Study: Same-sex parents just aren't the same

Growing up in a lesbian household, Robert Oscar Lopez felt like he was the one living in a closet. In his younger years, he tried to hide his mother’s lifestyle from other people, and later he tried to hide the politically incorrect frustration he felt being raised by two women, with no male role model.

“I was a nervous child. I was an awkward child,” he said. “I had a very difficult time maintaining friendships.”

Today he attributes his childhood insecurity to his unorthodox upbringing.

“It’s a very dysfunctional model,” said Lopez, now an English professor at California State University-Northridge. “If you have a biological parent who has been cut out of your life, there’s another person who’s not a parent that you’re expected to treat like a parent.”

According to a new study of tens of thousands of households from across the United States, children raised by same-sex parents are twice as likely to suffer emotional and behavioral problems as children with heterosexual parents. And compared with children raised jointly by their own biological parents, children from same-sex households are four times as likely to suffer problems such as depression, anxiety, defiance, or inattention.

The new research, involving 512 children of same-sex couples, comes at a time when the U.S. Supreme Court is weighing whether to declare homosexual marriage a constitutional right. Several now-adult children of gay couples, including Lopez, have begun to speak publicly against what they say is a problematic parenting model.

The latest findings suggest it is biology—not bullying, poverty, or family stability—that makes kids from gay households more likely to struggle emotionally.

“Biological relationship, it appears, is both necessary and sufficient to explain the higher risk of emotional problems faced by children with same-sex parents,” wrote the author of the study, D. Paul Sullins, a sociology professor at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.

In the study, 4 percent of children living with both biological parents experienced emotional problems, compared with 10 percent of children living with only one biological parent, and 21 percent of children living with no biological parent, Sullins told me by email. The reason same-sex households carry increased risk for children is because they are inherently unable to provide a home with two biological parents.

The findings run counter to dozens of previous studies that found no increased health risks for the children of homosexual couples. But many of those studies relied on “nonrandom recruited samples,” meaning study participants came from gay advocacy events, websites, and publications.

The new research, scheduled to be published in the February issue of the British Journal of Education, Society & Behavioural Science, is based on a random population sample less prone to bias. Sullins used a massive database of information on U.S. households known as the National Health Interview Survey, administered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The database included information on 1.6 million people (including children) interviewed between 1997 and 2013. It included 2,751 cohabiting same-sex couples (447 of those couples were married). Of these, Sullins analyzed 512 same-sex couples who had a child under the age of 18 living in the home.

About 1 in 4 children from same-sex households were likely to visit a mental health professional at some point, compared to about 1 in 5 children from opposite-sex households, after adjusting for factors of race, age, sex, parental income and education. Among children in same-sex households, about 17 percent experienced serious emotional problems, and about 19 percent experienced developmental problems like ADHD or learning disabilities, compared with 7 percent and 10 percent of children in opposite-sex households, respectively.

Although same-sex parents were slightly more likely to be impoverished or to have experienced psychological problems than opposite-sex parents, the differences were not statistically significant and didn’t account for the emotional problems their children experienced.

Some have claimed bullying or social stigma may explain emotional difficulties experienced by kids in homosexual households. But the study found same-sex parents were slightly less likely than other parents to say their child had been teased or bullied, although the difference was too small to be statistically significant.

The only variable explaining the increased health risks, Sullins concluded, was whether the child had a biological relationship with his or her parents. Other studies have shown that adopted children with no biological relationship to either parent also face a higher risk for emotional or behavioral problems. (In Sullins’ study, children of same-sex parents were sometimes adopted and sometimes biologically related to one of the same-sex partners.)

“The point is not that same-sex persons, whether married or not, are somehow less loving or effective as parents—I have no evidence for this one way or the other,” said Sullins. “But that, unlike opposite-sex partners, they cannot jointly procreate a child, which is the type of natural relationship in which children thrive best, by far, with regard to emotional health.”

A separate study by Sullins, published in January in the British Journal of Medicine and Medical Research, found children of same-sex couples are twice as likely to develop attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) as other children.

In spite of the increased risk, Sullins noted that even among same-sex households, most kids grow up to be seemingly well-adjusted.

But the data do not support the idea that kids’ emotional health would improve if their parents had legal permission to marry: “Functionally, opposite-sex marriage is a social practice that, as much as possible, ensures to children the joint care of both biological parents, with the attendant benefits that brings; same-sex marriage ensures the opposite.”

Sullins’ study seems to support the results of a 2012 study of young adults by University of Texas sociologist Mark Regnerus, who found those raised in same-sex households were more likely to be unemployed, depressed, unhealthy, promiscuous, and to have a negative view of their childhood.

“Biology matters,” wrote Regnerus last week, commenting on the new study. “And no amount of legislation, litigation, or cheerleading can alter that.”

Editor's note: This article was edited to clarify that D. Paul Sullins said the study found that 4 percent of children living with both biological parents experienced emotional problems.