According to the 2010 census data, there were 594,000 same-sex couple households in the United States- about 1% of all households. Of those couples, 115,000 reported having children. That’s only 0.02% of households in the US where same-sex couples are raising children. Finding a population that small at random is not only cumbersome but also takes considerable time which was in short supply in the run-up to redefine marriage.
Simply finding 20 children with same-sex parents using random methods would mean beginning with a huge pool of participants. Here’s a look at one study that did it- the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health.
It analyzed data based on one of the most exhaustive, and expensive, ongoing government survey research efforts to date. In the “fourth wave” of evaluating the same students over a period of two decades, 20 children with same-sex parents were identified- out of over 12,000. Here’s what they found.
The outcome reveals that “no difference” actually meant “huge difference”. Here are the official results which include one of the most surprising findings- that children who have married same-sex parents fare worse than those with unmarried same-sex parents.
The adolescents with same-sex parents experience significantly lower autonomy and higher anxiety, but also better school performance, than do adolescents with opposite-sex parents.
Comparing unmarried to (self-described) married same-sex parents, above-average child depressive symptoms rises from 50% to 88%; daily fearfulness or crying rises from 5% to 32%; grade point average declines from 3.6 to 3.4; and child sex abuse by parent rises from zero to 38%.
The longer a child has been with same-sex parents, the greater the harm.
The largest study to date – the National Health Interview Study which began with 1.6 million cases and yielded 512 same-sex parent families – destroys any fantasy that children with same-sex parents fare “no different” than children raised in the home of their married mother and father…
Dr. Sullins, who analyzed the data of both studies above concludes:
The higher risk of emotional problems for children in same-sex parent families has little or nothing to do with the quality of parenting, care, or other relational characteristics of those families.
If the greatest benefits for child well-being are conferred only on the biological offspring of both parents; and since same-sex relationships cannot, at least at present, conceive a child that is the biological offspring of both partners, in the way that every child conceived by opposite-sex partners is such; then same-sex partners, no matter how loving and committed, can never replicate the level of benefit for child well-being that is possible for opposite-sex partners.
This defect, moreover, is an essential and permanent feature of same-sex relationships; it is part of their definition, an irreducible difference that cannot be amended or abrogated by improving the circumstances, stability, legal status or social acceptance of same-sex couples.
The primary benefit of marriage for children may not be that it tends to present them with improved parents (more stable, financially affluent, etc., although it does do this), but that it presents them with their own parents.
This is the case for 98% of children in nuclear families—which most successfully fulfill the formal civil premise of marriage, that is, lifelong and exclusive partner commitment—compared to less than half of children in any other family category, and no children in same-sex families.
