The vindication of Mark Regnerus

Social science is a discipline beset by challenges. In theory, it would be possible to experiment on human beings, even large groups of human beings, but the ethical challenges are virtually insuperable. There is a reason we no longer hear of exercises such as the Milgram experiment in which people were led to believe they punished wrong answers from others with increasingly painful (and apparently even lethal) electric shocks. Sometimes, we get the benefit of so-called natural experiments. As an example, we are able to compare the impact of two vastly different social systems on a people who are genetically the same. I’m speaking of North and South Korea. Same people, radically different effects. For outsiders looking in, it should be fairly obvious which system works better.

One area where social science has been able to draw some fairly strong conclusions over the years has been in family formation. By the turn of the millennium, it had become fairly clear that children from traditional families with a mother and father in the home fared better (as a group) by almost any measure than children whose parents were divorced or never married. They did better in school, were less likely to go to jail, had better career outcomes, were more likely to marry and stay married, etc. None of this should really be surprising given that traditional marriage offers a child the care and experience of parents from each of the two sexes with the complementary thinking, methods, and emotional approaches that come with having both available. In addition, traditional marriage features the two people with the greatest possible interest in the child all the way down to the genetic level. One consequence of the power of these studies was that the George W. Bush administration strongly endorsed initiatives aimed at strengthening both fatherhood and marriage in the underclass.

But at about the same time, gay marriage began to loom larger in the national consciousness. If we know that children generally flourish with mother and father in the home, then what about children with same-sex parents? The sociologist Mark Regnerus of the University of Texas took on that investigation. It is here that the often political nature of social science reared its head as it was clear that any answer other than that same-sex parenting is just as good or better than traditional male-female pairings would be met with a very negative reaction.

Regnerus’ study did, indeed, show that same-sex pairings (just as has been true of any family structure other than the traditional male-female married pair) fared worse for children. Predictably, there was a firestorm of reaction both from the American left and from the academy. Some demanded to see Regnerus investigated for misconduct. His bravery in being willing to engage in such an investigation and to stand by unwelcome results cannot be overstated. He could easily have ruined his career in the highly politicized social sciences.

Another interesting development in the social sciences of late has been the understanding that many studies have perhaps been manipulated to generate results that could not be replicated in a more neutral study. The vindication of Mark Regnerus has occurred in a book by social science researchers from Cornell, Young and Cumberworth. Their work focuses on how small analytical changes can yield significant alterations in results. Appropriately, given the fervor, they give significant attention to the Regnerus study, which has been so often pilloried due to its unwelcome conclusions. Would it hold up given all the accusations of abuse? Without going into great detail, their chapter on Regnerus provided support for the validity of his 2012 study and its conclusions.

Social science is never going to be able to deliver the kind of hard conclusions we can get through the operation of the physical sciences, but that doesn’t mean it can’t help us to improve our understanding of social dynamics, problems that beset individual lives, and how to shape public policy. But in order to do that, it must not be captive to ideological interests on either the left or the right. Certainly, it cannot be a bludgeon employed by some kind of social vanguard. The purpose of social science is not to tell us to follow our dreams, to live any sort of way we might choose and to expect that children will be endlessly malleable, or to serve as a cheerleader for any ideology. The purpose of social science is to help us understand our social world, both as individuals and as communities, so that we can better predict the effects of public and private choices and to know what paths may more likely lead toward public flourishing.

For Mark Regnerus, vindication for his work is good both for him and for social science as a discipline. More importantly, it’s good for children and families.