Australian Newspapers: Mental health risk of kids of homosexuals due to discrimination study suggests
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The Australian Medical journal posted the following study: The kids are OK: it is discrimination, not same-sex parents, that harms children.
IS THIS THE COMPLETE PICTURE?
Newspapers around Australia have promoted this Australian study. Their argument is stigma or discrimination harms kids of homosexual parents not homosexuality. It is call the -No Harm thesis. Newspapers have swallowed the article -verbatim. The study is a survey of all research done on homosexual families and children. The study says 'overall the consensus is there is no harm" - the only harm is discrimination. Therefore, those who object openly to homosexual marriage should be silent - because it causes mental health issues with children of homosexuals.
WHAT WASN'T SAID?
This study acknowledges the NFSS research which came to a different conclusion. The reference list three critics, of the NFSS study. One paper doesnt address the NFSS and the other two critics are addresses by NFSS itself. It appears to be very convenient to ignore this elephant in the room. Why?
University of Texas sociologist Mark Regnerus published a study last year indicating that children who grew up in households where at least one parent had had a same-sex relationship reported higher rates of problems — unhappiness, relationship instability, etc. Conservative groups cited the study to argue against gay-marriage laws such as the one in California now under Supreme Court review. Points asked Regnerus to assess the repercussions of his research, which is available online at sciencedirect.com.
Some have seized on your research to argue that gay marriage is bad for children. How has this kind of politicization affected you?
I take responsibility for what is written — on a sensitive subject, no doubt — but not for what others make of it. Plenty of social conservatives made more of it than it deserves, while many social liberals went in the opposite direction, mindlessly denouncing it as having nothing interesting to say at all.
What has been the fallout for you, personally?
It’s been an interesting year, for sure. I think I’ve dealt with the ad hominem attacks fairly well. What I don’t want to do is make it personal. This is about ideas and science. I realize that this subject matter raises questions — and passions — about different visions for the just and good society. But civility seems increasingly uncommon here, and that is to be profoundly lamented.
You have welcomed scholarly attention and scrutiny, and you’ve certainly received it. Has any of the criticism raised valid points?
Sure, there are valid criticisms, as with any study, and I addressed several of them in a response and re-analysis of data that was published in the same journal [Social Science Research] last November. … As I wrote in the original study, others will approach the study of this subject a bit differently, with different classification rules of thumb or alternative statistical modeling approaches. That’s how science works, and that’s fine. … But when scholars howl on Day One of the study’s release — or when bloggers start lecturing me about sampling methods — well, that’s when you know that the matter has escaped the boundaries of normal science and gone off the rails a bit. I hope for cooler heads to prevail in the future, but I’m not optimistic about that.
Is there a specific time frame — a few days, two years, five years — that qualifies the parent’s same-sex experience as relevant to a child’s upbringing and future outcomes?
The study itself is billed as a generalist overview, and has features — including who lived in the household with the respondent every year of their life — that are unique to the data and make it a very comprehensive, strong dataset. … [For example,] roughly half of that small population never lived with their mother and her same-sex partner at the same time, while the other half lived with both for at least four months. Dwindling numbers of them shared the same domicile for five, 10, 15 or all 18 years. Stability in such households was quite uncommon in the population at large. How relevant a parent’s same-sex relationship experience is for a child’s upbringing is, of course, a viable empirical question, but … not every good question has data to answer it yet.
The study seems to treat same-sex experience and gayness as interchangeable. Aren’t there several shades of gray?
The study’s key question concerns the respondent’s awareness of a parent’s same-sex romantic relationship. While I took pains to assert that I wasn’t making claims about the sexual orientation of their parent — because we didn’t ask about it — it’s something I wish I had stated with greater clarity, and I did so in the follow-up response to critics. The reason we didn’t ask about parental sexual orientation is because in that era of study — remember, these are parents of people who are now as old as 39 — how the parent self-identifies, or how the child identifies the parent, is a rather subjective marker. Critics are applying today’s standards about orientation and openness to social realities of two or three decades ago. It’s anachronistic.
We preferred to assess the simple awareness of a more objective marker — a parent’s romantic relationship with someone of the same sex. … The science here is relatively new, and the population of study comparatively small. Generating a random sample here of a size and depth of complexity that would please everyone is a tall order and unbelievably expensive. We do the best we can with what is possible. I wish that such scrutiny had been directed at previous studies on the matter with the same unbending intensity as it has with mine.
Are your comparisons regarding the problems these children experience — unhappiness, attachment anxiety, impulsivity, etc. — only within the sample group, or do you compare those problems to what the general young-adult population experiences across the country?
No, I didn’t compare respondents to an overall category of average young adults. The comparisons in this study are made solely between the sampled groups here, which nevertheless comprised most respondents. But the advantage in a study like this one is that its sample is a population-based one, meaning its findings are representative of the population at large. …
One could wish that randomly screening over 15,000 young adults would turn up more reports of households headed by same-sex parents in stable relationships, but this study did not. Whether studies of today’s parents of smaller children would reveal more stability is anyone’s guess. It’s an empirical question.
This Q&A was conducted and condensed by Dallas Morning News editorial writer Tod Robberson. His email address is trobberson@dallasnews.com. Mark Regnerus can be reached at regnerus@prc.utexas.edu.
Newspapers around Australia have promoted this Australian study. Their argument is stigma or discrimination harms kids of homosexual parents not homosexuality. It is call the -No Harm thesis. Newspapers have swallowed the article -verbatim. The study is a survey of all research done on homosexual families and children. The study says 'overall the consensus is there is no harm" - the only harm is discrimination. Therefore, those who object openly to homosexual marriage should be silent - because it causes mental health issues with children of homosexuals.
WHAT WASN'T SAID?
This study acknowledges the NFSS research which came to a different conclusion. The reference list three critics, of the NFSS study. One paper doesnt address the NFSS and the other two critics are addresses by NFSS itself. It appears to be very convenient to ignore this elephant in the room. Why?
The public and academic reaction to Regnerus' research has been referred to as a "witch hunt" by his former mentor Christian Smith.In his book The Sacred Project of American Sociology, Smith calls this backlash a result of the content of sociology's "sacred project" (of mitigating oppression, inequality, etc.); Smith argued that the critical reaction e.g. on methodological issues displayed a set of double standards insofar as work by other scholars could be (but is generally not) subjected to similar criticism.Smith said that "The push-back" to Regnerus' article "is coming simply because some people don't like where the data led."
So what does Mark Regnerus say?
University of Texas sociologist Mark Regnerus published a study last year indicating that children who grew up in households where at least one parent had had a same-sex relationship reported higher rates of problems — unhappiness, relationship instability, etc. Conservative groups cited the study to argue against gay-marriage laws such as the one in California now under Supreme Court review. Points asked Regnerus to assess the repercussions of his research, which is available online at sciencedirect.com.
Some have seized on your research to argue that gay marriage is bad for children. How has this kind of politicization affected you?
I take responsibility for what is written — on a sensitive subject, no doubt — but not for what others make of it. Plenty of social conservatives made more of it than it deserves, while many social liberals went in the opposite direction, mindlessly denouncing it as having nothing interesting to say at all.
What has been the fallout for you, personally?
It’s been an interesting year, for sure. I think I’ve dealt with the ad hominem attacks fairly well. What I don’t want to do is make it personal. This is about ideas and science. I realize that this subject matter raises questions — and passions — about different visions for the just and good society. But civility seems increasingly uncommon here, and that is to be profoundly lamented.
You have welcomed scholarly attention and scrutiny, and you’ve certainly received it. Has any of the criticism raised valid points?
Sure, there are valid criticisms, as with any study, and I addressed several of them in a response and re-analysis of data that was published in the same journal [Social Science Research] last November. … As I wrote in the original study, others will approach the study of this subject a bit differently, with different classification rules of thumb or alternative statistical modeling approaches. That’s how science works, and that’s fine. … But when scholars howl on Day One of the study’s release — or when bloggers start lecturing me about sampling methods — well, that’s when you know that the matter has escaped the boundaries of normal science and gone off the rails a bit. I hope for cooler heads to prevail in the future, but I’m not optimistic about that.
Is there a specific time frame — a few days, two years, five years — that qualifies the parent’s same-sex experience as relevant to a child’s upbringing and future outcomes?
The study itself is billed as a generalist overview, and has features — including who lived in the household with the respondent every year of their life — that are unique to the data and make it a very comprehensive, strong dataset. … [For example,] roughly half of that small population never lived with their mother and her same-sex partner at the same time, while the other half lived with both for at least four months. Dwindling numbers of them shared the same domicile for five, 10, 15 or all 18 years. Stability in such households was quite uncommon in the population at large. How relevant a parent’s same-sex relationship experience is for a child’s upbringing is, of course, a viable empirical question, but … not every good question has data to answer it yet.
The study seems to treat same-sex experience and gayness as interchangeable. Aren’t there several shades of gray?
The study’s key question concerns the respondent’s awareness of a parent’s same-sex romantic relationship. While I took pains to assert that I wasn’t making claims about the sexual orientation of their parent — because we didn’t ask about it — it’s something I wish I had stated with greater clarity, and I did so in the follow-up response to critics. The reason we didn’t ask about parental sexual orientation is because in that era of study — remember, these are parents of people who are now as old as 39 — how the parent self-identifies, or how the child identifies the parent, is a rather subjective marker. Critics are applying today’s standards about orientation and openness to social realities of two or three decades ago. It’s anachronistic.
We preferred to assess the simple awareness of a more objective marker — a parent’s romantic relationship with someone of the same sex. … The science here is relatively new, and the population of study comparatively small. Generating a random sample here of a size and depth of complexity that would please everyone is a tall order and unbelievably expensive. We do the best we can with what is possible. I wish that such scrutiny had been directed at previous studies on the matter with the same unbending intensity as it has with mine.
Are your comparisons regarding the problems these children experience — unhappiness, attachment anxiety, impulsivity, etc. — only within the sample group, or do you compare those problems to what the general young-adult population experiences across the country?
No, I didn’t compare respondents to an overall category of average young adults. The comparisons in this study are made solely between the sampled groups here, which nevertheless comprised most respondents. But the advantage in a study like this one is that its sample is a population-based one, meaning its findings are representative of the population at large. …
One could wish that randomly screening over 15,000 young adults would turn up more reports of households headed by same-sex parents in stable relationships, but this study did not. Whether studies of today’s parents of smaller children would reveal more stability is anyone’s guess. It’s an empirical question.
This Q&A was conducted and condensed by Dallas Morning News editorial writer Tod Robberson. His email address is trobberson@dallasnews.com. Mark Regnerus can be reached at regnerus@prc.utexas.edu.
