The world is learning about and slowly accepting the LGBT community a little more every day. With new laws and a now safer environment, we are starting to see a lot more same-sex parents taking up the responsibility of a child. That being said, it’s not easy to become a gay parent. Besides, just the fact that one gender of the parent will be missing, there have been multiple studies that somehow prove same-sex parenting is much worse for a child than hetero-parents.
What we need to understand, however, when we’re making such differences is the fact that this is, at the end of the day, about the children.
Two Dads with a kid, we support!
Here are the facts about gay parenting that you should be aware of:
There will be differences between the nurturing of hetero-parents and same-sex parents. But these differences should be valid and drastic to not allow gay people to become parents. Children’s health excuses to why gay parents cannot legally marry or have children. People believe that a child has a fundamental right to have a father and mother. They also believe that children from same-sex parents go through more psychological issues and abuse. Agreeing that children are bullied and excluded more than hetero-children.
This explains the wide amounts of research that goes into such a sensitive topic. Taking responsibility for another life is a big deal and the medical and research departments understand the same. A review including a large body of research, paediatricians and other child and family experts states that same-sex parents are no different from hetero-parents.
Out of 79 research studies, 95% of the results show no difference. The latter 5% however, is what catches the eyes.
Rainbow flags and gay parents
What about the 5%?
This 5% of the research include tests led by non-expert authors like an economist and a sociologist with religious bias. It is already exceptionally clear that the entire test result is false.
We know that children who experience a broken family or grow up with a single parent don’t tend to do as well as those with a stable family. This falls back unto the fact that children may go through some tough times during their childhood. A comparison was struck between same-sex attracted parents in the presence of parental separation and compared these to children who have heterosexual, married parents.
What’s wrong with this you ask? The two categories are not alike whatsoever. One cannot compare the sex of the parents while still being together and in love to children who have had to see their parents fall apart or witness the difficulties of an individual parent. We know that children who have hetero-parents that are still in love and together are far more productive and successful. Given the same circumstances, it is safe to believe that same-sex parents would deliver the same.
Another study, a lot like this, shows children answering a series of questions. The analysis, however, was in great blunder. The questions were heavily misclassified, this caused for a completely invalid analysis of the children. Questions which clearly do not describe child abuse were labeled as being associated with child abuse.
This, of course, led to the false assertion that there was a strong difference between the abuse in children with same-sex parents and heterosexual parents.
Two Fathers kissing their cute new baby
Other results:
Gender fluidity in children is often triggered by experiences and childhood, wherein the child knows in their hearts that they do not follow the norm. When a child is exposed to the knowledge that homosexuality exists, researchers say that there is a high chance they will question their sex.
A study, however, proved otherwise, stating that children who had same-sex parents usually strongly identified with their biological sex. Of course, there exists a separate group of gender questioning children, but this has almost nothing to do with same-sex parenting but personal choice.
The data shows that same-sex parents can provide for these rights at least as well as heterosexual parents.
We understand that it is perfectly alright to have talks about opinions regarding same-sex marriages. But, we also must understand that whatever information we access is not misleading. Suggesting that harm is caused by same-sex parenting is not acceptable and can be detrimental.
