NEW YORK — On the heels of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that legalized
same-sex marriage nationwide, new research suggests that children raised by gay
parents are well adjusted and resilient, HealthDay reports.
Four new studies were scheduled to be presented this week at the annual
meeting of the American Psychological Association in Toronto that set out to
assess the psychological and sociological health of children raised by same-sex
couples.
One study looked at the experience of 49 pre-adolescent youngsters adopted by
either two-dad or two-mom households. The children’s average age was 8.
Led by Rachel Farr, a research assistant professor of psychology at the
University of Massachusetts, Amherst, researchers interviewed both children and
parents. Nearly 80 percent of the boys and girls said they felt “different” from
other children because of their parents’ status, the study found. But less than
60 percent felt they had been stigmatized because of their same-sex family
structure. And 70 percent appeared to respond to adversity with resilience,
demonstrating an upbeat attitude about their family, the researchers found
according to HealthDay.
A second study compared rates of anxiety and/or depression among 3- to
10-year-olds raised by 68 gay male couples with those of youngsters raised by 68
heterosexual parents. The team led by Robert-Jay Green, a retired professor of
clinical psychology at the California School of Professional Psychology in San
Francisco, found that all of the children were psychologically healthy.
A third study — led by Henny Bos, an assistant professor in behavioral and
social sciences at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands — found that
17-year-olds raised in households without a male role model were not
psychologically maladjusted and appeared to engage in gender-appropriate
behavior, HealthDay reports.
