Are your moms gay? Well, that’s okay.
By: Lara on February 27, 2008
Under: parenting
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So it’s an election year, and while there’s way too much going on in Iraq to focus on the usual hotbed issues like gay marriage, your friendly local developmental psychologist is still busily working to debunk the myths surrounding those issues.
The latest issue of Developmental Psychology has a special section devoted to sexual orientation. Two of the articles specifically focus on adjustment issues related to having same-sex parents. Here are the Cliff’s Notes:
1. Peer relationships—things like number of friends, general level of peer acceptance, and social connectedness—are no different for adolescents parented by lesbian parents compared to those parented by straight couples.
2. Adolescents parented by lesbian couples were no more likely to report being victimized by peers than were adolescents parented by heterosexuals, and they did not have more problems with psychological functioning (like depression).
And this is the tip of the iceberg; there are a lot more studies like these out there. It’s not the gender of the parents that matter. It’s the quality of the parenting, of the parent-child relationship. Something to chew on.
Sources:
1. Wainwright, J. L., & Patterson, C. J. (2008). Peer relations among adolescents with female same-sex parents. Developmental Psychology, 44, 117-126.
2. Rivers, I., Poteat, V. Paul, & Noret, N. (2008). Victimization, social support, and psychosocial functioning among children of same-sex and opposite-sex couples in the United Kingdom. Developmental Psychology, 44, 127-134.
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