The kids are alright!
Golden Cradle® Adoption Services is a non-profit adoption and birth-parent services agency in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. It prides itself in evolving to keep pace with current research, and “relies on numerous studies that have shown that children with same-sex parents and children in same-sex adoption fare as well as those children with heterosexual parents”.
For example, Golden Cradle® describes an analysis of fifteen studies involving 500 same-sex parents by Tufts-New England Medical Center in Boston concluded that children from same-sex parents do just as well as children from heterosexual couples. All of these studies very consistently showed that factors such as self-esteem, relationship with peers, intelligence, behavior, and gender identity were the same whether children were raised by heterosexual couples or by same-sex couples.
One study followed children raised by same-sex parents for 11 years as they became adults. The conclusion was still the same: that these adults fared just as well as adults that had been raised by heterosexual parents. Factors analyzed were: sexual orientation identification, self-esteem, relationships with family, the ability to adjust, and underlying psychological issues.
Furthermore, it has been found that the sexual orientation of the parents does not determine what type of parental abilities the parents have. For example, in a study with lesbian couples, it was found that parental abilities and styles were the same between same-sex parents and heterosexual parents – other than the fact that the lesbian couples were more inclined to share household duties and do child rearing on a more equal basis.
