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from Parenting & Family
NPR Guests Evaluate
Impact of Gay Parents On Children
May 27, 2004 - National Public Radio featured several guests on the
"Morning Edition," May 24, 2004, to discuss research on how gay parenting
affects children.
NPR reporter Joseph Shapiro interviewed Abigail Warner, Dr. Ellen Perrin, Steven
Nock, and Judith Stacey on the extent and nature of the research dealing with
gay parenting.
Abigail Garner is author of Families Like Mine and was reared in a gay
household. According to Garner, "We don't have the freedom to be as complex as
families that have heterosexual families."
Dr. Ellen Perrin is a pediatrician with the Floating Hospital for Children in
Boston. According to Perrin, she has reviewed the research on same-sex parenting
and said they all come to the same conclusion: "...those studies found no
differences in parent-child relationships, in self-esteem, in psychiatric or
emotional status or problem behaviors. The findings are quite monotonous. There
just were no differences."
But Steven Nock, a sociologist at the University of Virginia has reviewed the
same studies and believes each of them has a fatal flaw. According to Nock, "The
primary flaw is that their samples were self-recruited, that individuals
volunteered to participate in these studies as a result of seeing an ad or a
flier or being approached by a friend or contact, and whether or not people who
volunteer to participate in studies resemble the sort who do not is the
question."
Researcher Judith Stacey says the studies show that children brought up in gay
households will grow up "to be a bit more open and fluid in their approach to
gender behaviors and to sexuality generally."
According to Shapiro, Stacey's research also found that children from gay
households were more likely to question traditional gender roles; daughters of
lesbian mothers were more sexually active than daughters of straight parents;
and sons of lesbian mothers were less sexually active than boys reared in
straight households.
The audio of this interview is available here: NPR : Studies on Children of Gay
Couples Spark Controversy.
Updated: 8 February 2008
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