples that will be most meaningful.

—Research in this area has also been criticized for using poorly matched or no control groups in designs that call for such controls. Particularly notable in this category has been the tendency in some studies to compare development among children of a group of divorced lesbian mothers, many of whom are living with lesbian partners, to that among children of a group of divorced heterosexual mothers who are not currently living with heterosexual partners. It will be important for future research to disentangle maternal sexual orientation from maternal status as partnered or unpartnered.

—Other criticisms have been that most studies have involved relatively small samples, that there have been inadequacies in assessment procedures employed in some studies, and that the classification of parents as lesbian, gay, or heterosexual has sometimes been problematic (e.g., some women classified by researchers as lesbian might be regarded as bisexual by other observers). It is significant, however, that even with all the questions and/or limitations that may characterize research in the area, none of the published research suggests conclusions different from those that will be summarized below.

[Beldin]

I've just read in a local paper that a pair of lesbians in New York wanted a deaf baby and were searching for a deaf sperm donor (sp?) because they WANT their child to be handicapped .

Don't flame me, but even thinking of "parents" (..and gay parents at that...) voluntarily giving birth to a handicapped child makes me think of violence - directed at the so called "loveing mothers"...

Has anybody here further information on this case and/or other views on this ?

Worries,

Beldin

[Sailor Saturn]

Originally posted by Beldin
I've just read in a local paper that a pair of lesbians in New York wanted a deaf baby and were searching for a deaf sperm donor (sp?) because they WANT their child to be handicapped .

Don't flame me, but even thinking of "parents" (..and gay parents at that...) voluntarily giving birth to a handicapped child makes me think of violence - directed at the so called "loveing mothers"...

Has anybody here further information on this case and/or other views on this ?

Worries,

Beldin

I think WK already made a comment about this, so he may know more about all of it.

However, I don't totally agree with your view, Beldin. Looking at deafness as strictly a handicap is certainly a view of someone who can hear; but you're assuming that those two deaf lesbians view deafness as a handicap. If they want their child to be deaf, then they obviously do not view it as a handicap. While you see it as purposely harming their child, they obviously view it as a blessing of some kind. As you are not deaf, you really do not have a right to judge them for wanting to have a deaf child. Besides, who better to raise a deaf child than deaf parents?

[Robnark]

originally posted by SS
who better to raise a deaf child than deaf parents?

that's a good case for adopting a deaf child, but to intentionally bring a child into this world with a disability is a prospect i find bizarre to say the least. persoally i fell somewhat angry that they wish to do this, as any child that experiences problems in life that are directly down to their parents is unlikely to appreciate it very much, and there is no doubt that they will find it a disability in life.

[Sailor Saturn]

Originally posted by Robnark


that's a good case for adopting a deaf child, but to intentionally bring a child into this world with a disability is a prospect i find bizarre to say the least. persoally i fell somewhat angry that they wish to do this, as any child that experiences problems in life that are directly down to their parents is unlikely to appreciate it very much, and there is no doubt that they will find it a disability in life.

You're also looking at deafness as a disability. I've known several deaf people and they did not view it as a disability. Obviously, the aforementioned parents did not view it as a disability either. Also, if deafness is hereditary, wouldn't any deaf person who chose to have a kid be choosing to likely have a deaf child? If a deaf man and deaf woman married and had a kid, it would likely be a deaf kid. How is that different from the two lesbians? They just had to go in a more roundabout way because modern science has not progressed far enough for two women to concieve(sp?).

[Ned Flanders]

If I or my spouse had a disability/disease linked directly to genetics, I would probably opt for adopting a child versus procreation as I wouldn't want to risk passing such traits to my children. I have to side with robnark and agree that it is twisted to want to breed a child with a deafness disability. How would you feel the day you found out it was intentional. It doesn't matter if the parents, whatever their genders, care if it is a disability or not. The child has no chance and no say and it just beyond me to have the will to impose that on another person.

That said, if the child is born with deafness, i guess they will know no different so maybe it isn't that bad for the child.

[Sailor Saturn]

Originally posted by Ned Flanders
If I or my spouse had a disability/disease linked directly to genetics, I would probably opt for adopting a child versus procreation as I wouldn't want to risk passing such traits to my children. I have to side with robnark and agree that it is twisted to want to breed a child with a deafness disability. How would you feel the day you found out it was intentional. It doesn't matter if the parents, whatever their genders, care if it is a disability or not. The child has no chance and no say and it just beyond me to have the will to impose that on another person.

That said, if the child is born with deafness, i guess they will know no different so maybe it isn't that bad for the child.

I used to know a girl who was born deaf. She was the happiest child I've ever seen. Everyone loved her. If anything, she was living a better life than any non-deaf person I've ever known. And, yes, her mother was also deaf.

[Ned Flanders]

by SS
I used to know a girl who was born deaf. She was the happiest child I've ever seen. Everyone loved her. If anything, she was living a better life than any non-deaf person I've ever known. And, yes, her mother was also deaf.

To each their own, it's only a matter of opinion. There is no right or wrong here. I don't doubt what you say here, my opinions lies not whether or not a deaf person can be happy but rather why would you choose to conceive a deaf child. Why intentionally deprive someone of a beautiful gift.

[Ode to a Grasshopper]

It strikes me as somwhat sad that that child will never be able to listen to music, or the sound of ocean waves breaking on the shore, or even (in time) the laughter of their own child, simply because it's parents decided they wanted a deaf child. Being deaf may not be a major disability but it still means you can't enjoy a number of life's experiences that those with hearing could.

[Sailor Saturn]

Originally posted by Ode to a Grasshopper
It strikes me as somwhat sad that that child will never be able to listen to music, or the sound of ocean waves breaking on the shore, or even (in time) the laughter of their own child, simply because it's parents decided they wanted a deaf child. Being deaf may not be a major disability but it still means you can't enjoy a number of life's experiences that those with hearing could.

There may be things a deaf person can enjoy that those of us who aren't deaf can't. You really can't judge the situation fully without experiencing both situations.

[Ode to a Grasshopper]

All the advantages I can really think of off the top of my head are that all of the child's other senses (sight, taste, touch, smell) will naturally adjust and become stronger to compensate for the loss of hearing. If I come up with any more I'll post them.

BTW, I'm not saying that these are the only advantages, I'm just trying to see both sides of the issue here.