'This Is Lazy Research': Blaze Readers React to Study Saying Kids of Gay Parents at Bigger Risk of ‘Emotional Problems’ Than Children of Opposite-Sex Parents

TheBlaze posted a story earlier this week about a study showing that children of gay parents are at higher risk of emotional problems than children of opposite-sex parents.

The study, which examined 207,007 children and included 512 kids with gay parents, was conducted by sociologist and Catholic priest Donald Sullins of Catholic University of America and published in the “British Journal of Education, Society & Behavioral Science” this month.

Here's what some readers of TheBlaze had to say about the issue:

barber2

Gosh, what a surprise and how much money did it cost to come to this startling conclusion?! Oh, God, I miss the days when good common sense rather than "anything goes" ruled morality.

zorro

I remember reading an article about a “support” group for kids of gay parents. They basically got together to show people how “normal” and “well established” they were. What's funny was the fact that normal, well-established people felt the need to “support” each other. It was also interesting to read their comments about how hard it was growing up. They didn’t see any of the irony.

A coworker of mine is gay and has lost friends because he thinks gay marriage is a joke and is very much against gay couples adopting. No doubt, it’s better to have two dads or two moms than no parents at all, but it’s most definitely NOT the same thing. Children are best raised by a mother and a father, period.

The-Monk

What I have noticed is that opposite-sex parents are mainly concerned with the child’s well-being and rights and same-sex parents are mainly concerned with their own well-being and rights instead of the child’s well-being and rights.

Think about it…

Cavallo

Any dysfunctional family structure will have a higher incidence of emotional problems in the children. Single parents, substance-abusing parents, parents who openly pursue deviant sexual lifestyles, even those who chase their high-profile careers and shuck their kids off to nannies, etc.

Blest

First off, let me begin by reminding people of something very important.

Correlation does not imply causation.

Correlation Does Not Imply Causation.

CORRELATION DOES NOT IMPLY CAUSATION.

This is a correlation study. It doesn’t mean anything. It is just a data point to be used later. Don’t read so much into this.

Now, having said that, I don’t see how this is “news” to anybody who’s been paying attention. Homosexuality has always tried to use force, not facts, to change people’s opinions of things.

They intimidated (threatened lawsuits against) the American Psychological Association to change the definition of homosexuality as a mental disorder in the diagnostic manual. Not because of facts, mind you, but because of fear and political pressure.

So I am always very skeptical of any study coming from people with favorable views of homosexuality. In fact, the only study I would trust is one that comes from people who have negative views of homosexuality but find no difference at all between children raised by homosexuals and children raised by heterosexuals.

sdeciant

Believe it or not, we need more empirical research on this topic to share with people, because there are many who don’t believe this is the case. In fact, there was a study published last year – I think it was done in Sweden – and it claimed some benefits experienced by children of gay parents. One is that gay parents are generally quite affluent (to be able to adopt, go through special fertilization procedures, etc). The bottom line is that scientifically sound methodology is necessary, and such studies should continue. And the longitudinal nature of such research means that it takes a number of years – often a decade or more – to collect and analyze data.

To be honest with you, I have no problem approaching the data with an open mind. Practically speaking, I suspect some issues when children grow up without role models of a particular gender in the home. But I’ll let the data speak for itself – as long as the methods are sound and the researchers unbiased.

LibertarianSocialist

There is an obvious confounding variable that is not accounted for in this study…

Adopted children generally experience more “emotional distress” than children raised by their biological parents (including depression, PTSD, self-esteem issues, etc).

The majority of same-sex couples adopt their children. If someone is to do a study on this, it ought to be comparing adopted children of same-sex couples and opposite-sex couples…additionally, and this cannot be stressed enough, it should not be conducted by a religious organization and published in a religious publication.

Think_Twice2

I actually decided to read the study and see if I could pinpoint any issues. Here are a few:

1. Apples and oranges: the study compares opposite-sex married couples with biological children to same-sex couples with children. The claim put forth by the author is that this shows married gay couples raise children with more emotional problems but the study doesn’t actually check to see if the gay couples are married, or if the children are adopted or not. Instead of measuring only one variable (same-sex or opposite-sex marriage), it ignores two others (biological versus adopted, and married versus unknown marital status).

2. The group that actually ranks worst (single-parent households have children with twice the emotional issues compared to same-sex households) is completely ignored in the conclusion. If the worst thing you could do is raise a child as a single person, shouldn’t the author be against that? And why no comparison to foster care?

3. Even in the case of number 2, we don’t know if the children involved are biological or adopted. The author says they simply didn’t research it. That’s a huge variable if they’re making the argument that gay couples should not be allowed to adopt. Is the problem because they are gay, or because they are adopting? The study doesn’t research it, but the author claims it’s gays getting married. Odd.

“Biology matters” says the author. But then they didn’t actually study biology in the research. What gives?

bukowski72

This “study” is a joke. It doesn’t matter what it is covering.

The sample is 512 against 207,007. That is three tenths of a percent.

Anyone who would base which socks they should wear on a sample like that is a moron.

Mikeil305

“The reduced risk of child emotional problems with opposite-sex married parents compared to same-sex parents is explained almost entirely by the fact that married opposite-sex parents tend to raise their own joint biological offspring, while same-sex parents never do this,” he wrote. “The primary benefit of marriage for children, therefore, may not be that it tends to present them with improved parents (more stable, financially affluent, etc., although it does do this), but that it presents them with their own parents.”

Was this actually written in the study?

Here’s the problem — and correct me if I’m wrong — we don’t know how many of the opposite-sex couples were the biological parents of the children. We don’t know how many of the same-sex marriages contained biological parents.

This is lazy research and his conclusions are not derived from the data.

Cattelle

Gay men and women are prevalent in my field, as I work in the arts. They are wonderful and I have great compassion for the hand they have been dealt.

Still, the oxytocin studies of babies' interaction with mothers and fathers was largely ignored. Doesn’t even matter the relationship. Babies respond differently to men and women, and both are beneficial. They can do as many studies as they like, and try to skew and scrunch the data, but you can’t fool God or Mother Nature – whichever is your belief.

I’m sure gay couples would be much better adopting a child without a possible mother/father home. But they will never be able to say two same-sex parents are the same, no matter how much they want it to be so. The science will prevail.

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