Weekend Reading on Kids Raised by Gay Parents

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette ran a story today asking What Happens to Kids Raised by Gay Parents? It’s notable for profiling one child who is straight and one who is gay. This is a rare look at “second-generation” LGBT individuals and a needed recognition that while LGBT parents won’t necessarily have LGBT children, statistically, some of them will, and we shouldn’t ignore them. The article is generally positive, and asserts “most studies have found that outcomes for children of gay and lesbian parents are no better—and no worse—than for other children,” though it does offer the other side’s opinion.

More interestingly, it also cites Gary Gates, a senior research fellow at the Williams Institute on Sexual Orientation Law and Public Policy at UCLA, who points out that most studies in support of children in LGBT families have focused on white couples of relatively high income, and on “intentional” same-sex parent households, where both partners decided to have children together. (See Abigail Garner for more on the oversampling of children from LGBT families.) In contrast, Gates says most same-sex couples with children have household incomes below that of opposite-sex married parents, a significant number of their families are created when the parents have children from an earlier opposite-sex marriage or relationship, and about 45 percent of same-sex parents are black or Latino.

Even though I don’t believe expanded studies will change the basic premise that LGBT parents are just as capable of raising well-adjusted children as any others, I do think they will provide needed insight into the diversity of experiences and needs across the entire LGBT community (including, I hope, the sometimes-forgotten bi and trans components). With luck, we’ll be able to read some soon.

(Thanks to PageOneQ for the link.)