04 October 2007

Children Of Lesbian Couples Are Doing Well

Whatever your view of homosexuality, this is an important study because it moves some of the ground of debate. One by contributing to the 'normalisation' of gay relationships and two by taking away bad environment for child-rearing as an objection.
A study of families in the Netherlands indicates that children raised by lesbian couples “do not differ in well being or child adjustment compared with their counterparts in heterosexual-parent families.”

More interestingly, and challengly, but perhaps not surprisingly:
lesbian biological mothers were significantly more satisfied with their partners as a co-parent than were heterosexual mothers. The partners of lesbian biological mothers “are more committed as parents than are heterosexual fathers, that is, they display a higher level of satisfaction with their partner as co-parent and spend more time on child care and less on employment.”
Lesbian couples were significantly higher on strength of desire to have children than were heterosexual couples. There were significant differences in the division of family tasks, with both of the lesbian partners spending more time on household work and childcare, and less time at work outside the home, than the heterosexual fathers.

Watch out for more studies on this kind of thing, particularly for studies on gay males as co-parents.
I think that the challenge this presents to the received approach to homophile relationships centres around 'God is love and those who live in love live in God' ... for a traditionalist approach there is a difficulty in honouring that of God in such relationship, particularly where 'innocent children' are implicated, with a distaste [is that the right word?] for the nature of one aspect of the parental relationship.
ScienceDaily: Children Of Lesbian Couples Are Doing Well, Study Finds:

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