I was twelve years old before I discovered that there was such a thing in the world as an unwanted child. “Well, what a pampered, privileged life you led!” You might reply. And, you would have a point. It came as a shock back then. And frankly, the fact that there still exist unwanted children disturbs me more, rather than less, as the years go by.
We have a referendum in Ireland on the 22nd May to equalize hom*osexual marriage. Most of the friends and colleagues I know are pretty clear that they can see no reason why this should not happen and will be voting “Yes."
But then—we are a pretty hom*ogeneous bunch of boringly predictable lefty liberal academic types. Thus it’s been a surprise—a disturbing one at that—to see an element entering into the discussion from some quarters. Namely, that somehow children will suffer if hom*osexual marriage has the same status as heterosexual marriage.
Posters have gone up around the city (I live in Cork, Ireland) announcing that “Children deserve a mother and a father” or that children with hom*osexual parents will be the result of allegedly damaging “Surrogacy." (1)
Now, this could be a cynical ploy on the part of campaigners. The cry of “Won’t somebody please think of the children” has been an effective low-blow for years. How can somebody reply to the call to “Protect the children!” with a dismissive “Stuff ‘em!"?
They can’t.
However, they could point out that the stated “No” campaign would, on those terms, also seek to outlaw children being brought up by grandparents, single parents, foster parents, or other legal guardians.
And someone might, at this juncture, observe that the history of human parenting has always included a lot of alloparenting—the sharing of child-rearing among kin and helpers and that such talk is highly anachronistic and likely to be out of step with natural human proclivities. (2)
They could even point out that hom*osexual parenting is hardly unique to humans with same-sex coupling naturally occurring in our close relatives the bonobos as well as other species like gulls. Thus, its no more unnatural than hom*osexuality is generally—i.e. not at all. (3)
But, I’m going to assume that the “No” to equal marriage campaigners are sincere in their belief that hom*osexual marriage might harm children and address such concerns as if they were genuine, sincere, and heartfelt—as they might be.
Consensus
It’s rare in behavioral science, especially in developmental behavioral science, that we get unequivocal results. Usually our results are hedged with “yes… but” or “it could be argued” or that hoary old cliché “more research is needed in this area." But this time the results are unambiguous.
Study after study (59 in all) for the last 30 years has returned the same finding or cluster of findings: Whether we look at emotional, educational, or other outcome measures, scientists cannot distinguish children brought up by hom*osexual parents from those brought up by heterosexual ones. (4)
It’s often the case in behavioral science that studies involve fairly small samples, and so it’s often useful to perform meta-analyses—studies that combine the results of other studies thereby increasing explanatory power. Here the results are the same. Kids of gay and lesbian parents do just fine and have done for as long as we have measured them. (5)
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Now, all of this was challenged in 2012 when Mark Regenerus’ infamous study purported to show that the children of gay and lesbian parents actually fared worse than those of heterosexual parents (6).
To say that this study prompted a firestorm would be an understatement. Various motives were imputed to Regenerus himself, his funders, his publicisers, his publishers and uncle Tom Cobley and all. Peer review—the process whereby papers make it into print—was itself called into question by some.
Peer Review
Peer review is just the process whereby the experts in your field decide whether some study has passed a rather low set of hurdles pertaining to some pretty basic questions. Has the study been done before? Have the authors done due diligence in reading and assessing other key findings in the field? Do the sums add up? At no point does peer review answer the question “is it true," because it can’t.
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Falsifiablity
When you are at the frontiers of knowledge you can’t just Google the answers. All we have is our best efforts to break our hypotheses (we call it “falisifiability”). Those that could never in principle be broken are meaningless. If we fail enough times to break our hypotheses, we start to increase our confidence in them.
Regenerus had attempted to break a pretty consistent finding in behavioral science. Had he succeeded? He had certainly succeeded in attracting some criticism—much of it personal.
It’s become something of a modern cliché to tackle the man and not the ball—but that’s not how I was brought up to do science. And I’m going to stick my neck out and say that none of that is how anyone should or needs to do science. Facts and values belong in separate boxes. Or, as someone else put it in relation to this whole issue:
“[S]cience already has its own ways to deal with controversial research results. Studies should be replicated. Data sets should be made public and reanalyzed… Eventually the truth comes out. By those means, Regnerus might be shown to have been wrong or perhaps be vindicated. That is how science is supposed to work.” (7)
Replicability
The thing about reality is that it doesn’t care if you are beautiful, politically correct, pious, on the side of the angels or the devils. The data, as a friend of mine is fond of saying, are all that is the case. Science is our best set of methods for uncovering nature’s secrets. Regenerus has made his data publicly available and the results are coming back. (8)
Cheng and Powell (2015) go through the Regenerus study forensically and interested parties are encouraged to follow this up if they wish. The take-home message is not to react in a knee-jerk way and certainly not to rush to policy change. Science proceeds quite slowly, alas, and the eureka moments are rare indeed.
Rigor
A re-analysis of the data has excluded rather dubious respondents (such as one who described themselves as 7’8” tall and weighing 88lbs and another who claimed to have been arrested at age 1). Other confusions or outright falsifications were apparent, accounting for 82 cases in all. “[These] cases account for over one-third (34.7%) of the 236 respondents categorized by Regnerus as LM or GF.” (p. 16) ("LM" means "lesbian mother" and "GF" means "gay father")
Anyone who does behavioral science is familiar with the importance of cleaning up data. And the standard rule of thumb is that if you have to discard 1/3 of your data as being a mess then your survey has been compromised. To keep such messy data in your study and then attempt to analyze it means that your results can no longer be trusted.
And when the Regenerus data were cleaned up? We get the same substantive results as all the previous work in this area. Children of gay and lesbian parents are indistinguishable from those of straight parents.
Conclusions
What things do cause negative outcomes for children? Marital discord. Bullying. Rejection by the parents—especially (but not exclusively) rejection for the hom*osexuality of the child. (9) Nowhere has it been found that the sexuality of the parents is a significant predictor of negative outcomes.
But all this should come as no surprise. Whether a child of hom*osexual parents is biologically related to one of them or not, there is one thing you would hope you can bet the farm on—that child is wanted. And that is what matters.
Update 27/02/2017
New research links drop in teen suicide to acceptance of same-sex marriage laws
https://richarddawkins.net/2017/02/same-sex-marriage-policy-linked-to-d…
This is not a surprise: People accepting who you are and who you love is likely to be an important part of how you feel about yourself.
Update 26/02/2017
I recently discovered that Gabe Segal (who taught me logic way back in the 1990s) was once asked "Are there arguments against gay marriage that are not religious, bigoted or both?". His reply was "There are no good arguments meeting that description." If anyone has any, then bring them forward and let's hear them. (10)
Update 20/05/2020
I also discovered that Rai Gaita (who taught me ethics back in the 1990s) also weighed in on this topic with his usual nuance and clarity
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5gooFdkyb0&t=9s
References
1) Now it’s an interesting irony that the couple on the posters advertising the “No” campaign are furious at the use of their image in such a way and are, in fact, enthusiastic supporters of marriage equality. Ironic. But, strictly, irrelevant.
http://www.irishexaminer.com/examviral/real-life/the-people-on-the-no-p…
2) Read Hrdy, S. B. (2009). Mothers and others: the evolutionary origins of mutual understanding. Harvard University Press, for an excellent account of this
For same sex parenting and hom*osexual pairings e.g.
3) Bailey, N. W., & Zuk, M. (2009). Same-sex sexual behavior and evolution. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 24(8), 439-446.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169534709001542
MacFarlane, G. R., Blomberg, S. P., Kaplan, G., & Rogers, L. J. (2007). Same-sex sexual behavior in birds: expression is related to social mating system and state of development at hatching. Behavioral Ecology, 18(1), 21-33.
http://beheco.oxfordjournals.org/content/18/1/21.short
4) For some representative examples see:
Patterson, C. J. (1992). Children of lesbian and gay parents. Child development, 63(5), 1025-1042.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-8624.1992.tb01679.x/a… (No differences found in children of hom*osexual/heterosexual parents but quality of relationship predicts outcomes)
Wainright, J. L., Russell, S. T., & Patterson, C. J. (2004). Psychosocial adjustment, school outcomes, and romantic relationships of adolescents with same‐sex parents. Child development, 75(6), 1886-1898.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2004.00823.x/full (Used matched groups and found that--close relationships predicted school adjustment but not the sexuality of parents)
5) Meta-analyses finding that studies considered en masse found no negative outcomes in children of gay and lesbian parents:
Anderssen, N., Amlie, C., & Ytterøy, E. A. (2002). Outcomes for children with lesbian or gay parents. A review of studies from 1978 to 2000. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 43(4), 335-351.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-9450.00302/abstract A meta analysis of 23 studies
Crowl, A., Ahn, S., & Baker, J. (2008). A meta-analysis of developmental outcomes for children of same-sex and heterosexual parents. Journal of GLBT family studies, 4(3), 385-407.
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15504280802177615 A meta analysis of 19 studies
6) Regnerus, M (2012) "How different are the adult children of parents who have same-sex relationships? Findings from the New Family Structures Study," Social Science Research Vol 41, Issue 4 , pp. 752-770; online at: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0049089X12000610
7) Smith, Christian. 2012. "An Academic Auto-da-fé." Chronicle of Higher Education. Opinions and Idea Section.
http://chronicle.com/article/An-Academic-Auto-da-F-/133107/
8) Cheng, S., & Powell, B. (2015). Measurement, Methods, and Divergent Patterns: Reassessing the Effects of Same-Sex Parents. Social Science Research.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0049089X1500085X
9) Ryan, C., Huebner, D., Diaz, R. M., & Sanchez, J. (2009). Family rejection as a predictor of negative health outcomes in white and Latino lesbian, gay, and bisexual young adults. Pediatrics, 123(1), 346-352.
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/123/1/346.short Family rejection predicts negative health outcomes
Peterson, J. L., & Zill, N. (1986). Marital disruption, parent-child relationships, and behavior problems in children. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 295-307.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/352397?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents Marital disruption predicts behavior problems in children
10) https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2005/nov/03/highereducation.educ…
