Adoptive parents invest more time and financial resources in their children than biological parents, according to a new national study challenging arguments that have been used to oppose same-sex marriage and gay adoption.

The study, published in the new issue of the American Sociological Review, found that couples who adopt spend more money on their children and invest more time on such activities as reading to them, eating together and talking with them about their problems.

“One of the reasons adoptive parents invest more is that they really want children, and they go to extraordinary means to have them,” Indiana University sociologist Brian Powell, one of the study’s three co-authors, said in a telephone interview Monday.

“Adoptive parents face a culture where, to many other people, adoption is not real parenthood,” Powell said. “What they’re trying to do is compensate. … They recognize the barriers they face, and it sets the stage for them to be better parents.”

Powell and his colleagues examined data from 13,000 households with first-graders in the family. The data was part of a detailed survey called the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education and other agencies.

The researchers said 161 families in the survey were headed by two adoptive parents, and they rated better overall than families with biological parents on an array of criteria - including helping with homework, parental involvement in school, exposure to cultural activities and family attendance at religious services. The only category in which adoptive parents fared worse was the frequency of talking with parents of other children.

The researchers noted that adoptive couples, in general, were older and wealthier than biological parents, but said the adoptive parents still had an advantage - albeit smaller - when the data was reanalyzed to account for income inequality.

In particular, the researchers said, adoptive parents had a pronounced edge over single-parent and stepparent families.

The researchers said their findings call into question the long-standing argument that children are best off with their biological parents. Such arguments were included in state Supreme Court rulings last year in New York and Washington that upheld laws against same-sex marriage.

The researchers said gay and lesbian parents may react to discrimination by taking extra, compensatory steps to promote their children’s welfare.

“Ironically, the same social context that creates struggles for these alternative families may also set the stage for them to excel in some measures of parenting,” the study concluded.

An opponent of same-sex marriage, Peter Sprigg of the conservative Family Research Counsel, noted that the study focused on male/female adoptive couples, not on same-sex couples, and he questioned whether it shed any new light on adoptive parenting by gays.

Sprigg, the research council’s vice president for policy, said he warmly supports adoption, but believes it is best undertaken by married, heterosexual couples.

Adam Pertman, executive director of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, welcomed the study’s findings, but cautioned against possibly exaggerated interpretations of it.

“It’s an affirmation that there are all sorts of families that are good for kids,” he said. “Adoptive parents aren’t less good or better. They just bring different benefits to the table. In terms of how families are formed, it should be a level playing field.”

The study was funded by the National Science Foundation, the Spencer Foundation and the American Educational Research Association.

Hmmm, the study says that one of the reason adoptive parents are so great is because “they really want children, and they go to extraordinary means to have them.” Can you think of another group of people who - even when they give birth or build their families through surrogacy - “really want children, and…go to extraordinary means to have them?” Survey says…LGBT parents.

I wrote earlier about one researcher whose findings were so distorted by James Dobson of Focus on the Family that she asked him to stop lying about her work!

Saletan looked at the studies to see if he would have better luck finding truly negative outcomes for the children of LGBT parents. Here’s what he turned up:

The 30-year search for proof that gay parents are destructive looks a lot like the hunt for WMD. The American Psychological Association has compiled abstracts of 67 studies. Some are plainly biased, and only the latest two or three have avoided the methodological flaws of earlier investigations. But after 67 tries, you’d expect the harm of gay parenting to show up somewhere. Yet in study after study, on measure after measure, kids turn out the same.

One study found that straight parents “made a greater effort to provide an opposite-sex role model for their children,” but it doesn’t say whether this affected the kids. Another says children raised by lesbian couples “were more likely to explore same-sex relationships,” but it doesn’t say they turned out gay. Other studies say they seldom do.

That’s it. That’s the evidence against gay parenthood. On the other hand, three studies say lesbians share child care more equally than straight couples do. Others conclude that lesbians are more satisfied with their relationships, that they show more “parenting awareness skills,” that nonbiological lesbian moms “played a more active role in daily caretaking than did most fathers,” and that their kids are less domineering and experience “greater warmth and interaction with their mother.”

Such unwelcome findings haven’t chastened the antigay lobby any more than they’ve chastened the Bush administration. If the direct evidence doesn’t bear you out, look for indirect evidence. So conservatives have developed a subtler argument: On average, children do best when raised by their two married, biological parents.

Let’s take this argument a piece at a time. It’s true that two parents are better than one. It’s also true that married parents are better than unmarried ones. But those aren’t arguments against gay parenthood. They’re arguments for gay marriage.

You can read Saletan’s clever and correct article here.

But beyond the disappointment of the ruling itself, I was surprised by the ugliness and poor reasoning of the decision - especially for our families. In writing his decision, Judge Robert S. Smith - a name that will live in infamy - pointlessly included tired - and demonstrably untrue - stereotypes that equal marriage rights will somehow hurt children. This is from Arthur Leonard in the Gay City News.

Smith embraces the peculiar reasoning of the federal court of appeals from the 11th Circuit in its recent decision upholding Florida’s ban on gay people adopting children, the unprovable but conventional assumption that children benefit more from being raised by opposite-sex married couples than by same-sex couples. Setting aside as essentially irrelevant the numerous studies showing that children raised by both kinds of couples turn out about the same, Smith insists that the absence of substantial long-term studies undermines their usefulness, and that the Legislature is free to go on imagining—applying, in his words, “the common-sense premise”—that it is protecting children by forbidding same-sex couples from marrying.

In other words, to Smith the word “rational,” when used to evaluate legislative action, includes acting out of habit or custom, even in the face of contrary evidence. A true conservative, he believes it is rational to blindly preserve existing social arrangements even when they have the effect of discriminating against a segment of society.

As Judge Kaye points out in her dissent, Smith never addresses the significant disadvantages visited upon the numerous children being raised by same-sex couples as a result of the state’s refusal to allow their parents to marry.

Joe Solmonese, President of the Human Rights Campaign (and our sponsor!), had this to say about the court’s decision as it impacts our famlies:

“The court’s archaic reasoning is rooted in ignorance and completely contradicted by the facts of today. The court threw the expert advice of child welfare professionals and years of scientific evidence out the window with its ruling against fairness.”

HRC’s press release went on to give this excellent summation of the body of evidence which refutes attacks on our parenting: 

Bolstered by all major research studies, the prevailing professional opinion is that a parent’s sexual orientation has nothing to do with his or her ability to be a good parent. The nation’s leading child welfare, psychological and children’s health organizations also have issued policy or position statements in this regard, including:

American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (1999)
American Academy of Family Physicians (2002)
American Academy of Pediatrics (2006)
American Bar Association (1995, 1999 and 2003)
American Medical Association (2004)
American Psychiatric Association (1997 and 2002)
American Psychoanalytic Association (2002)
American Psychological Association (1976 and 2004)
Child Welfare League of America (1988)
National Adoption Center (1998)
National Association of Social Workers (2002)
North American Council on Adoptable Children (1998)
The American Academy of Pediatrics journal published a report this month finding that children of same-sex couples would benefit from marriage fairness for their parents. Read more on the opinion of leading professional organizations.

The NY court ruling is a huge disappointment, but our community will find a way to move forward. If only for the sake of our children, equality will prevail. But we must work to achieve our freedom. What have you done today to make the world a better place for our families?

Children adopted by gays and lesbians fare no better or worse than those raised by heterosexual adults, and barriers preventing gay parents from adopting should be removed, said a report released Friday by the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, entitled “Expanding Resources for Children.”

“Based on both the available research and growing experience,” the report concludes, “adoption by gays and lesbians holds promise as an avenue for achieving permanency for many of the waiting children in foster care.”

The report is part of an extensive yearlong project intended to provide a research-based context for the ongoing debate over adoption of children by gays and lesbians. Report findings include:

• Children reared by gay and lesbian parents fare comparably to those raised by heterosexuals on a range of measures of social and psychological adjustment. 
• Tens of thousands of children in the foster care system are disadvantaged by laws that bar gays and lesbians from adopting them. 
• Even in states that don’t bar gays and lesbians from adopting, individual agencies and workers sometimes discriminate against gay and lesbian applicants or don’t realize that gay parenting is permitted.

“The bottom line is that adoption by gays and lesbians is a fine thing to do,” Adam Pertman, executive director of the Adoption Institute, told the PlanetOut Network. “There is simply no credible research showing that children are harmed when they’re adopted by gay and lesbian parents, but lots of evidence to indicate that they do well in those homes.”

Less than half of the approximately 110,000 children available for adoption find homes every year, so it makes no sense to restrict the pool of eligible parents, according to Joe Kroll, executive director of North American Council on Adoptable Children (NACAC) in St. Paul, Minn. On its Web site NACAC states that all prospective foster and adoptive parents, regardless of sexual orientation, should be given equal and fair consideration. NACAC also opposes rules and legislation restricting the consideration of parents based on their sexual orientation.

Teenagers raised by two moms develop as well as teens raised by opposite-sex parents, according to a groundbreaking new study published in the journal Child Development.

Researchers drew from a large U.S. sample of 12- to 18-year-olds, looking at measures of psychosocial well-being, romantic relationships and behavior in school. There were no significant differences between the two groups of teens in terms of depression, anxiety, sexual activity, self-esteem and school grades.

The study found that, as common sense would have it, “what is most important in a teen’s development is the quality of relationship with his or her parents, regardless of their gender.”

Message to homophobes: Duh, dummies.

Well, here’s what some of my fellow nutty left-wingers are saying. This is from Ellen C. Perrin, MD, professor of pediatrics at what I am sure is the wildly radical Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston. She revealed the findings at the American Academy of Pediatrics Conference and Exhibition - a fringe group if ever there was one! Everyone know that pediatricians hate kids!

“The vast consensus of all the studies shows that children of same-sex parents do as well as children whose parents are heterosexual in every way. In some ways children of same-sex parents actually may have advantages over other family structures.”

Holy cow! Listen to the findings of these strange things scientists call “evidence-based studies.”

Researchers looked at information gleaned from 15 studies on more than 500 children, evaluating possible stigma, teasing and social isolation, adjustment and self-esteem, opposite gender role models, sexual orientation, and strengths.

Studies from 1981 to 1994, including 260 children reared by either heterosexual mothers or same-sex mothers after divorce, found no differences in intelligence, type or prevalence of psychiatric disorders, self-esteem, well-being, peer relationships, couple relationships, or parental stress.

“Some studies showed that single heterosexual parents’ children have more difficulties than children who have parents of the same sex,” Perrin says. “They did better in discipline, self-esteem, and had less psychosocial difficulties at home and at school.”

Another study of 37 children of 27 divorced lesbian mothers and a similar number of children of heterosexual mothers found no differences in behavior, adjustment, gender identity, and peer relationships.

Two other large studies involving more than 100 couples found that same-sex parents also had contact with extended family, had social support, and had a more equitable division of labor in the home.

“Lesbian couples share household responsibilities and chores more equitably,” Perrin says. “And, the children of lesbian couples are less aggressive, more nurturing to peers, more tolerant of diversity, and more inclined to play with both boy’s and girl’s toys.

How dare these “researchers” use “empirical truth” to prove that LGBT parents are, at least, equal to their straight counterparts? I guess they’re as nuts as I am!

You can read the whole story at Web MD.

Stable marriage can increase the financial prosperity of couples and improves the lives of American children, including those being raised by same-sex couples, according to a report released on Tuesday.

The report by the Brookings Institution and Princeton University showed that while the poor see lack of money as a barrier to marriage, even when they have children out of wedlock, healthy marriage actually ensures them healthier finances in the long run.

“First, marriage may increase children’s material well-being through such benefits as family leave from work and spousal health insurance eligibility,” the report said. “Second, same-sex marriage may benefit children by increasing the durability and stability of their parents’ relationship.”

Of course, we gay parents have known all along that an end to discrimination could only help our children. But its nice to have that fact verified by two such prestigious organizations.