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Latest Surrogacy News
Same-sex parenting: Does a mom & dad make a difference?
January 16, 2004 By Michael Foust
BP News
EDITORS' NOTE: This is the seventh story in a series
examining the national debate over same-sex "marriage."
The series appears in Baptist Press each Friday
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (BP)--Some say Bernie Cummings and
Ernie Johnston of Oregon are just like any other couple.
One of the men works, the other stays at home to care
for their three children, all born through surrogacy.
"[I]f I were working, I'd miss that moment when Caelan
[their daughter] was just getting up from her nap,
grabbing and holding on to me," Cummings told The New
York Times.
Cummings sounds like any stay-at-home mom, but he isn't.
He and his partner are among the approximately 156,000
homosexual households in America with children.
According to U.S. Census data gathered by The Times,
there are some 60,000 male couples, 96,000 female
couples.
The issue of same-sex parenting is controversial enough.
Mix in the issue of same-sex "marriage" and the debate
intensifies.
In fact, the Massachusetts high court based part of its
recent pro-same-sex "marriage" decision on the
well-being of children, arguing that children of married
parents are better off both financially and socially.
Such rulings raise a host of questions: Is there a
difference between a traditional family and a same-sex
household? Does it make a difference if a child has a
mom and a dad? Or, is the child just as well off with
two dads, or two moms?
The New York Times profiled "stay-at-home" dads within
same-sex partnerships in its Jan. 12 edition -- with the
implication that such couples are just as traditional as
a family with a stay-at-home mom.
The picture on the front page showcased one of the
families: A man in his 40s, Tom Howard, is seen holding
a tissue, wiping the nose of one his daughters. Just to
his left, his other daughter is sitting on the couch,
playing with a doll. The headline reads: "Two Fathers,
With One Happy to Stay at Home."
"People look at that and they kind of intuitively know
that what's wrong with that picture is that little boy
or that little girl doesn't have a mamma," Focus on the
Family's Glenn Stanton, a sociologist, told Baptist
Press. "... We know that kids need [mothers]."
Although laws vary nationally, only three states --
Florida, Mississippi and Utah -- explicitly ban same-sex
couples from adopting, according to the Human Rights
Campaign, a homosexual activist group. HRC lists 22
states that are open to same-sex adoption and says the
other 25 states are somewhere in the middle.
But traditionalists point to a body of research showing
that children with biological parents are better off
than children in other circumstances. For instance,
children with biological parents are less likely to drop
out of school, more likely to have good grades, less
likely to commit crime and less likely to be sexually
active, research shows.
Traditionalists say that same-sex parenting, meanwhile,
and thus the legalization of same-sex "marriage," will
harm society in ways that statistics cannot necessarily
measure. One example: They say that traditional marriage
gives children a model for how men and women are to
interact.
Ray Hammond, pastor of Boston's Bethel AME Church, told
a Senate subcommittee last year that marriage is the way
in which the "great divide in the human race -- the
gender divide -- is reconciled."
"[M]others and fathers build their own healthy
relationships and model those relationships before the
next generation," he said.
Additionally, Hammond said, marriage makes fatherhood
"more than a biological event" by "connecting men to the
children they bring into the world."
Speaking at that same Senate hearing, columnist Maggie
Gallagher, coauthor of the book, "The Case for
Marriage," said that by legalizing same-sex "marriage"
America would be "making a powerful statement" that
"children do not need mothers and fathers."
R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of Southern Baptist
Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., argued recently
in a debate that the presence of a mother and father are
critical for a child's growth.
"Both boys and girls define themselves and establish
their own identity and expectations based upon their
observation of both father and mother, husband and wife
-- male and female," he said.
Studies of same-sex parenting seem to support
traditionalists, showing that children of same-sex
parents are more prone to consider homosexual behavior.
Two University of Southern California professors,
Timothy Biblarz and Judith Stacey, published a study in
2001 on same-sex parenting in American Sociological
Review. Although favorable to same-sex parenting, they
concluded that children of same-sex couples are more
likely to experiment with homosexuality.
Biblarz and Stacey quoted a study that found that 64
percent of young adults raised by homosexual women had
considered same-sex relationships. By contrast, only 17
percent of young adults raised by heterosexual mothers
had considered such a relationship.
"The evidence, while scanty and under-analyzed, hints
that parental sexual orientation is positively
associated with the possibility that children will be
more likely to attain a similar orientation -- and
theory and common sense support such a view," they
wrote.
The American Academy of Pediatrics made a similar
conclusion in a 2002 report.
"[M]en and women who had lesbian mothers were slightly
more likely to consider the possibility of having a
same-sex partner, and more of them had been involved in
at least a brief relationship with someone of the same
sex," the AAP paper read.
Such research leaves conservatives asking: If
homosexuality is genetic -- as homosexuals argue -- then
why is there a difference between the children of
traditional and homosexual parents?
Focus on the Family's Stanton said mainstream
anthropology research shows that all cultures support
the need of a mother and father.
"A little girl who grows up seeing her daddy love and
care for and deal peaceably and respectively with his
wife is going to be a little girl who is going to grow
up and not tolerate abuse or being used by another man,"
he said.
Likewise, Stanton said, a boy who sees his mother
treated respectfully "is a little boy who is going to
grow up and treat women that way as well. It's what they
know."
The aforementioned report by the American Academy of
Pediatrics made headlines two years ago when it
concluded that no difference exists "between gay and
non-gay parents in emotional health, parenting skills
and attitudes toward parenting."
But the report acknowledged that it was based on a
"small and non-representative" sample and noted that
most children of same-sex parents come from broken homes
-- such as from a family where a man divorces his wife
in order to live with his male partner.
"These families closely resemble stepfamilies formed
after heterosexual couples divorce, and many of their
parenting concerns and adjustments are similar," it
said.
Stanton, author of a book titled, "Why Marriage
Matters," said the parallel between same-sex parenting
and divorce is important.
Interestingly, the same year that the AAP published its
paper on same-sex parenting it published a paper on
divorce, saying that "for many children" divorce is a
"long, searing experience" and "is often characterized
by painful losses."
That is significant, Stanton said, because the benefits
of children being raised by biological parents, compared
to being raised by one parent or by step-parents, are
enormous.
"We find that when children grow up any time without
their biological mother or father, that they face
serious declines in a whole host of important well-being
measures," he said. "Kids who grow up with both
biological parents tend to do better in every important
measure of well-being."
Stanton has collected data on the Focus on the Family
website showing that when comparing children raised by
their biological parents to children raised by
step-parents, on average:
-- "[S]tepparents provide less warmth and communicate
less with their children than do biological parents."
-- Children in stepfamilies are more likely to have
greater "emotional, behavioral and academic problems."
-- Preschool children living with one biological parent
and one step-parent are "40 times more likely to become
a victim of abuse."
Same-sex parents are aware of the criticisms. When asked
by The New York Times if he desired to return to work,
Peter Vitale of Minnesota said, "If I were honest, I'd
say that I want to do an excellent job at this because I
know the world has me under a microscope."
Stanton said he occasionally engages in debates over the
issue of same-sex parenting and is asked a trick
question: Would a child be better off raised by a loving
homosexual couple than raised by abusive heterosexual
parents?
The answer, Stanton said, is not yes or no, but neither.
"The point is that there is no gay activist who is
saying, 'Just give us the kids who are in abusive homes,
or just give us the kids that nobody else wants,'" he
said.
Gallagher told the Senate subcommittee that society must
stand firm on the belief that children need mothers and
fathers.
"If two mothers are just the same as a mother and a
father, then a woman and her mother are just the same as
a mother and father," she said.
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