That is the question researchers explored in the first study
ever to track children raised by lesbian parents, from birth to
adolescence. Although previous studies have indicated that children
with same-sex parents show no significant differences compared with
children in heterosexual homes when it comes to social development
and adjustment, many of those investigations involved children who
were born to women in heterosexual marriages, who later divorced
and came out as lesbians.
For their new study, published on Monday in the journal
Pediatrics, researchers Nanette Gartrell, a professor of
psychiatry at the University of California at San Francisco (and a
law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles), and
Henry Bos, a behavioral scientist at the University of Amsterdam,
focused on what they call planned lesbian families — households in
which the mothers identified themselves as lesbian at the time of
artificial insemination.
Data on such families are sparse, but they are important for
establishing whether a child's environment in a home with same-sex
parents would be any more or less nurturing than one with a
heterosexual couple.
The authors found that children raised by lesbian mothers —
whether the mother was partnered or single — scored very similarly
to children raised by heterosexual parents on measures of
development and social behavior. These findings were expected, the
authors said; however, they were surprised to discover that
children in lesbian homes scored higher than kids in straight
families on some psychological measures of self-esteem and
confidence, did better academically and were less likely to have
behavioral problems, such as rule-breaking and aggression.
"We simply expected to find no difference in psychological
adjustment between adolescents reared in lesbian families and the
normative sample of age-matched controls," says Gartrell. "I was
surprised to find that on some measures we found higher levels of
[psychological] competency and lower levels of behavioral problems.
It wasn't something I anticipated."
In addition, children in same-sex-parent families whose mothers
ended up separating did as well as children in lesbian families in
which the moms stayed together.
The data that Gartrell and Bos analyzed came from the U.S.
National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study (NLLFS), begun in 1986.
The authors included 154 women in 84 families who underwent
artificial insemination to start a family; the parents agreed to
answer questions about their children's social skills, academic
performance and behavior at five follow-up times over the 17-year
study period. Children in the families were interviewed by
researchers at age 10 and were then asked at age 17 to complete an
online questionnaire, which included queries about the teens'
activities, social lives, feelings of anxiety or depression, and
behavior.
Not surprisingly, the researchers found that 41% of children
reported having endured some teasing, ostracism or discrimination
related to their being raised by same-sex parents. But Gartrell and
Bos could find no differences on psychological adjustment tests
between the children and those in a group of matched controls. At
age 10, children reporting discrimination did exhibit more signs of
psychological stress than their peers, but by age 17, the feelings
had dissipated. "Obviously there are some factors that may include
family support and changes in education about appreciation for
diversity that may be helping young people to come to a better
place despite these experiences," says Gartrell.
It's not clear exactly why children of lesbian mothers tend to
do better than those in heterosexual families on certain measures.
But after studying gay and lesbian families for 24 years, Gartrell
has some theories. "They are very involved in their children's
lives," she says of the lesbian parents. "And that is a great
recipe for healthy outcomes for children. Being present, having
good communication, being there in their schools, finding out what
is going on in their schools and various aspects of the children's
lives is very, very important."
Although active involvement isn't unique to lesbian households,
Gartrell notes that same-sex mothers tend to make that kind of
parenting more of a priority. Because their children are more
likely to experience discrimination and stigmatization as a result
of their family circumstances, these mothers can be more likely to
broach complicated topics, such as sexuality and diversity and
tolerance, with their children early on. Having such a foundation
may help to give these children more confidence and maturity in
dealing with social differences and prejudices as they get
older.
Because the research is ongoing, Gartrell hopes to test some of
these theories with additional studies. She is also hoping to
collect more data on gay-father households; gay fatherhood is less
common than lesbian motherhood because of the high costs of
surrogacy or adoption that gay couples face in order to start a
family.