How many same-sex couples in the U.S. are raising children? According to the Williams Institute of UCLA, a new analysis of Census 2010 data shows that “nearly 132,000 (20%) of the nearly 650,000 same-sex couples in the U.S. identified as spouses. Data further show that 31% of couples who identified as spouses and 14% of unmarried partners are raising children.”
That means over 110,000 same-sex couples are raising kids.
Be careful, though: remember there are also single lesbian and gay parents, as well as (one assumes) couples who did not wish to identify themselves as such on the Census. Not to mention transgender and bisexual parents, who are invisible here, although some may have same-sex partners and thus (unbeknownst to us) be part of the above counts.
Still, this means that at a minimum, there are several hundred thousand of us lesbian and gay parents. We may not take over the world, but it’s increasingly likely we’ll pop up at a PTA meeting.
10 years into having a kid in public school, I still have yet to meet any other same-sex parents at any school event. But my wife did get “checked out” by a female teacher at back-to-school night; does that count? :-)
LOL!