October 17, 2010
Study: Gay Parents More Likely to Have Gay Kids
By Paul Kix
Walter Schumm knows what he’s about to do is unpopular: publish a study arguing that gay parents are more likely to raise gay children than straight parents. But the Kansas State University family studies professor has a detailed analysis that past almost aggressively ideological researchers never had. …
Lawyers for the state of Florida heard of Schumm’s fledgling research and invited him in 2008 to testify in a case. The state’s Department of Children and Families was attempting to uphold a ban on gay and lesbian parents adopting children. Schumm’s testimony actually ended up aiding the gay parents in the trial. He said: “Gay parents can be good foster parents,” and “The decision to permit homosexuals to adopt is best made by the judiciary on a case by case basis.” Schumm tells AOL News that he agreed to testify as one of the state’s witnesses only if his evidence was not “slanted” for or against gay rights.
But also in his testimony was an inkling of the robust research Schumm has just completed. His study on sexual orientation, out next month, says that gay and lesbian parents are far more likely to have children who become gay. “I’m trying to prove that it’s not 100 percent genetic,” Schumm tells AOL News. His study is a meta-analysis of existing work. First, Schumm extrapolated data from 10 books on gay parenting; Cameron, for what it’s worth, had only looked at three, and offered no statistical analysis in his paper. Schumm skewed his data so that only self-identified gay and lesbian children would be labeled as such. This is important because sometimes Schumm would come across a passage of children of gay parents who said they were “adamant about not declaring their sexual orientation at all.” These people would be labeled straight, even though the passage’s implication was that they were gay.
Schumm concluded that children of lesbian parents identified themselves as gay 31 percent of the time; children of gay men had gay children 19 percent of the time, and children of a lesbian mother and gay father had at least one gay child 25 percent of the time. Furthermore, when the study restricted the results so that they included only children in their 20s – presumably after they’d been able to work out any adolescent confusion or experimentation – 58 percent of the children of lesbians called themselves gay, and 33 percent of the children of gay men called themselves gay. (About 5 to 10 percent of the children of straight parents call themselves gay, Schumm says.)
Schumm next went macro, poring over an anthropological study of various cultures’ acceptance of homosexuality. He found that when communities welcome gays and lesbians, “89 percent feature higher rates of homosexual behavior.”
Finally, Schumm looked at the existing academic studies, the ones used to pillory Cameron’s work. In all there are 26 such studies. Schumm ran the numbers from them and concluded that, surprisingly, 20 percent of the kids of gay parents were gay themselves. When children only 17 or older were included in the analysis, 28 percent were gay.
Abbie Goldberg is a psychology professor at Clark University, and the author of “Lesbian and Gay Parents and Their Children: Research on the Family Life Cycle,” which this year won the Distinguished Book Award from the APA. She hasn’t read Schumm’s study, only seen the abstract. But she says, in general, that a meta-analysis of this nature relies on sample sizes that are often too small and may furthermore brim with participants whose perspective is firmly aligned with the LGBT community. In other words, they’re aware of these sorts of studies and seek them out. “The fundamental problem with this [type of meta-analysis] is such samples tend to be biased,” Goldberg tells AOL News.
Schumm says he guarded against that by seeking out so many different works. And across all his data – the 10 books he consulted, the anthropological study, the scientific articles – he noticed how lesbians begat more lesbians. In Schumm’s study, he quotes from the extant literature the stories of young women, describing how being gay was never frowned upon in their household, and so that “option” was available to them. That said, Schumm also finds evidence of gay mothers pushing their daughters, upset over a relationship with a man, to “try out women.” But couldn’t gay men also tell their sons this? Yes, but Schumm tells AOL News that most gay men have at some point been with a woman, so they understand why their sons might date them. Whereas the literature shows some lesbians “have a hatred of men that’s intense,” Schumm says.
Schumm says it shouldn’t have taken until 2010 to do the meta-analysis. Too often his colleagues impose “liberal or progressive political interpretations” on their studies, which inhibit further inquiry. “It’s kind of sad,” he tells AOL News.
As if expecting a political backlash himself, Schumm concludes his study with a quote from philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. “All truth passes through three stages: First it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.”
Schumm didn’t use any studies or science articles in his propaganda piece. He looked at 10 popular audience books on LGBT parenting and families, added up the number of gay and straight children referred to and now makes the preposterous claim that that is representative of LGBT families in general. In at least one of those books the author said she intentionally picked equal numbers of gay and heterosexual children to talk about and she had previously criticized Paul Cameron for using this to claim children of gays were more likely to have gay children, an absurd conclusion and a criticism Schumm was aware of before he wrote his article and yet he chose to perpetuate this lie anyway.
The children profiled in these books weren’t picked for to attempt any statistical representation of the children of LGBT parents, they were picked because they made for a compelling story and to do that the authors intentionally focused on gay children thus making the any “statistical analysis” of these families completely unscientific and unrepresentative.
For a more detailed analysis of the utterly flawed work of Schumm, see:
http://www.boxturtlebulletin.com/2010/10/17/27400#comments
The fact is that huge volumes of research has been done on the children of same sex parents and all of it shows these children do just as well, if not better than the children of heterosexual parents and they are no more likely to be gay either. Check out the research from the APA on gay and lesbian parenting here:
http://www.apa.org/pi/lgbt/resources/parenting.aspx
Here a few of the studies going back to the 80′s that show children of gay parents aren’t more likely to be gay then the children of heterosexual parents. Further research as is available at the APA demonstrates this through the 90′s and 2000′s and up until today.
Golombok, Spencer, & Rutter, Children in Lesbian and Single-Parent Households:
Psychosexual and Psychiatric Appraisal, 24, J. Child Psychology and Psychiatry
551, 568 (1983)
Green, The Best Interests of a Child with a Lesbian Mother, 10 Bull. Am. Acad.
Psychiatry and Law, 7, 13, (1982)
Green, Mandel, Hotveldt, Gray, & Smith, Lesbian Mothers and Their Children: A
Comparison with Solo Parent Heterosexual Mothers and Their Children, 15 Archives
Sexual Behav., 167, 181 (1986)
Kirkpatrick, Smith, and Roy, Lesbian Mothers and their Children: A Comparative
Survey, 51 Am. J. Orthopsychiatry 545, 551 (1981)
Bozett, Children of Gay Fathers, in Gay and Lesbian Parents, F. Bozett ed.
(1987)
You do lousy research, Priya.
Homosexual researchers already admit that studies show children raised by homosexuals are more likely to experiment with homosexual sex. Check out studies by Timothy Biblarz and Judith Stacey. They just redefine same-sex experimentation as not a negative in order to be able to make conclusions for public consumption that homosexual parenting does not produce negative outcomes, even though many parents would consider that a negative outcome. I did the research a few years ago; read the original documents; and saw the deceptive homosexualist spin.
That is a lie site editor. There is no research that shows children of gay parents are more likely to be gay themselves. In fact you are lying about the research of Biblarz and Stacey, they actually concluded, in their own words, “The bottom line is that the science shows that children raised by two same-gender parents do as well on average as children raised by two different-gender parents.”.
The American psychological Association is the leading authority on same sex parenting and the research they’ve done extensive and exhaustive. Readers can check for themselves by going to the link I posted and they’ll see that the overwhelming scientific concensus is that the sexual orientation of parents does not affect the sexual orientation of children.
The only people who dispute this are christianist cranks like Schumm who use the absurd tactic of counting the sex of people referred to in general audience books which were in no way randomly selected or representative of the group he claims to be studying. When you use a book that says it intentionally selected equal numbers of gay and heterosexual children its obvious that your goal is to deceive and the dishonesty of Schumm couldn’t be more transparent.
Priya, you’re funny… You should really relax and read slower. I told you that BS concluded that “children raised by two same-gender parents do as well on average as children raised by two different-gender parents” and I explained how they get away with saying that when their evidence doesn’t back up their conclusion. So where, pray tell, did I lie?
The most direct statement you make about my comments after saying that I lied was that there is no research showing children of homosexual parents are more likely to be homosexual themselves. You’re being cunning and deceptive. That might actually qualify you as a researcher on this subject. At any rate, I never said anything about whether children would be more likely to be homosexual themselves, I talked about whether they would be more likely to experiment with homosexual behaviour. And that’s exactly what BS concluded, so if I lied, then they lied too. You need to get a grip on reality before embarrassing yourself with such foolishness and hyperactive allegations that are patently false.
Site editor anti-gay people like you have constantly misrepresented, distorted, and outright lied about the real research on LGBTs and that’s what you’re continuing to do here. What Biblarz and Stacey found was that STATISTICALLY THE CHILDREN OF GAYS WERE NOT MORE LIKELY TO BE GAY THEN THE CHILDREN OF HETEOROSEXUALS. They said specifically the studies they examined “almost uniformly reports findings of NO NOTABLE DIFFERENCES between children reared by heterosexual parents and those reared by lesbian and gay parents…”. Their findings have been consistently backed up by serveral dozen to 100 or more studies that show the same thing.
You foolishly thought you could get away with lying about their study and a bit of simple checking shows there conclusions were exactly the opposite of what you tried to portray. You look like an idiot and rightfully so.
Priya, here’s more on the deceptive prohomosexual parenting material:
Lack of Random Sampling. Researchers use random sampling to ensure that the study participants are representative of the population being studied (for example, homosexuals or lesbians). Findings from unrepresentative samples have no legitimate generalization to the larger population.
· L. Lott-Whitehead and C. T. Tully admit the inherent weaknesses in their study of lesbian mothers:
This study was descriptive and, therefore, had inherent in its design methodological flaws consistent with other similar studies. Perhaps the most serious concerns representativeness. . . . Probability random sampling . . . was impossible. This study does not purport to contain a representative sample, and thus generalizability cannot be assumed.[18]
· N. L. Wyers acknowledges that he did not use random sampling procedures in his study of lesbian and gay spouses, rendering his study “vulnerable to all the problems associated with self-selected research participants.”[19]
· Golombok et al. write of their study:
A further objection to the findings lies in the nature of the samples studied. Both groups were volunteers obtained through gay and single-parent magazines and associations. Obviously these do not constitute random samples, and it is not possible to know what biases are involved in the method of sample selection.[20]
18. Laura Lott-Whitehead and Carol T. Tully, “The Family Lives of Lesbian Mothers,” Smith College Studies in Social Work 63 (1993): 265.
19. Wyers, “Homosexuality in the Family,” p. 144.
20. Golombok et al., “Children in Lesbian and Single-parent Households: Psychosexual and Psychiatric Appraisal,” Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 24 (1983): 569.
Priya, you keep lying even about others like Biblarz and Stacey and say I’m proved wrong without showing your evidence. Here’s the evidence of your deception (the second item is from Biblarz and Stacey). Why would you lie about the evidence of sexual identity confusion among homosexual parented children when even homosexual researchers are willing to be truthful about it? If you think the majority of Canadians support homosexual parenting why do have to lie about it?:
Sexual Identity Confusion
· Even though they attempted to argue otherwise, Golombok and Tasker’s study revealed in its results section a clear connection between being raised in a lesbian family and homosexuality: “With respect to actual involvement in same-gender sexual relationships, there was a significant difference between groups. . . . None of the children from heterosexual families had experienced a lesbian or gay relationship.” By contrast, five (29 percent) of the seventeen daughters and one (13 percent) of the eight sons in homosexual families reported having at least one same-sex relationship.[58]
· These findings have most recently been confirmed in a study appearing in the American Sociological Review. Authors Judith Stacey and Timothy J. Biblarz alluded to the “political incorrectness” of their finding of higher rates of homosexuality among children raised in homosexual households: “We recognize the political dangers of pointing out that recent studies indicate that a higher proportion of children of lesbigay parents are themselves apt to engage in homosexual activity.”[59]
58. Tasker and Golombok, “Do Parents Influence the Sexual Orientation?” p. 7.
59. Judith Stacey and Timothy J. Biblarz, “(How) Does the Sexual Orientation of Parents Matter,” American Sociological Review 66 (2001): 174, 179.
LOL, I can’t believe you’ve got the gall to complain about a lack of random sampling and non-representative samples after putting up that propaganda by Schumm! You’re hilarious! Reading general audience books (where at least one of the authors says she intentionally included equal numbers of gay and heterosexual children), counting the number of gay and heterosexual children and then claiming that shows the percentages of gay children same sex parents have is as non-random and nonrepresentative as it can possibly get!
You hypocrite! Even more laughable is that you claim the work of Biblarz and Stacey isn’t legitimately generalizable to the larger population yet somehow you want people to believe the falsehoods you claim their study shows is somehow generalizable to the larger.
population!
Your claim that children of same sex parents experience sexual identity confusion is typical of the sorts of lies people like you tell about the actual research. When one reads the research we find you base this absurd claim on facts like such children being more likely to play with non-sterotypical gendered toys, far from experiencing “sexual identity confusion”.
How ironic of you to accuse me of not showing the evidence to back up my facts when I have and you most certainly have not. I’ve linked to the authority on LGBT parenting and dozens upon dozens of the studies they have which have shown for decades that the children of same sex parents do just as well, if not better than the children of opposite sex parents and are no more likely to be gay. You on the other hand have fabricated one lie after another and you’re placing footnotes in your lies doesn’t change the fact that they’re lies one bit.
The fact is that Biblarz and Stacey concluded the studies they examined “almost uniformly reports findings of NO NOTABLE DIFFERENCES between children reared by heterosexual parents and those reared by lesbian and gay parents…” and found that STATISTICALLY THE CHILDREN OF GAYS WERE NOT MORE LIKELY TO BE GAY THEN THE CHILDREN OF HETEOROSEXUALS. You started out by blatently lying about their study, hiding the actual conclusions of the report and trying to portray it as though they found THE EXACT OPPOSITE OF WHAT THEY ACTUALLY DID.
You’ve been exposed as the charlaton you are and no amount of further lying by you, footnoted or not, is going to salvage your reputation. You’ve made an utter fool of yourself.