Quote:I doubt many people would find credible a series of studies done by or funded by tobacco growers/cigarette manufacturers that seemed to say that smoking is good for you. Similarly there have been numerous studies done by or funded by groups who promote gay marriage, adoption of children by gays, etc. etc. A close look will usually indicate no substantiation for the method or that the sampling used was too small to be statistically significant.
Agreed -- agreed enthusiastically, even. I've been poking around a social science database throw the U. Wisc. library for a few minutes here (http://biblioline.nisc.com) and haven't found any compelling abstracts whatsoever.
Fer instance, I get things like this:
Quote:Author: Kurdek, Lawrence A.
Source: Journal of Family Issues, 22(6), 727-754; 2001 ISSN: 0192-513X
Notes: 65 refs.; 3 tables
Publication Type: Journal Article
Abstract:
Both partners from gay, lesbian, heterosexual-parent, and heterosexual-nonparent couples completed surveys at seven time points (n = 150, 102, 90, and 108 couples, respectively, at the first assessment) that assessed variables from the following five domains relevant to close relationships: individual differences, relationship schemas, conflict resolution, social support, and relationship quality. Although the type-of-couple differences that were significant were nearly all small in size relative to partners from heterosexual-nonparent couples, those from gay or lesbian couples reported less social support from family members, those from lesbian couples reported more positive relationship quality, and those from heterosexual-parent couples reported more negative relationship quality.
Which is pretty much nothing, right?
Well, there is the affidavit of Steven Nock of the sociology department at the University of Virginia, who concludes that there is not sufficient research to support the claim that gay parenting (for lack of a better term) does not have a deletorious impact on child-rearing. It's a response to another individual's affidavit that it there was no negative impact, but it is notable that Professor Nock does not present any studies indicating that there
is a negative impact, either. You can download it if you want -- the first 40 pages or so is a rundown of statiscal methods. I do present the warning that it's a big file, though:
PDF link
I did retrieve a review on the subject from "Marriage and Family Review" (http://www.haworthpressinc.com/web/MFR/ , though I may only be able to retrieve the article because I log in through the university) that I have not had a chance to read. Citation info is Fitzgerald, B. Children of Lesbian and Gay Parents: A Review of the Literature. Marriage and Family Rev., 29(1):57-75, 1999.
I haven't had a chance to read the thing, but the abstract concludes:
Quote:The body of literature generally concludes that children with lesbian and gay parents are developing psychologically, intellectually, ehaviorally, and emotionally in positive directions, and that the sexual orientation of parents is not an effective or important predictor of successful child
development. The paper also includes a discussion of the limitations of these studies, provides suggestions for future research, and discusses the challenge these families pose for the meaning and definition of family.
Again, though, I'm leery of these sorts of things, and the author of the review was a grad student at SUNY Albany, so who knows what the agenda is. If someone is really interested in reading the thing -- I must admit that I'm not -- I can email it along. In a very brief skim, the sample sizes of the cited studies were small. On a subject like this, though, it's going to be very hard to generate a large sample, and the most important thing is not the size of the sample but whether it was random or not.
Charlotte Patterson's 1992 review in
Child Development reaches the same conclusion, but that is a very old review.
