from Parenting & Family

NPR reporter Joseph Shapiro interviewed Abigail Warner, Dr. Ellen Perrin, Steven Nock, and Judith Stacey on the extent and nature of the research dealing with gay parenting.

Abigail Garner is author of Families Like Mine and was reared in a gay household. According to Garner, "We don't have the freedom to be as complex as families that have heterosexual families."

Dr. Ellen Perrin is a pediatrician with the Floating Hospital for Children in Boston. According to Perrin, she has reviewed the research on same-sex parenting and said they all come to the same conclusion: "...those studies found no differences in parent-child relationships, in self-esteem, in psychiatric or emotional status or problem behaviors. The findings are quite monotonous. There just were no differences."

But Steven Nock, a sociologist at the University of Virginia has reviewed the same studies and believes each of them has a fatal flaw. According to Nock, "The primary flaw is that their samples were self-recruited, that individuals volunteered to participate in these studies as a result of seeing an ad or a flier or being approached by a friend or contact, and whether or not people who volunteer to participate in studies resemble the sort who do not is the question."

Researcher Judith Stacey says the studies show that children brought up in gay households will grow up "to be a bit more open and fluid in their approach to gender behaviors and to sexuality generally."

According to Shapiro, Stacey's research also found that children from gay households were more likely to question traditional gender roles; daughters of lesbian mothers were more sexually active than daughters of straight parents; and sons of lesbian mothers were less sexually active than boys reared in straight households.

The audio of this interview is available here: NPR : Studies on Children of Gay Couples Spark Controversy.