[LINK] "Two moms are as good as a mom and a dad: study"

[rfmcdonald]

The Toronto Star's Cathal Kelly shares the news.

A pair of American sociologists spent five years sifting through all the available literature contrasting the outcomes for children raised in traditional families with those raised by a same-sex couple. Their conclusion: no substantive difference at all.

“The upshot of the study is something that should be common sense, but instead there is this enormous belief in the significance of gender. Bottom line: What matters is good parenting,” said NYU’s Judith Stacey. She and colleague Timothy Biblarz published the results of their investigation in the Journal of Marriage and Family on Friday.

Stacey and Biblarz have been involved in the culture wars surrounding gay marriage and gay parenthood since the release of their 2001 study, How Does The Sexual Orientation of Parents Matter?

Those who disagreed with their answer to that question – “not that much” – began casting around for their own scientific data. That prompted this follow-up.

“In the U.S. especially, policy makers ... always start their (anti-gay marriage) argument with, ‘Research proves...,’” Stacey said. “But that research is almost exclusively research that compares children with two married parents to children whose parents divorced or never married. It’s completely skewed.

“They were extrapolating from those studies, which can say, on average – and that’s an important qualification – two parents usually are better than one. Not always. That’s another, more complicated story. But it certainly has nothing to do with whether (the parents are) male or female.”

The only discernible and consistent advantage they could come up with for traditional couples: lactation.

The studies covered same-sex female couples; apparently there are too few same-sex male families, too recently, to be included.