“Mya and Her Moms” is a 10-week video series from CafeMom Studios featuring Florida lesbian moms Lisa and Laura and their eight-year-old daughter Mya. The videos give us a charming look at a lovely family—and the positive depiction of an LGBT family on a mainstream parenting site always has tremendous value. The way the site is positioning the videos, however, is a bit problematic.
A right-wing author has published a paper that claims children of lesbian and gay parents face many negative outcomes—but several leading LGBT organizations are calling his work “flawed, misleading, and scientifically unsound.”
“Half of Teens with Lesbian Mothers Face Stigmatization, Most Often During School,” read the title of a press release from UCLA’s Williams Institute March 8. Yikes. That’s important news, given the need to raise public awareness of harassment and bullying in schools—but it’s also a scary message for lesbian moms. It’s almost enough to make prospective parents return their turkey basters.
Note the subtitle, however: “Nearly two-thirds have effective coping skills.” Yes, our children may face stigmatization and bullying, but that doesn’t mean we should view them as helpless in the face of it.
A shortish roundup this week, but all kinds of good reads:
Same-sex parents who have biological or stepchildren tend to be economically disadvantaged compared to their opposite-sex counterparts, whereas same-sex parents who have adopted tend to be economically advantaged, says demographer Gary Gates of UCLA’s Williams Institute. Despite the common media view of same-sex parents as relatively wealthy (see Modern Family, The L Word, The Kids Are All Right, etc.), Gates says, “a complete picture of LGBT parents in the U.S. would show a community with substantial socioeconomic and racial/ethnic diversity.”
The percentage of same-sex couples with children has fallen slightly since 2006—a drop that may in fact reflect a decline in social stigma, according to a new study. At the same time, the total number of same-sex couples raising children has risen, and the percentage of same-sex couples who have adopted children has nearly doubled in the past decade.
New results from the U.S. National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study (NLLFS), the longest-running and largest study of American lesbian families, show that the quality of life—a measure of positive psychological adjustment—of 17-year-olds raised by lesbian moms did not differ from those who grew up with heterosexual parents. The study took 78 17-year-olds from the NLLFS—all of whom have lesbian
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
Family Creation The American Society for Reproductive Medicine’s Sexuality, Reproduction & Menopause (SRM) e-journal has an article explaining, “What are the reproductive options when a same-sex couple wants a family?“ Law The New York Law Journal tells us, “Creative Parenting Agreements Still Needed With Same-Sex Marriage,” reminding us why second-parent adoptions are still needed even
Keeping it short this week, since I need to go figure out how to build an emergency shelter out of Legos before the storm hits. Hope all of you are staying safe, too. The White House and the Department of Homeland Security confirmed that same-sex spouses and partners will be considered in case-by-case reviews of
Data from Census 2010 is slowly rolling in, state by state, and so far, it looks like about one quarter of same-sex couples are raising children, in states as diverse as Alabama, California, Hawaii, and Wyoming. The diligent demographers at the Williams Institute of UCLA are doing the analysis; they have yet to release breakdowns
