Ахахаха, пару сообщений назад ты писала о том как здорово думать своей головой. Вот и начинай претворять в жизнь, а не просить кого-то. Скажу только одно что исследования по вопросу воспитания детей в однополых парах сырые, в зависимости от того кем проведены исследования, или же активистами движения или же активистами религиозных организаций, результаты исследований противоречивы. А вот независимое исследование, наделавшее много шуму в своё время:
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The New Family Structures Study (NFSS) is a social-science data-collection project that fielded a survey to a large, random sample of American young adults (ages 18–39) who were raised in different types of family arrangements. In this debut article of the NFSS, I compare how the young-adult children of a parent who has had a same-sex romantic relationship fare on 40 different social, emotional, and relational outcome variables when compared with six other family-of-origin types. The results reveal numerous, consistent differences, especially between the children of women who have had a lesbian relationship and those with still-married (heterosexual) biological parents. The results are typically robust in multivariate contexts as well, suggesting far greater diversity in lesbian-parent household experiences than convenience-sample studies of lesbian families have revealed. The NFSS proves to be an illuminating, versatile dataset that can assist family scholars in understanding the long reach of family structure and transitions.
Highlights
► The New Family Structures Study collected data from nearly 3000 adults. ► I compare young adults who grew up with a lesbian mother or gay father. ► Differences exist between children of parents who have had same-sex relationships and those with married parents. ► This probability study suggests considerable diversity among same-sex parents.
Keywords
Same-sex parenting;
Family structure;
Young adulthood;
Sampling concerns
1. Introduction
The well-being of children has long been in the center of public policy debates about marriage and family matters in the United States. That trend continues as state legislatures, voters, and the judiciary considers the legal boundaries of marriage. Social science data remains one of the few sources of information useful in legal debates surrounding marriage and adoption rights, and has been valued both by same-sex marriage supporters and opponents. Underneath the politics about marriage and child development are concerns about family structures’ possible effects on children: the number of parents present and active in children’s lives, their genetic relationship to the children, parents’ marital status, their gender distinctions or similarities, and the number of transitions in household composition. In this introduction to the New Family Structures Study (NFSS), I compare how young adults from a variety of different family backgrounds fare on 40 different social, emotional, and relational outcomes. In particular, I focus on how respondents who said their mother had a same-sex relationship with another woman—or their father did so with another man—compare with still-intact, two-parent heterosexual married families using nationally-representative data collected from a large probability sample of American young adults.
Social scientists of family transitions have until recently commonly noted the elevated stability and social benefits of the two-parent (heterosexual) married household, when contrasted to single mothers, cohabiting couples, adoptive parents, and ex-spouses sharing custody (Brown, 2004, Manning et al., 2004 and McLanahan and Sandefur, 1994). In 2002, Child Trends—a well-regarded nonpartisan research organization—detailed the importance for children’s development of growing up in “the presence of two biological parents” (their emphasis; Moore et al., 2002, p. 2). Unmarried motherhood, divorce, cohabitation, and step-parenting were widely perceived to fall short in significant developmental domains (like education, behavior problems, and emotional well-being), due in no small part to the comparative fragility and instability of such relationships.
In their 2001 American Sociological Review article reviewing findings on sexual orientation and parenting, however, sociologists Judith Stacey and Tim Biblarz began noting that while there are some differences in outcomes between children in same-sex and heterosexual unions, there were not as many as family sociologists might expect, and differences need not necessarily be perceived as deficits. Since that time the conventional wisdom emerging from comparative studies of same-sex parenting is that there are very few differences of note in the child outcomes of gay and lesbian parents ( Tasker, 2005, Wainright and Patterson, 2006 and Rosenfeld, 2010). Moreover, a variety of possible advantages of having a lesbian couple as parents have emerged in recent studies ( Crowl et al., 2008, Biblarz and Stacey, 2010, Gartrell and Bos, 2010 and MacCallum and Golombok, 2004). The scholarly discourse concerning gay and lesbian parenting, then, has increasingly posed a challenge to previous assumptions about the supposed benefits of being raised in biologically-intact, two-parent heterosexual households.
1.1. Sampling concerns in previous surveys
Concern has arisen, however, about the methodological quality of many studies focusing on same-sex parents. In particular, most are based on non-random, non-representative data often employing small samples that do not allow for generalization to the larger population of gay and lesbian families (Nock, 2001, Perrin and Committee on Psychosocial Aspects of Child and Family Health, 2002 and Redding, 2008). For instance, many published studies on the children of same-sex parents collect data from “snowball” or convenience samples (e.g., Bos et al., 2007, Brewaeys et al., 1997, Fulcher et al., 2008, Sirota, 2009 and Vanfraussen et al., 2003). One notable example of this is the National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study, analyses of which were prominently featured in the media in 2011 (e.g., Huffington Post, 2011). The NLLFS employs a convenience sample, recruited entirely by self-selection from announcements posted “at lesbian events, in women’s bookstores, and in lesbian newspapers” in Boston, Washington, and San Francisco. While I do not wish to downplay the significance of such a longitudinal study—it is itself quite a feat—this sampling approach is a problem when the goal (or in this case, the practical result and conventional use of its findings) is to generalize to a population. All such samples are biased, often in unknown ways. As a formal sampling method, “snowball sampling is known to have some serious problems,” one expert asserts (Snijders, 1992, p. 59). Indeed, such samples are likely biased toward “inclusion of those who have many interrelationships with, or are coupled to, a large number of other individuals” (Berg, 1988, p. 531). But apart from the knowledge of individuals’ inclusion probability, unbiased estimation is not possible.
Further, as Nock (2001) entreated, consider the convenience sample recruited from within organizations devoted to seeking rights for gays and lesbians, like the NLLFS sampling strategy. Suppose, for example, that the respondents have higher levels of education than comparable lesbians who do not frequent such events or bookstores, or who live elsewhere. If such a sample is used for research purposes, then anything that is correlated with educational attainment—like better health, more deliberative parenting, and greater access to social capital and educational opportunities for children—will be biased. Any claims about a population based on a group that does not represent it will be distorted, since its sample of lesbian parents is less diverse (given what is known about it) than a representative sample would reveal (Baumle et al., 2009).
To compound the problem, results from nonprobability samples—from which meaningful statistics cannot be generated—are regularly compared with population-level samples of heterosexual parents, which no doubt are comprised of a blend of higher and lower quality parents. For example, Gartrell et al., 2011a and Gartrell et al., 2011b inquired about the sexual orientation and behavior of adolescents by comparing data from the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG) with those in the snowball sample of youth in the NLLFS. Comparing a population-based sample (the NSFG) to a select sample of youth from same-sex parents does not provide the statistical confidence demanded of good social science. Until now, this has been a primary way in which scholars have collected and evaluated data on same-sex parents. This is not to suggest that snowball samples are inherently problematic as data-collection techniques, only that they are not adequate for making useful comparisons with samples that are entirely different with regard to selection characteristics. Snowball and various other types of convenience sampling are simply not widely generalizable or comparable to the population of interest as a whole. While researchers themselves commonly note this important limitation, it is often entirely lost in the translation and transmission of findings by the media to the public.
1.2. Are there notable differences?
The “no differences” paradigm suggests that children from same-sex families display no notable disadvantages when compared to children from other family forms. This suggestion has increasingly come to include even comparisons with intact biological, two-parent families, the form most associated with stability and developmental benefits for children (McLanahan and Sandefur, 1994 and Moore et al., 2002).
Answering questions about notable between-group differences has nevertheless typically depended on with whom comparisons are being made, what outcomes the researchers explored, and whether the outcomes evaluated are considered substantial or superficial, or portents of future risk. Some outcomes—like sexual behavior, gender roles, and democratic parenting, for example—have come to be valued differently in American society over time.
For the sake of brevity—and to give ample space here to describing the NFSS—I will avoid spending too much time describing previous studies, many of whose methodological challenges are addressed by the NFSS. Several review articles, and at least one book, have sought to provide a more thorough assessment of the literature (Anderssen et al., 2002, Biblarz and Stacey, 2010, Goldberg, 2010, Patterson, 2000 and Stacey and Biblarz, 2001a). Suffice it to say that versions of the phrase “no differences” have been employed in a wide variety of studies, reports, depositions, books, and articles since 2000 (e.g., Crowl et al., 2008, Movement Advancement Project, 2011, Rosenfeld, 2010, Tasker, 2005, Stacey and Biblarz, 2001a, Stacey and Biblarz, 2001b, Veldorale-Brogan and Cooley, 2011 and Wainright et al., 2004).
Much early research on gay parents typically compared the child development outcomes of divorced lesbian mothers with those of divorced heterosexual mothers (Patterson, 1997). This was also the strategy employed by psychologist Fiona Tasker (2005), who compared lesbian mothers with single, divorced heterosexual mothers and found “no systematic differences between the quality of family relationships” therein. Wainright et al. (2004), using 44 cases in the nationally-representative Add Health data, reported that teenagers living with female same-sex parents displayed comparable self-esteem, psychological adjustment, academic achievement, delinquency, substance use, and family relationship quality to 44 demographically “matched” cases of adolescents with opposite-sex parents, suggesting that here too the comparisons were not likely made with respondents from stable, biologically-intact, married families.
However, small sample sizes can contribute to “no differences” conclusions. It is not surprising that statistically-significant differences would not emerge in studies employing as few as 18 or 33 or 44 cases of respondents with same-sex parents, respectively ( Fulcher et al., 2008, Golombok et al., 2003 and Wainright and Patterson, 2006). Even analyzing matched samples, as a variety of studies have done, fails to mitigate the challenge of locating statistically-significant differences when the sample size is small. This is a concern in all of social science, but one that is doubly important when there may be motivation to confirm the null hypothesis (that is, that there are in fact no statistically-significant differences between groups). Therefore, one important issue in such studies is the simple matter of if there is enough statistical power to detect meaningful differences should they exist. Rosenfeld (2010) is the first scholar to employ a large, random sample of the population in order to compare outcomes among children of same-sex parents with those of heterosexual married parents. He concluded—after controlling for parents’ education and income and electing to limit the sample to households exhibiting at least 5 years of co-residential stability—that there were no statistically-significant differences between the two groups in a pair of measures assessing children’s progress through primary school.
Sex-related outcomes have more consistently revealed distinctions, although the tone of concern about them has diminished over time. For example, while the daughters of lesbian mothers are now widely understood to be more apt to explore same-sex sexual identity and behavior, concern about this finding has faded as scholars and the general public have become more accepting of GLB identities (Goldberg, 2010). Tasker and Golombok (1997) noted that girls raised by lesbian mothers reported a higher number of sexual partners in young adulthood than daughters of heterosexual mothers. Boys with lesbian mothers, on the other hand, appear to display the opposite trend—fewer partners than the sons of heterosexual mothers.
More recently, however, the tone about “no differences” has shifted some toward the assertion of differences, and that same-sex parents appear to be more competent than heterosexual parents ( Biblarz and Stacey, 2010 and Crowl et al., 2008). Even their romantic relationships may be better: a comparative study of Vermont gay civil unions and heterosexual marriages revealed that same-sex couples report higher relationship quality, compatibility, and intimacy, and less conflict than did married heterosexual couples (Balsam et al., 2008). Biblarz and Stacey’s (2010) review article on gender and parenting asserts that,
based strictly on the published science, one could argue that two women parent better on average than a woman and a man, or at least than a woman and man with a traditional division of labor. Lesbian coparents seem to outperform comparable married heterosexual, biological parents on several measures, even while being denied the substantial privileges of marriage (p. 17).
Even here, however, the authors note that lesbian parents face a “somewhat greater risk of splitting up,” due, they suggest, to their “asymmetrical biological and legal statuses and their high standards of equality” (2010, p. 17).
Another meta-analysis asserts that non-heterosexual parents, on average, enjoy significantly better relationships with their children than do heterosexual parents, together with no differences in the domains of cognitive development, psychological adjustment, gender identity, and sexual partner preference (Crowl et al., 2008).
However, the meta-analysis reinforces the profound importance of who is doing the reporting—nearly always volunteers for small studies on a group whose claims about documentable parenting successes are very relevant in recent legislative and judicial debates over rights and legal statuses. Tasker (2010, p. 36) suggests caution:
Parental self-report, of course, may be biased. It is plausible to argue that, in a prejudiced social climate, lesbian and gay parents may have more at stake in presenting a positive picture….Future studies need to consider using additional sophisticated measures to rule out potential biases…
Suffice it to say that the pace at which the overall academic discourse surrounding gay and lesbian parents’ comparative competence has shifted—from slightly-less adept to virtually identical to more adept—is notable, and rapid. By comparison, studies of adoption—a common method by which many same-sex couples (but more heterosexual ones) become parents—have repeatedly and consistently revealed important and wide-ranging differences, on average, between adopted children and biological ones. In fact, these differences have been so pervasive and consistent that adoption experts now emphasize that “acknowledgement of difference” is critical for both parents and clinicians when working with adopted children and teens (Miller et al., 2000). This ought to give social scientists studying gay parenting outcomes pause, especially in light of concerns noted above about small sample sizes and the absence of a comparable recent, documented improvement in outcomes from youth in adopted families and stepfamilies.
Far more, too, is known about the children of lesbian mothers than about those of gay fathers (Biblarz and Stacey, 2010, Patterson, 2006 and Veldorale-Brogan and Cooley, 2011). Biblarz and Stacey (2010, p. 17) note that while gay-male families remain understudied, “their daunting routes to parenthood seem likely to select more for strengths than limitations.” Others are not so optimistic. One veteran of a study of the daughters of gay fathers warns scholars to avoid overlooking the family dynamics of “emergent” gay parents, who likely outnumber planned ones: “Children born into heterosexually organized marriages where fathers come out as gay or bisexual also face having to deal with maternal bitterness, marital conflict, possible divorce, custody issues, and father’s absence” (Sirota, 2009, p. 291).
Regardless of sampling strategy, scholars also know much less about the lives of young-adult children of gay and lesbian parents, or how their experiences and accomplishments as adults compare with others who experienced different sorts of household arrangements during their youth. Most contemporary studies of gay parenting processes have focused on the present—what is going on inside the household when children are still under parental care ( Tasker, 2005, Bos and Sandfort, 2010 and Brewaeys et al., 1997). Moreover, such research tends to emphasize parent-reported outcomes like parental divisions of labor, parent–child closeness, daily interaction patterns, gender roles, and disciplinary habits. While such information is important to learn, it means we know far more about the current experience of parents in households with children than we do about young adults who have already moved through their childhood and now speak for themselves. Studies on family structure, however, serve scholars and family practitioners best when they span into adulthood. Do the children of gay and lesbian parents look comparable to those of their heterosexual counterparts? The NFSS is poised to address this question about the lives of young adults between the ages of 18 and 39, but not about children or adolescents. While the NFSS is not the answer to all of this domain’s methodological challenges, it is a notable contribution in important ways.
1.3. The New Family Structures Study
Besides being brand-new data, several other aspects about the NFSS are novel and noteworthy. First, it is a study of young adults rather than children or adolescents, with particular attention paid to reaching ample numbers of respondents who were raised by parents that had a same-sex relationship. Second, it is a much larger study than nearly all of its peers. The NFSS interviewed just under 3000 respondents, including 175 who reported their mother having had a same-sex romantic relationship and 73 who said the same about their father. Third, it is a weighted probability sample, from which meaningful statistical inferences and interpretations can be drawn. While the 2000 (and presumably, the 2010) US Census Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) offers the largest nationally-representative sample-based information about youth in same-sex households, the Census collects much less outcome information of interest. The NFSS, however, asked numerous questions about respondents’ social behaviors, health behaviors, and relationships. This manuscript provides the first glimpse into those outcomes by offering statistical comparisons of them among eight different family structures/experiences of origin. Accordingly, there is much that the NFSS offers, and not just about the particular research questions of this study.
There are several things the NFSS is not. The NFSS is not a longitudinal study, and therefore cannot attempt to broach questions of causation. It is a cross-sectional study, and collected data from respondents at only one point in time, when they were between the ages of 18 and 39. It does not evaluate the offspring of gay marriages, since the vast majority of its respondents came of age prior to the legalization of gay marriage in several states. This study cannot answer political questions about same-sex relationships and their legal legitimacy. Nevertheless, social science is a resource that offers insight to political and legal decision-makers, and there have been enough competing claims about “what the data says” about the children of same-sex parents—including legal depositions of social scientists in important cases—that a study with the methodological strengths of this one deserves scholarly attention and scrutiny.
2. Data collection, measures, and analytic approach
The NFSS data collection project is based at the University of Texas at Austin’s Population Research Center. A survey design team consisting of several leading family researchers in sociology, demography, and human development—from Penn State University, Brigham Young University, San Diego State University, the University of Virginia, and several from the University of Texas at Austin—met over 2 days in January 2011 to discuss the project’s sampling strategy and scope, and continued to offer advice as questions arose over the course of the data collection process. The team was designed to merge scholars across disciplines and ideological lines in a spirit of civility and reasoned inquiry. Several additional external consultants also gave close scrutiny to the survey instrument, and advised on how best to measure diverse topics. Both the study protocol and the questionnaire were approved by the University of Texas at Austin’s Institutional Review Board. The NFSS data is intended to be publicly accessible and will thus be made so with minimal requirements by mid-late 2012. The NFSS was supported in part by grants from the Witherspoon Institute and the Bradley Foundation. While both of these are commonly known for their support of conservative causes—just as other private foundations are known for supporting more liberal causes—the funding sources played no role at all in the design or conduct of the study, the analyses, the interpretations of the data, or in the preparation of this manuscript.
2.1. The data collection process
The data collection was conducted by Knowledge Networks (or KN), a research firm with a very strong record of generating high-quality data for academic projects. Knowledge Networks recruited the first online research panel, dubbed the KnowledgePanel®, that is representative of the US population. Members of the KnowledgePanel® are randomly recruited by telephone and mail surveys, and households are provided with access to the Internet and computer hardware if needed. Unlike other Internet research panels sampling only individuals with Internet access who volunteer for research, the KnowledgePanel® is based on a sampling frame which includes both listed and unlisted numbers, those without a landline telephone and is not limited to current Internet users or computer owners, and does not accept self-selected volunteers. As a result, it is a random, nationally-representative sample of the American population. At last count, over 350 working papers, conference presentations, published articles, and books have used Knowledge Networks’ panels, including the 2009 National Survey of Sexual Health and Behavior, whose extensive results were featured in an entire volume of the Journal of Sexual Medicine—and prominently in the media—in 2010 (Herbenick et al., 2010). More information about KN and the KnowledgePanel®, including panel recruitment, connection, retention, completion, and total response rates, are available from KN. The typical within survey response rate for a KnowledgePanel® survey is 65%. Appendix A presents a comparison of age-appropriate summary statistics from a variety of socio-demographic variables in the NFSS, alongside the most recent iterations of the Current Population Survey, the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), the National Survey of Family Growth, and the National Study of Youth and Religion—all recent nationally-representative survey efforts. The estimates reported there suggest the NFSS compares very favorably with other nationally-representative datasets.
2.2. The screening process
Particularly relevant for the NFSS is the fact that key populations—gay and lesbian parents, as well as heterosexual adoptive parents—can be challenging to identify and locate. The National Center for Marriage and Family Research (2010) estimates that there are approximately 580,000 same-sex households in the United States. Among them, about 17%—or 98,600—are thought to have children present. While that may seem like a substantial number, in population-based sampling strategies it is not. Locating minority populations requires a search for a probability sample of the general population, typically by way of screening the general population to identify members of rarer groups. Thus in order to boost the number of respondents who reported being adopted or whose parent had a same-sex romantic relationship, the screener survey (which distinguished such respondents) was left in the field for several months between July 2011 and February 2012, enabling existing panelists more time to be screened and new panelists to be added. Additionally, in late Fall 2011, former members of the KnowledgePanel® were re-contacted by mail, phone, and email to encourage their screening. A total of 15,058 current and former members of KN’s KnowledgePanel® were screened and asked, among several other questions, “From when you were born until age 18 (or until you left home to be on your own), did either of your parents ever have a romantic relationship with someone of the same sex?” Response choices were “Yes, my mother had a romantic relationship with another woman,” “Yes, my father had a romantic relationship with another man,” or “no.” (Respondents were also able to select both of the first two choices.) If they selected either of the first two, they were asked about whether they had ever lived with that parent while they were in a same-sex romantic relationship. The NFSS completed full surveys with 2988 Americans between the ages of 18 and 39. The screener and full survey instrument is available at the NFSS homepage, located at: www.prc.utexas.edu/nfss.
2.3. What does a representative sample of gay and lesbian parents (of young adults) look like?
The weighted screener data—a nationally-representative sample—reveal that 1.7% of all Americans between the ages of 18 and 39 report that their father or mother has had a same-sex relationship, a figure comparable to other estimates of children in gay and lesbian households (e.g., Stacey and Biblarz, 2001a and Stacey and Biblarz, 2001b report a plausible range from 1% to 12%). Over twice as many respondents report that their mother has had a lesbian relationship as report that their fathers have had a gay relationship. (A total of 58% of the 15,058 persons screened report spending their entire youth—up until they turned 18 or left the house—with their biological mother and father.)
While gay and lesbian Americans typically become parents today in four ways—through one partner’s previous participation in a heterosexual union, through adoption, in-vitro fertilization, or by a surrogate—the NFSS is more likely to be comprised of respondents from the first two of these arrangements than from the last two. Today’s children of gay men and lesbian women are more apt to be “planned” (that is, by using adoption, IVF, or surrogacy) than as little as 15–20 years ago, when such children were more typically the products of heterosexual unions. The youngest NFSS respondents turned 18 in 2011, while the oldest did so in 1990. Given that unintended pregnancy is impossible among gay men and a rarity among lesbian couples, it stands to reason that gay and lesbian parents today are far more selective about parenting than the heterosexual population, among whom unintended pregnancies remain very common, around 50% of total (Finer and Henshaw, 2006). The share of all same-sex parenting arrangements that is planned, however, remains unknown. Although the NFSS did not directly ask those respondents whose parent has had a same-sex romantic relationship about the manner of their own birth, a failed heterosexual union is clearly the modal method: just under half of such respondents reported that their biological parents were once married. This distinguishes the NFSS from numerous studies that have been entirely concerned with “planned” gay and lesbian families, like the NLLFS.
Among those who said their mother had a same-sex relationship, 91% reported living with their mother while she was in the romantic relationship, and 57% said they had lived with their mother and her partner for at least 4 months at some point prior to age 18. A smaller share (23%) said they had spent at least 3 years living in the same household with a romantic partner of their mother’s.
Among those who said their father had a same-sex relationship, however, 42% reported living with him while he was in a same-sex romantic relationship, and 23% reported living with him and his partner for at least 4 months (but less than 2% said they had spent at least 3 years together in the same household), a trend similarly noted in Tasker’s (2005) review article on gay and lesbian parenting.
Fifty-eight (58) percent of those whose biological mothers had a same-sex relationship also reported that their biological mother exited the respondent’s household at some point during their youth, and just under 14% of them reported spending time in the foster care system, indicating greater-than-average household instability. Ancillary analyses of the NFSS suggests a likely “planned” lesbian origin of between 17% and 26% of such respondents, a range estimated from the share of such respondents who claimed that (1) their biological parents were never married or lived together, and that (2) they never lived with a parental opposite-sex partner or with their biological father. The share of respondents (whose fathers had a same-sex relationship) that likely came from “planned” gay families in the NFSS is under 1%.
These distinctions between the NFSS—a population-based sample—and small studies of planned gay and lesbian families nevertheless raise again the question of just how unrepresentative convenience samples of gay and lesbian parents actually are. The use of a probability sample reveals that the young-adult children of parents who have had same-sex relationships (in the NFSS) look less like the children of today’s stereotypic gay and lesbian couples—white, upper–middle class, well-educated, employed, and prosperous—than many studies have tacitly or explicitly portrayed. Goldberg (2010, pp. 12–13) aptly notes that existing studies of lesbian and gay couples and their families have largely included “white, middle-class persons who are relatively ‘out’ in the gay community and who are living in urban areas,” while “working-class sexual minorities, racial or ethnic sexual minorities, sexual minorities who live in rural or isolated geographical areas” have been overlooked, understudied, and difficult to reach. Rosenfeld’s (2010) analysis of Census data suggests that 37% of children in lesbian cohabiting households are Black or Hispanic. Among respondents in the NFSS who said their mother had a same-sex relationship, 43% are Black or Hispanic. In the NLLFS, by contrast, only 6% are Black or Hispanic.
This is an important oversight: demographic indicators of where gay parents live today point less toward stereotypic places like New York and San Francisco and increasingly toward locales where families are more numerous and overall fertility is higher, like San Antonio and Memphis. In their comprehensive demographic look at the American gay and lesbian population, Gates and Ost (2004, p. 47) report, “States and large metropolitan areas with relatively low concentrations of gay and lesbian couples in the population tend to be areas where same-sex couples are more likely to have children in the household.” A recent updated brief by Gates (2011, p. F3) reinforces this: “Geographically, same-sex couples are most likely to have children in many of the most socially conservative parts of the country.” Moreover, Gates notes that racial minorities are disproportionately more likely (among same-sex households) to report having children; whites, on the other hand, are disproportionately less likely to have children. The NFSS sample reveals the same. Gates’ Census-based assessments further raise questions about the sampling strategies of—and the popular use of conclusions from—studies based entirely on convenience samples derived from parents living in progressive metropolitan locales.
2.4. The structure and experience of respondents’ families of origin
The NFSS sought to provide as clear a vision as possible of the respondents’ household composition during their childhood and adolescence. The survey asked respondents about the marital status of their biological parents both in the past and present. The NFSS also collected “calendar” data from each respondent about their relationship to people who lived with them in their household (for more than 4 months) from birth to age 18, as well as who has lived with them from age 18—after they have left home—to the present. While the calendar data is utilized only sparingly in this study, such rich data enables researchers to document who else has lived with the respondent for virtually their entire life up to the present.
For this particular study, I compare outcomes across eight different types of family-of-origin structure and/or experience. They were constructed from the answers to several questions both in the screener survey and the full survey. It should be noted, however, that their construction reflects an unusual combination of interests—the same-sex romantic behavior of parents, and the experience of household stability or disruption. The eight groups or household settings (with an acronym or short descriptive title) evaluated here, followed by their maximum unweighted analytic sample size, are:
1.
IBF: Lived in intact biological family (with mother and father) from 0 to 18, and parents are still married at present (N = 919).
2.
LM: R reported R’s mother had a same-sex romantic (lesbian) relationship with a woman, regardless of any other household transitions (N = 163).
3.
GF: R reported R’s father had a same-sex romantic (gay) relationship with a man, regardless of any other household transitions (N = 73).
4.
Adopted: R was adopted by one or two strangers at birth or before age 2 (N = 101).
5.
Divorced later or had joint custody: R reported living with biological mother and father from birth to age 18, but parents are not married at present (N = 116).
6.
Stepfamily: Biological parents were either never married or else divorced, and R’s primary custodial parent was married to someone else before R turned 18 (N = 394).
7.
Single parent: Biological parents were either never married or else divorced, and R’s primary custodial parent did not marry (or remarry) before R turned 18 (N = 816).
8.
All others: Includes all other family structure/event combinations, such as respondents with a deceased parent (N = 406).
Together these eight groups account for the entire NFSS sample. These eight groups are largely, but not entirely, mutually exclusive in reality. That is, a small minority of respondents might fit more than one group. I have, however, forced their mutual exclusivity here for analytic purposes. For example, a respondent whose mother had a same-sex relationship might also qualify in Group 5 or Group 7, but in this case my analytical interest is in maximizing the sample size of Groups 2 and 3 so the respondent would be placed in Group 2 (LMs). Since Group 3 (GFs) is the smallest and most difficult to locate randomly in the population, its composition trumped that of others, even LMs. (There were 12 cases of respondents who reported both a mother and a father having a same-sex relationship; all are analyzed here as GFs, after ancillary analyses revealed comparable exposure to both their mother and father).
Obviously, different grouping decisions may affect the results. The NFSS, which sought to learn a great deal of information about respondents’ families of origin, is well-poised to accommodate alternative grouping strategies, including distinguishing those respondents who lived with their lesbian mother’s partner for several years (vs. sparingly or not at all), or early in their childhood (compared to later). Small sample sizes (and thus reduced statistical power) may nevertheless hinder some strategies.
In the results section, for maximal ease, I often make use of the acronyms IBF (child of a still-intact biological family), LM (child of a lesbian mother), and GF (child of a gay father). It is, however, very possible that the same-sex romantic relationships about which the respondents report were not framed by those respondents as indicating their own (or their parent’s own) understanding of their parent as gay or lesbian or bisexual in sexual orientation. Indeed, this is more a study of the children of parents who have had (and in some cases, are still in) same-sex relationships than it is one of children whose parents have self-identified or are “out” as gay or lesbian or bisexual. The particular parental relationships the respondents were queried about are, however, gay or lesbian in content. For the sake of brevity and to avoid entanglement in interminable debates about fixed or fluid orientations, I will regularly refer to these groups as respondents with a gay father or lesbian mother.
2.5. Outcomes of interest
This study presents an overview of 40 outcome measures available in the NFSS. Table 1 presents summary statistics for all variables. Why these outcomes? While the survey questionnaire (available online) contains several dozen outcome questions of interest, I elected to report here an overview of those outcomes, seeking to include common and oft-studied variables of interest from a variety of different domains. I include all of the particular indexes we sought to evaluate, and a broad list of outcomes from the emotional, relational, and social domains. Subsequent analyses of the NFSS will no doubt examine other outcomes, as well as examine the same outcomes in different ways.
Table 1. Weighted summary statistics of measures, NFSS.
NFSS variables Range Mean SD N
Currently married 0, 1 0.41 0.49 2988
Currently cohabiting 0, 1 0.15 0.36 2988
Family received welfare growing up 0, 1 0.34 0.47 2669
Currently on public assistance 0, 1 0.21 0.41 2952
Currently employed full-time 0,1 0.45 0.50 2988
Currently unemployed 0, 1 0.12 0.32 2988
Voted in last presidential election 0, 1 0.55 0.50 2960
Bullied while growing up 0, 1 0.36 0.48 2961
Ever suicidal during past year 0, 1 0.07 0.25 2953
Recently or currently in therapy 0, 1 0.11 0.32 2934
Identifies as entirely heterosexual 0, 1 0.85 0.36 2946
Is in a same-sex romantic relationship 0, 1 0.06 0.23 1056
Had affair while married/cohabiting 0, 1 0.19 0.39 1869
Has ever had an STI 0, 1 0.11 0.32 2911
Ever touched sexually by parent/adult 0, 1 0.07 0.26 2877
Ever forced to have sex against will 0, 1 0.13 0.33 2874
Educational attainment 1–5 2.86 1.11 2988
Family-of-origin safety/security 1–5 3.81 0.97 2917
Family-of-origin negative impact 1–5 2.58 0.98 2919
Closeness to biological mother 1–5 4.05 0.87 2249
Closeness to biological father 1–5 3.74 0.98 1346
Self-reported physical health 1–5 3.57 0.94 2964
Self-reported overall happiness 1–5 4.00 1.05 2957
CES-D depression index 1–4 1.89 0.62 2815
Attachment scale (depend) 1–5 2.97 0.84 2848
Attachment scale (anxiety) 1–5 2.51 0.77 2830
Impulsivity scale 1–4 1.88 0.59 2861
Level of household income 1–13 7.42 3.17 2635
Current relationship quality index 1–5 3.98 0.98 2218
Current relationship is in trouble 1–4 2.19 0.96 2274
Frequency of marijuana use 1–6 1.50 1.23 2918
Frequency of alcohol use 1–6 2.61 1.36 2922
Frequency of drinking to get drunk 1–6 1.70 1.09 2922
Frequency of smoking 1–6 2.03 1.85 2922
Frequency of watching TV 1–6 3.15 1.60 2919
Frequency of having been arrested 1–4 1.29 0.63 2951
Frequency pled guilty to non-minor offense 1–4 1.16 0.46 2947
N of female sex partners (among women) 0–11 0.40 1.10 1975
N of female sex partners (among men) 0–11 3.16 2.68 937
N of male sex partners (among women) 0–11 3.50 2.52 1951
N of male sex partners (among men) 0–11 0.40 1.60 944
Age 18–39 28.21 6.37 2988
Female 0, 1 0.51 0.50 2988
White 0, 1 0.57 0.49 2988
Gay-friendliness of state of residence 1–5 2.58 1.78 2988
Family-of-origin structure groups
Intact biological family (IBF) 0, 1 0.40 0.49 2988
Mother had same-sex relationship (LM) 0, 1 0.01 0.10 2988
Father had same-sex relationship (GF) 0, 1 0.01 0.75 2988
Adopted age 0–2 0, 1 0.01 0.75 2988
Divorced later/joint custody 0, 1 0.06 0.23 2988
Stepfamily 0, 1 0.17 0.38 2988
Single parent 0, 1 0.19 0.40 2988
All others 0, 1 0.15 0.36 2988
Mother’s education
Less than high school 0, 1 0.15 0.35 2988
Received high school diploma 0, 1 0.28 0.45 2988
Some college/associate’s degree 0, 1 0.26 0.44 2988
Bachelor’s degrees 0, 1 0.15 0.36 2988
More than bachelor’s 0, 1 0.08 0.28 2988
Do not know/missing 0, 1 0.08 0.28 2988
Family-of-origin income
$0–20,000 0, 1 0.13 0.34 2988
$20,001–40,000 0, 1 0.19 0.39 2988
$40,001–75,000 0, 1 0.25 0.43 2988
$75,001–100,000 0, 1 0.14 0.34 2988
$100,001–150,000 0, 1 0.05 0.22 2988
$150,001–200,000 0, 1 0.01 0.11 2988
Above $200,000 0, 1 0.01 0.10 2988
Do not know/missing 0, 1 0.22 0.42 2988
Table options
The dichotomous outcome variables summarized in Table 1 are the following: relationship status, employment status, whether they voted in the last presidential election, and use of public assistance (both currently and while growing up), the latter of which was asked as “Before you were 18 years old, did anyone in your immediate family (that is, in your household) ever receive public assistance (such as welfare payments, food stamps, Medicaid, WIC, or free lunch)?” Respondents were also asked about whether they had ever seriously thought about committing suicide in the past 12 months, and about their utilization of counseling or psychotherapy for treatment of “any problem connected with anxiety, depression, relationships, etc.”
The Kinsey scale of sexual behavior was employed, but modified to allow respondents to select the best description of their sexual orientation (rather than behavior). Respondents were asked to choose the description that best fits how they think about themselves: 100% heterosexual, mostly heterosexual but somewhat attracted to people of your own sex, bisexual (that is, attracted to men and women equally), mostly homosexual but somewhat attracted to people of the opposite sex, 100% homosexual, or not sexually attracted to either males or females. For simplicity of presentation, I create a dichotomous measure indicating 100% heterosexual (vs. anything else). Additionally, unmarried respondents who are currently in a relationship were asked if their romantic partner is a man or a woman, allowing construction of a measure of “currently in a same-sex romantic relationship.”
All respondents were asked if “a parent or other adult caregiver ever touched you in a sexual way, forced you to touch him or her in a sexual way, or forced you to have sexual relations?” Possible answers were: no, never; yes, once; yes, more than once; or not sure. A broader measure about forced sex was asked before it, and read as follows: “Have you ever been physically forced to have any type of sexual activity against your will?” It employs identical possible answers; both have been dichotomized for the analyses (respondents who were “not sure” were not included). Respondents were also asked if they had ever had a sexually-transmitted infection, and if they had ever had a sexual relationship with someone else while they (the respondent) were married or cohabiting.
Among continuous variables, I included a five-category educational achievement measure, a standard five-point self-reported measure of general physical health, a five-point measure of overall happiness, a 13-category measure of total household income before taxes and deductions last year, and a four-point (frequency) measure of how often the respondent thought their current relationship “might be in trouble” (never once, once or twice, several times, or numerous times). Several continuous variables were constructed from multiple measures, including an eight-measure modified version of the CES-D depression scale, an index of the respondent’s reported current (romantic) relationship quality, closeness to the respondent’s biological mother and father, and a pair of attachment scales—one assessing dependability and the other anxiety. Finally, a pair of indexes captures (1) the overall safety and security in their family while growing up, and (2) respondents’ impressions of negative family-of-origin experiences that continue to affect them. These are part of a multidimensional relationship assessment instrument (dubbed RELATE) designed with the perspective that aspects of family life, such as the quality of the parent’s relationship with their children, create a family tone that can be mapped on a continuum from safe/predictable/rewarding to unsafe/chaotic/punishing (Busby et al., 2001). Each of the scales and their component measures are detailed in Appendix B.
Finally, I evaluate nine count outcomes, seven of which are frequency measures, and the other two counts of gender-specific sexual partners. Respondents were asked, “During the past year, how often did you…” watch more than 3 h of television in a row, use marijuana, smoke, drink alcohol, and drink with the intent to get drunk. Responses (0–5) ranged from “never” to “every day or almost every day.” Respondents were also asked if they have ever been arrested, and if they had ever been convicted of or pled guilty to any charges other than a minor traffic violation. Answers to these two ranged from 0 (no, never) to 3 (yes, numerous times). Two questions about respondents’ number of sex partners were asked (of both men and women) in this way: “How many different women have you ever had a sexual relationship with? This includes any female you had sex with, even if it was only once or if you did not know her well.” The same question was asked about sexual relationships with men. Twelve responses were possible: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4–6, 7–9, 10–15, 16–20, 21–30, 31–50, 51–99, and 100+.
2.6. Analytic approach
My analytic strategy is to highlight distinctions between the eight family structure/experience groups on the 40 outcome variables, both in a bivariate manner (using a simple T-test) and in a multivariate manner using appropriate variable-specific regression techniques—logistic, OLS, Poisson, or negative binomial—and employing controls for respondent’s age, race/ethnicity, gender, mother’s education, and perceived family-of-origin income, an approach comparable to Rosenfeld’s (2010) analysis of differences in children making normal progress through school and the overview article highlighting the findings of the first wave of the Add Health study (Resnick et al., 1997). Additionally, I controlled for having been bullied, the measure for which was asked as follows: “While growing up, children and teenagers typically experience negative interactions with others. We say that someone is bullied when someone else, or a group, says or does nasty and unpleasant things to him or her. We do not consider it bullying when two people quarrel or fight, however. Do you recall ever being bullied by someone else, or by a group, such that you still have vivid, negative memories of it?”
Finally, survey respondents’ current state of residence was coded on a scale (1–5) according to how expansive or restrictive its laws are concerning gay marriage and the legal rights of same-sex couples (as of November 2011). Emerging research suggests state-level political realities about gay rights may discernibly shape the lives of GLB residents (Hatzenbuehler et al., 2009 and Rostosky et al., 2009). This coding scheme was borrowed from a Los Angeles Times effort to map the timeline of state-level rights secured for gay unions. I modified it from a 10-point to a 5-point scale (Times Research Reporting, 2012). I classify the respondent’s current state in one of the following five ways:
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1 = Constitutional amendment banning gay marriage and/or other legal rights.
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2 = Legal ban on gay marriage and/or other legal rights.
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3 = No specific laws/bans and/or domestic partnerships are legal.
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4 = Domestic partnerships with comprehensive protections are legal and/or gay marriages performed elsewhere are recognized.
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5 = Civil unions are legal and/or gay marriage is legal.
Each case in the NFSS sample was assigned a weight based on the sampling design and their probability of being selected, ensuring a sample that is nationally representative of American adults aged 18–39. These sample weights were used in every statistical procedure displayed herein unless otherwise noted. The regression models exhibited few (N < 15) missing values on the covariates.
This broad overview approach, appropriate for introducing a new dataset, provides a foundation for future, more focused analyses of the outcomes I explore here. There are, after all, far more ways to delineate family structure and experiences—and changes therein—than I have undertaken here. Others will evaluate such groupings differently, and will construct alternative approaches of testing for group differences in what is admittedly a wide diversity of outcome measures.
I would be remiss to claim causation here, since to document that having particular family-of-origin experiences—or the sexual relationships of one’s parents—causes outcomes for adult children, I would need to not only document that there is a correlation between such family-of-origin experiences, but that no other plausible factors could be the common cause of any suboptimal outcomes. Rather, my analytic intention is far more modest than that: to evaluate the presence of simple group differences, and—with the addition of several control variables—to assess just how robust such group differences are.
3. Results
3.1. Comparisons with still-intact, biological families (IBFs)
Table 2 displays mean scores on 15 dichotomous outcome variables which can be read as simple percentages, sorted by the eight different family structure/experience groups described earlier. As in Table 3 and Table 4, numbers that appear in bold indicate that the group’s estimate is statistically different from the young-adult children of IBFs, as discerned by a basic T-test (p < 0.05). Numbers that appear with an asterisk (*) beside it indicate that the group’s dichotomous variable estimate from a logistic regression model (not shown) is statistically-significantly different from IBFs, after controlling for respondent’s age, gender, race/ethnicity, level of mother’s education, perceived family-of-origin’s income, experience with having been bullied as a youth, and the “gay friendliness” of the respondent’s current state of residence.
Table 2. Mean scores on select dichotomous outcome variables, NFSS (can read as percentage: as in, 0.42 = 42%).
IBF (intact bio family) LM (lesbian mother) GF (gay father) Adopted by strangers Divorced late (>18) Stepfamily Single-parent All other
Currently married 0.43 0.36 0.35 0.41 0.36* 0.41 0.37 0.39
Currently cohabiting 0.09 0.24* 0.21 0.07^ 0.31* 0.19* 0.19* 0.13
Family received welfare growing up 0.17 0.69* 0.57* 0.12^ 0.47*^ 0.53*^ 0.48*^ 0.35^
Currently on public assistance 0.10 0.38* 0.23 0.27* 0.31* 0.30* 0.30* 0.23*
Currently employed full-time 0.49 0.26* 0.34 0.41 0.42 0.47^ 0.43^ 0.39
Currently unemployed 0.08 0.28* 0.20 0.22* 0.15 0.14 0.13^ 0.15
Voted in last presidential election 0.57 0.41 0.73*^ 0.58 0.63^ 0.57^ 0.51 0.48
Thought recently about suicide 0.05 0.12 0.24* 0.07 0.08 0.10 0.05 0.09
Recently or currently in therapy 0.08 0.19* 0.19 0.22* 0.12 0.17* 0.13* 0.09
Identifies as entirely heterosexual 0.90 0.61* 0.71* 0.82^ 0.83^ 0.81*^ 0.83*^ 0.82*^
Is in a same-sex romantic relationship 0.04 0.07 0.12 0.23 0.05 0.13* 0.03 0.02
Had affair while married/cohabiting 0.13 0.40* 0.25 0.20 0.12^ 0.32* 0.19^ 0.16^
Has ever had an STI 0.08 0.20* 0.25* 0.16 0.12 0.16* 0.14* 0.08
Ever touched sexually by parent/adult 0.02 0.23* 0.06^ 0.03^ 0.10* 0.12* 0.10* 0.08*^
Ever forced to have sex against will 0.08 0.31* 0.25* 0.23* 0.24* 0.16* 0.16*^ 0.11^
Bold indicates the mean scores displayed are statistically-significantly different from IBFs (currently intact, bio mother/father household, column 1), without additional controls.An asterisk (*) next to the estimate indicates a statistically-significant difference (p < 0.05) between the group’s coefficient and that of IBF’s, controlling for respondent’s age, gender, race/ethnicity, level of mother’s education, perceived household income while growing up, experience being bullied as a youth, and state’s legislative gay-friendliness, derived from logistic regression models (not shown).A caret (^) next to the estimate indicates a statistically-significant difference (p < 0.05) between the group’s mean and the mean of LM (column 2), without additional controls.
