Children with same-sex parents thrive. The results of a study

It is not so much a question of “who” the parents are, but of “how” one is a parent. It is repeated over and over again, but perhaps never enough. In support of the fact that the sexual orientation of parents is not a determining factor for the development of children now comes a new study conducted by a research group of the Guangxi Medical University, China. Published by the magazine BMJ Global Healthhighlights once again that children’s development would not be negatively affected by having same-sex parents compared to heterosexual parents and could even be better off in some respects.

The analysis, which covered 34 studies performed in the past between the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Italy, confirms previous findings that children can thrive best in both same-sex and different-sex familiescontesting the notion that growing up with same-sex parents harms their development.

However, while, on the one hand, the researchers would not have found any adverse effects related to having same-sex parents, instead they identified significant impacts caused by stigma and by the scarce social support for this kind of families.
“This analysis showed that, between heterosexual and homosexual families, most outcomes are similar,” the authors write. “Research on non-straight parents and their children has broadened our understanding of contemporary family life and added new perspectives to our understanding of parenting and child development.”

Specifically, the research attempted to explore the common idea among homophobic activists that being a parent necessarily “requires” a boy and a girl to raise a child and that without this pairing the child will be worse off than peers from heterosexual families. . This has been refuted many times, but continues to be a widely held belief among traditionalists.

By scanning several scientific journals for articles examining family outcomes for heterosexual parents and homosexual parents, the authors identified 34 articles, later narrowed down to 16 after controlling for included covariates.

The analysis considered a number of parameters, including the parent-child relationships And the psychological adaptation of the child, looking for the differences between the two family models that many firmly believe can exist. They found that in parent-child relationships and psychological adjustment, families with same-sex parents actually performed better than heterosexual parents, but there were also some downsides. In the satisfaction with the couple relationshipin the parental mental healthin parenting stress It is in the family functioningsame-sex parents had worse outcomes, suggesting that the family pattern does not impact the child, but other factors may weigh negatively on the parents. These negative results were in fact related to social risk factors, such as lo little social support and the discrimination that the family may have to deal with.

In any case, the results suggest that children can thrive despite the social pressure exerted on their parents. “Same-sex parenting groups showed higher levels of quality of the parent-child relationshipas higher levels of heat, greater amounts of interaction And more supportive behaviorscompared to heterosexual parent groups,” wrote the authors, as reported by The Guardian.

The researchers hope the findings could lead to a better support for same-sex parent couples and a reduction in the stigma associated with them, including influencing politics and laws within communities.\

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