Um, all right, I've looked over the links, and most of them have to do with single parenting, which is not the question. A few may support the importance of a father (like, a male one); none speak to the importance of having a mother, which I suppose is taken as a given. Anyway, here's my take. Not particularly germaine or convincing.
Before I get started with the links, even if I accept that an otherwise identical straight couple is better suited to rais a child than their doppleganger gay couple, what is the likelihood of such a choice having to be made? By placing a flat preference on straight parents over gay ones, you increase the very real possibility that you pass over situations in a particular gay couple would be demonstrably better suited to raise a kid than a particular straight couple.
Anyway, here goes...
Family Institute
http://www2.duq.edu/familyinstitute/templates/features/csmf/children.html
Much data here goes uncited, though the data themselves don't seem ridiculous. This bit
Quote: Family structure directly influences the income of the various family systems in which American children are being raised. Traditional nuclear families enjoy a median income of $48,000. Stepfamilies average an income of $45,900. Cohabiting couples subsist on a common annual wealth of $25,000. Divorced/Separated families live on approximately $18, 500 a year. Finally, never-married, single families exist on an annual income of $15,000 (See Figure 4.6).
confuses median and average, which is a small warning sign that any analysis of statistics should be taken with a grain of salt. Anyway, this only speaks to families that have had disruptions - i.e., divorce. Since divorce itself is probably correlated to a certain extent with other factors that would cause instability in a home, increased rates among children of divorced parents isn't surprising - though I fail to see what it has to do with the issue of gay marriage.
I could also note that this is a Catholic university if the web page made any particularly strong claims, but what is presented is pretty ho-hum data.
Kids do better in two-parent homes
http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/710/context/archive
This is an article about children of single parents, not of paired gay or lesbian parents.
Sneer not at Ozzie & Harriett
http://www.keepmedia.com/ShowItemDetails.do?itemID=33836
Another article about single parents. One thing that intrigues me about this article, though: it holds up the nuclear family as the traditional model, when in fact the extended family is far more prominent in our heritage. The nuclear family was singularly strange, and I might be inclined to argue that this strong insulation of the nuclear family away from the extended family amplifies problems between parents and children and among siblings. But that would be an enormous tangent.
Dan Quayle was right
http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/civilization/cc0039.html
Another article about how children suffer in single parent households and as a result of divorce - again, not directly relevant to the current discussion, which has evolved into a discussion of the effect of a two same-sex parent household. There is a bit about the effect of absent fathers, but there is no mention that gender is a key factor here. In fact, the assumption seems to be that the children will end up with their mother with a visiting father. While this is usually the case, it would be interesting to see if there were any differences for children raised by single fathers. Alas, nothing.
Also, I wouldn't make too much of the data presented that boys in disrupted (assumed to be no father) homes are more likely drop out of school than girls in disrupted families. To make anything of this, you'd have to demonstrate that this is
not the case in intact families.
About the only potentially relevant article I can find in this article is, "Change is bad." (A cheeky oversimplification, but, damn it, I gotta be cheeky sometimes.)
Eric Digests
http://www.ericfacility.net/ericdigests/ed355314.html
I get a 404 error on this one. Sorry.
Marriage Equality - California
http://www.marriageequalityca.org/parenting_articles.php#article3
Huh? Where is the negative data here? All I can find is this:
Quote: But Amy Desai, a policy analyst with the group Focus on the Family, said the new report is alarming in its suggestions that children of gay parents might be more open to homosexual activity. "Kids do best when they have a married mother and a married father," she said.
Which, um, I don't see as a problem. And I'll let other people rant about Focus on the Family, if they are so inclined.
Marriage Watch
http://www.amptoons.com/blog/001061.html
???
Why children need mother love and father love
http://www.family.org/cforum/fosi/marriage/ssuap/a0027554.cfm
Here, at least, is something. Granted, I grew up with a father and a mother, and the gender roles that this article describes for parents don't match with mine at all, but that's a whole different matter. There's something here, and some credible sources are cited - articles from peer-reviewed journals (none of which examine gay parenting directly). There is a largely unsubstantiated assumption that two gay men will both behave like traditional fathers, and that two lesbians will both behave like traditional mothers - and that neither situation offers benefits to children that are
not present in a "normal" family.
Some research reports
http://fatherfamilylink.gse.upenn.edu/research/recent/2001a.htm
This amuses me
Quote: Overall, women are younger than men when they become pregnant.
Again, this appears to be a bunch of stuff about divorce and parental absence, not about same-sex parents, though I admit I jumped around and looked at random articles. (I should be doing something else right now.) Yes, there are suggestions that fathers are very beneficial, but, again, none of these directly address same-sex parenting. Additionally, many of the problems noted here (and elsewhere) associated with the absence of a father are also associated with poverty and/or lack of supervision.
The article by Ahlberg and Sandnabba at least looks at parenting styles, but seems to suggest primarily that how you are parented influences how you parent - duh
Role of fathers
http://www.civitas.org.uk/hwu/fathers.php
This is the sort of evidence presented here:
Quote: 'Do fathers and mothers have different styles of play? Consider these two examples: a father picks up his son, seven-month-old David, tosses him in the air, and throws his head back so that he and David are face to face. As David giggles and chortles, his father lowers him, shakes him, and tosses him up in the air again. A mother sits her daughter, ten-month-old Lisa, on her lap and pulls out her favourite toy, a green donkey that brays when you squeeze it. Lisa smiles, and for the next few minutes her mother moves the donkey in front of Lisa's eyes, makes it bray, and talks and sings to her daughter. Lisa watches intently, smiles, and occasionally reaches for her donkey. Are these examples merely cultural stereotypes, or do mothers and fathers really play with their babies in different ways? A series of studies confirm that differences in parental play styles do exist.'
Differences in parental styles that may well be tied to one's own gender construction, which is highly variable among both the straight and gay "communities." Gay couples are already existing somewhat outside the accepted social norm; there is no reason to assume that their styles of interaction are consistent with social norms. And I might also counter with another stereotype: that of the "butch" and "femme" dynamic in a gay or lesbian couple
If, on the other hand, the importance is purported to be biological, one might asked if there are differences in the bonds formed between adoptive fathers and children.
But that's not the focus of this article anyhow. At every step of the way, the alternative to the presence of a father appears to be the absence of a father - not a same-sex couple.
Marriage and child poverty
http://www.heritage.org/Research/Family/CDA02-04.cfm
Marriage and poverty. Single parents are more likely to be poor than married parents. Not relevant to current discussion.
Australian study
http://www.aifs.org.au/institute/pubs/RP30.html#implications
Quote: In contrast to research on single-parent and stepfamilies, research to date has shown that children in same-sex couple families are no more likely to experience psychological disorder than children growing up in more traditional family types (Golombok and Tasker 1994; Green, Mandel, Hotvedt, Gray and Smth 1986; Golombok 1999). However, gay and lesbian-parent families have been little researched. More work is needed in Australia to understand the dynamics of gay and lesbian families and the developmental trajectories of their children.
Sure. More work is always good.
Quote: Gay and lesbian parents may encounter additional issues because of their situation as members of a stigmatised community.
Yeah. That's true for a lot of people. This article doesn't come up with (nor does it purport to come up with) any evidence that having same-sex parents is bad for kids.
Crime and family disruption in US cities
http://www.children.smartlibrary.info/NewInterface/segment.cfm?segment=1594&table_of_contents=1505
Single parenting and crime. Not relevant.
Family data base
http://www.heritage.org/research/features/familydatabase/results.cfm?Key=160
Um, is there anything in here that's not focused on single parents and/or teenage mothers and/or poverty and/or food stamps? Really, a bunch of articles saying that marriage is good makes me think we ought to extend the blessings of the institution to more people
Asian families
http://www.arthurhu.com/index/family.htm
I don't see the relevance of this one, either, but
Quote: Asians have problems, but fewer of them. Significantly, although black problems are widely publicized, the strength of Asian families and outcomes seems to be deliberately hidden from discussion as part of the general supression of the "model minority".
Really? When the apparent success of Asian-Americans (a vastly heterogeneous class of people, but whatever), family influence is cited as
the reason. Where is this straw man?
Gay Lesbian adoption - a third view
http://www.abolishadoption.com/gay.html
Er, it would take more time than I'm willing to invest to figure out what's going on with this site.
