That children need a female mother and male father who are married to each other used to be a matter of common sense. That kind of sense is less common these days but a new study confirms conventional parenting wisdom.
Read it all here:
There is a new and significant piece of evidence in the social science debate about gay parenting and the unique contributions that mothers and fathers make to their children’s flourishing. A study published last week in the journal Review of the Economics of the Household—analyzing data from a very large, population-based sample—reveals that the children of gay and lesbian couples are only about 65 percent as likely to have graduated from high school as the children of married, opposite-sex couples. And gender matters, too: girls are more apt to struggle than boys, with daughters of gay parents displaying dramatically low graduation rates.
[…..]
children of married opposite-sex families have a high graduation rate compared to the others; children of lesbian families have a very low graduation rate compared to the others; and the other four types [common law, gay, single mother, single father] are similar to each other and lie in between the married/lesbian extremes.
[…..]
the particular gender mix of a same-sex household has a dramatic difference in the association with child graduation. Consider the case of girls. . . . Regardless of the controls and whether or not girls are currently living in a gay or lesbian household, the odds of graduating from high school are considerably lower than any other household type. Indeed, girls living in gay households are only 15 percent as likely to graduate compared to girls from opposite sex married homes.
The universal human experience is that children need two parents: one of each sex. This is so obvious it’s embarrassing to say so.
If the mom and dad are there and getting along the children will be better off. Nowadays I see dads spending so much time with the children I wonder if our society is turning fathers into mothers?
Anyone who cares to look with objective and open eyes will see this. Those that are blinded by the homosexual agenda will not, and come up with every excuse under the sun as to why this independent and objective information is not reliable/acceptable.
Orwell once said: “We have now sunk to a depth at which the restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men”.
To even have to study data to prove that children thrive best with a loving mum and dad (of opposite gender – that has to be added because even the definition of mother and father is polluted), is so blindingly obvious that it highlights the depth to which our society has indeed sunk that it needs even to be said.
Here I am under the sun!
One observation: there are, by an order of magnitude, more children in the world dramatically screwed over by heterosexual parents who are _not_ in fact loving, than children being hurt by homosexual parents, loving or or not. _That’s_ stating the obvious. I humbly suggest that we would be making a better contribution to the betterment of the human race by putting the largest group of children in need at the top of our priorities.
Hello Vincent,
I think your observation is influenced by the relative numbers. Please allow me to do a bit of number crunching to explain, (and admittedly these numbers are just made up from my own head)
# of People in Group 1: 900
Group 1 people who suffer from whatever: 9
Rate of suffering: 1%
# of People in Group 2: 100
Group 2 people who suffer from whatever: 5
Rate of suffering: 5%
In this example it can be seen that the number of people in Group 1 that are suffering is almost twice as many as the number of people in Group 2. But the Group 2 people are 5 times more likely to suffer than the Group 1 people.
So the questions becomes simply these. Within which group is the problem worse? And is it not there that we should be directing our efforts?
You’re kidding, right? Leaving aside the principle that with finite resources you should go after the problem that affects the largest number of actual people on the ground, the real problem with this demonstration is that the numbers of the two populations (kids being actively harmed by heterosexual non-loving parents on the one hand, and kids being harmed by homosexual parents loving or not) are not even in the same ballpark. It’s not 5 against 9, it’s infinitely more lopsided than that.
Furthermore, the harm inflicted on kids being brought up by non-loving heterosexual parents ranges from emotional neglect to sexual abuse and murder. Whereas this study’s claims are that children being brought up by homosexual parents don’t graduate high school quite as much. I don’t doubt that some homosexual parents also abuse their kids, but in dramatically lower absolute numbers. And we should go after those _anyway_, regardless of their sexual orientation.
Did you follow the links? If you will than you will get to this:
http://www.familystructurestudies.com/
Check it out. There are comparisons for:
Marijuana
Smoking
Arrested
Pled guilty
Public assistance
Unemployment
Family safety
Suicide
Therapy
Depression
Touched sexually
Forced sex
STI
Relationship quality
Relationship trouble
Affair
Education
Women’s female partners
Women’s male partners
Men’s male partners
Sexual orientation
In each and every one of these categories the traditional family was ALWAYS better than the gay/lesbian “family”. And as you raise the issue of sexual abuse allow me to highlight this information:
Touched sexually: Children traditional families 2%, Children of gay men 6%, Children of lesbian women 23%.
Forced sex: Children traditional families 8%, Children of gay men 25%, Children of lesbian women 31%.
STI: Children traditional families 8%, Children of gay men 25%, Children of lesbian women 20%.
So please stop pretending that same sex parenting is at all comparable to a normal family.
I’m not claiming that. Mind you, I haven’t seen credible evidence that it’s so very much worse at all, but that’s nowhere near what I’m talking about.
I’m just saying that it is such a marginal phenomenon in absolute numbers that the number of kids being harmed by it is dwarfed by the number of kids being harmed by heterosexual parents. That’s not even controversial.
It is a miracle that God can heal all people, adults and children, regardless of their background. Born in a normal loving environment is good, but God can save and transform us from all abnormal situations. There are no perfect families. Let us pray for the transforming power of the triune God!
You’re really not following me. Using rates in this context simply means that you leave more kids in the lurch and get to feel superior about it.
Also, I looked up the Witherspoon Institute. I’m happy for you that you find them credible. The very journal that published the study you base your numbers on then published an audit that concludes the study should not have been published because of highly flawed methods.
http://chronicle.com/blogs/percolator/controversial-gay-parenting-study-is-severely-flawed-journals-audit-finds/30255
How typical of those who sympathize with the homosexual agenda. Find and excuse, any excuse no matter how ridiculous, to ignore any and all information that does not say what they want others to hear.
What does that even mean?
The _very_ journal. That _published_ the study you quote. Had it _audited_. The audit concluded they _shouldn’t_ have published it. The journal _published_ that audit. Therefore _admitting_ that the study is seriously lacking.
Do you deny this?
Did a little digging into the alleged flawed methods of the study. Turns out that the complaints is entirely one of “definitions” of a gay/lesbian person. Of course the homo-agenda sympathizers want an incredibly restrictive definition that will make such studies practically impossible to conduct. And that is what it is all about. They do not want such studies to be done because they already know just how bad the truth is for them.
What complaints? It’s an outside audit. Who cares what the complaints are, it’s the conclusions of the audit that matter, surely?
Vincent is correct. If a journal retracts an article, it means that there are serious problems with the study.
Imagine if I did a study of the average weight of hockey players… and included everyone who has ever tried hockey, the results would not be very representative of actual hockey players.
From a strictly research point of view, this study does not meet the criteria of sound research and has been rejected as so. To be using this article as “proof” even after it has been retracted is not appropriate.
Of course the contents would be representative. You are talking about an average. It appears you mean the mode or the median and, reflecting your own research bias, you also may be thinking adult male hockey players (or even NHL players, who are not representative at all of average hockey players).
Anonymuse. I used hockey as an example but no analogy is perfect. I am a researcher by profession. All I am saying is that if a journal retracts an article, it is very serious and never done lightly. I have never seen a retracted article used as a credible source as this thread appears to be doing.
“Anonymuse. I used hockey as an example but no analogy is perfect.”
And I really wasn’t talking about hockey.
Perhaps I need to be a bit more blunt. From what I have been able to see in the explanations offered for why the article was retracted I am left with the opinion that the journal was subjected to “politically correct” pressures to distance itself from something that is obviously offensive to those who support the homosexual agenda. The “reasons” (excuses) offered come across as so much back-peddling and typical bs. It is interesting to note that Elsevier Science (ES), the original publisher, continues to offer the original report. If the report is as flawed as is suggested, than ES (one of the worlds largest international publishers of scientific books and journals) would be expected to also retract it. That ES has not is in itself at least curious, and more likely telling of the political nature of this entire debate.
You both (Vincent and EdmotonAnglican) appear to be assuming that Darren Sherkat’s “audit” was without bias.
As this article notes, a scholar whose criticism of another scholar’s work includes tendentious diatribes (albeit in emails) which, had they come from the other camp would immediately be labelled “bigoted”, can hardly to be trusted to be objective. From the silver-tongued Sherkat:
David.
I actually am not referring to an audit. I am referring to the fact that if a journal retracts an article, this is serious business and the article is considered useless by the research community. To be honest, the term “audit” is not normally used in research in this way so I’m not sure what people actually mean by it. Nevertheless, retracting an article means that there are serious flaws in the methodology.
As far as biases, nobody denies that they exist. It is impossible to not have them. This is why it is so important for correct methodologies to be used. Otherwise, each side will use pseudo-studies to defend their point of view.
I am a researcher in the field of sociology and I have never seen someone talk like this in my field….nor have I heard of him or his journal. It is not a maintain group. When I looked it up, the goal of the “National Association of Scholars” is to counteract “liberal bias.” So we need to take his blog with a grain of salt too. However, we all know that there are extreme points of view on both sides so it is important that proper methodologies are used.
I stand by my original argument that if this article has been retracted by the journal in which it was published, it is not appropriate to use it. If you don’t agree, write to a professor at ANY university. Ask them if it is ok to cite/quote an article that has been retracted in an academic journal. Don’t even mention what the topic is about to ensure that there is no “bias.” I am certain that all of them will tell you the same that I have said here.
Perhaps I am missing something, but my understanding is that the journal published the “audit”. Did they also publish a retraction of the original article, or are you saying that their publishing of the audit amounts to the same thing as retracting the article – a point I would dispute?
EdmotonAnglican: Many thanks for your clear clarification!
AMP: so basically, we’re _both_ hanging on like grim death to anything that will apparently bolster our argument and will latch onto any excuse to discredit the other side.
That’s cool. 😀