Study: Gay Parenting Does a Kid Good

Children raised by gay couples show good progress through school x390 (STANFORD) | ADVOCATE.COM

Stanford University recently conducted a study showing little difference in educational achievement between children raised by gay couples and those raised by married heterosexual couples.

The study, published in Demography magazine, utilized the U.S. Census for their findings. The results indicated that 7% of children raised by heterosexual married couples were held back a year, while about 9.5% of children living with same-sex partners repeated a grade.

Children of gay and married couples had lower grade-repetition rates than their peers raised by opposite-sex unmarried couples and single parents, according to the story.

Click here to read the full story.

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Reader Comments

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Name: Larry
Date posted: 9/1/2010 12:22:12 PM
Hometown: Newton, MA

Comment:
Although I understand why people are doing studies like this, it really irks me. Plenty of crappy straight parents out there and last time I checked, no one has to get a parent license!
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Name: RonK
Date posted: 9/1/2010 8:31:17 AM
Hometown: Clifton, NJ

Comment:
Correction: And bisexuals and transgendered are never counted using the CB criteria.
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Name: RonK
Date posted: 9/1/2010 12:47:34 AM
Hometown: Clifton, NJ

Comment:
@Bill: When you consider the criteria that the Census Bureau uses to determine gay/lesbian households, then, Yes!, the two populations are of equal, statistical value. I say this because since 1990, the Census Bureau has included an "unmarried partner" category to describe an unrelated household member's relationship to the householder. If the householder designates another adult of the same sex as his or her unmarried partner, the household counts as a same-sex unmarried partner household. Added to the "unmarried partner" number are those who select "married" and are of the same sex. Right or wrongly then, and through no fault of the Census Bureau, the data can only be as good as WE allow it to be – hence, why the number is so low. ‘Gay/lesbian households with children’ is a subset thereof. And bisexuals and transsexuals are never counted using the CB criteria.
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Name: Bill
Date posted: 8/31/2010 7:22:47 PM
Hometown: Arlington

Comment:
@ RonK - Thanks for the awesome research! This is my question. Are the two populations of equal, statistical value? The straight population is just a regular report of information. The gay population is a subset that went the extra step of sharing personal information. Do you think that would impact the outcome?
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Name: RonK
Date posted: 8/31/2010 6:15:03 PM
Hometown: Clifton, NJ

Comment:
@Bill: Since I don't believe half of the purported 'real' news reported on this site, I went looking for more information about Demography magazine and found the census statistics in an FRC article here: http://www.frc.org/get.cfm?i=IS04C02. Yes! I realize it’s the FRC which under any other circumstances I would be loath to quote, but the more I looked after I posted, the more questionable the FRC number became in other published studies for exactly the reason you state, with some higher and some lower – but not significantly. GLAD [http://www.glad.org/uploads/docs/publications/me-2000-census.pdf] reports, ‘Of the 594,391 same-sex couples counted in the 2000 census, 34.3% of female partner households and 22.3% of male partner households reported at least one child under the age of 18 living with them’. Even this 268,320 difference with the FRC number seems unreasonably low because there was no coordinated effort to compile GLBT households even in 2010.
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Name: Bill
Date posted: 8/31/2010 4:23:01 PM
Hometown: Arlington

Comment:
@ RonK - How were gays identified in 2000 since it was not an asked question? Also, I would be highly suspect of those who self-identified as gay given stigmatization. Those that so identify (in 2000) would be a very select subset that cannot be randomized. What'd you think?
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Name: RonK
Date posted: 8/31/2010 3:47:27 PM
Hometown: Clifton, NJ

Comment:
1) I think the correct name is 'The Demography Journal'; 2) Did you know that the 2000 Census found only 326,071 homosexuals/lesbians living in households with children? Um! 3) If the primary data source is the census, what was the secondary source? School records? Makes you wonder how the resulting data was compiled since the census bureau guarantees that NAMES are not available for use in statistical analyses!
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Name: Bill
Date posted: 8/31/2010 3:20:33 PM
Hometown: Arlington

Comment:
@ Dan - you made an excellent point regarding older kids. As I stated, I have a number of questions regarding the study. My questions don't mean that the study wasn't valid, just they are open for me at this time.
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Name: Dan
Date posted: 8/31/2010 10:28:59 AM
Hometown: Boston

Comment:
We must take into consideration that many gay parent's adopt older children who have been in the system and therefore may not have had the educational advantages of other children. I wonder if the study took that into consideration.
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Name: Bill
Date posted: 8/31/2010 10:26:07 AM
Hometown: Arlington

Comment:
@ BT - I agree. I have a number of questions about the data sets. The straight data came from the 2000 Census, but where did the same-sex data come from? It appears that the dependent variable was child success. Does that mean that the independent variables were parents income and education? As you mention, the N is not clarified. I hate articles based on unspecified research. Does anyone have links to the actual data study?

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