A new academic
study based on the Canadian census suggests that a married mom and dad matter
for children. Children of same-sex coupled households do not fare as well.
There is a new and
significant piece of evidence in the social science debate about gay parenting
and the unique contributions that mothers and fathers make to their children's
flourishing. A study published last week in the journal Review of the Economics of the Household--analyzing
data from a very large, population-based sample--reveals that the children of
gay and lesbian couples are only about 65 percent as likely to have graduated
from high school as the children of married, opposite-sex couples. And gender
matters, too: girls are more apt to struggle than boys, with daughters of gay parents
displaying dramatically low graduation rates.
Unlike US-based
studies, this one evaluates a 20 percent sample of the Canadian census, where
same-sex couples have had access to all taxation and government benefits since
1997 and to marriage since 2005.
While in the US Census
same-sex households have to be guessed at based on the gender and number of
self-reported heads-of-household, young adults in the Canadian census were
asked, "Are you the child of a male or female same-sex married or common
law couple?" While study author and economist Douglas Allen noted that
very many children in Canada who live with a gay or lesbian parent are actually
living with a single mother--a finding consonant with that detected in the
2012 New Family Structures Study--he
was able to isolate and analyze hundreds of children living with a gay or
lesbian couple (either married or in a "common
law" relationship akin to cohabitation).
So the study is able
to compare--side by side--the young-adult children of same-sex couples and
opposite-sex couples, as well as children growing up in single-parent homes and
other types of households. Three key findings stood out to Allen:
children of married
opposite-sex families have a high graduation rate compared to the others;
children of lesbian families have a very low graduation rate compared to the
others; and the other four types [common law, gay, single mother, single
father] are similar to each other and lie in between the married/lesbian
extremes.
Employing regression
models and series of control variables, Allen concludes that the substandard
performance cannot be attributed to lower
school attendance or the more modest education of gay or lesbian parents.
Indeed, same-sex parents were characterized by higher levels of education, and
their children were more likely to be enrolled in school than even those of
married, opposite-sex couples. And yet their children are notably more likely
to lag in finishing their own schooling.
The same is true of
the young-adult children of common law parents, as well as single mothers and
single fathers, highlighting how little--when you lean on large, high-quality
samples--the data have actually changed over the past few decades. The intact,
married mother-and-father household remains the gold standard for children's
progress through school. What is surprising in the Canadian data is the
revelation that lesbian couples' children fared worse, on average, than even
those of single parents.
The truly unique
aspect of Allen's study, however, may be its ability to distinguish
gender-specific effects of same-sex households on children. He writes:
the particular gender
mix of a same-sex household has a dramatic difference in the association with
child graduation. Consider the case of girls. . . . Regardless of the controls
and whether or not girls are currently living in a gay or lesbian household,
the odds of graduating from high school are considerably lower than any other
household type. Indeed, girls living in gay households are only 15 percent as
likely to graduate compared to girls from opposite sex married homes.
Thus although the
children of same-sex couples fare worse overall, the disparity is unequally
shared, but is instead based on the combination of the gender of child and
gender of parents. Boys fare better--that is, they're more likely to have
finished high school--in gay households than in lesbian households. For girls,
the opposite is true. Thus the study undermines not only claims about "no
differences" but also assertions that moms and dads are
interchangeable. They're not.
Every study has its
limitations, and this one does too. It is unable to track the household history
of children. Nor is it able to establish the circumstances of the birth of the
children whose education is evaluated--that is, were they the product of a
heterosexual union, adopted, or born via surrogate or assisted reproductive
technology? Finally, the census did not distinguish between married and common
law gay and lesbian couples. But couples they are.
Indeed, its
limitations are modest in comparison to its remarkable and unique strengths--a
rigorous and thorough analysis of a massive, nationally-representative dataset
from a country whose government has long affirmed same-sex couples and
parenting. It is as close to an ideal test as we've seen yet.
The study's
publication continues the emergence of new, population-based research in this
domain, much of which has undermined scholarly and popular claims about
equivalence between same-sex and opposite-sex households echoed by activists
and reflected in recent legal proceedings about same-sex marriage.
Might the American
Psychological Association and American Sociological Association have been too
confident and quick to declare "no differences" in such a new arena
of study, one marked by the consistent reliance upon small or nonrandom
"convenience" samples? Perhaps. Maybe a married mom and dad do matter,
after all.
Mark
Regnerus is an associate professor of sociology at the University of Texas at
Austin and senior fellow at the Austin Institute for the Study of Family and
Culture.
This article originally
appeared in Public Discourse,
the online journal of the Witherspoon Institute of Princeton, NJ, it is
reprinted with permission.
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