I haven't looked at the actual study yet, but from New Scientist's description of it it sounds like it was pretty well designed. The only problem with it that I can see is the relatively small sample size.
Posted by Belle (Member # 2314) on :
The sample size is indeed a big problem - 44 out of 12,000.
However, it isn't surprising that when you match up teens
quote:who shared the same sex, age, ethnicity, adoption status and family income, among other factors.
You are going to find that there aren't many significant differences.
Still, it's difficult to draw conclusions when you're talking about a sample size that's approximately .4% of the total.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
"However, it isn't surprising that when you match up teens who shared the same sex, age, ethnicity, adoption status and family income, among other factors, you are going to find that there aren't many significant differences."
If only everyone who opposed same-sex marriage felt this way....
Posted by Miro (Member # 1178) on :
But isn't that the point? To reduce the other variables as much as possible so that any differences observed are more likely to be due to the variable in question?
Posted by Belle (Member # 2314) on :
There's too many variables we don't know, if they're in the study, the article doesn't give us the information.
Are the teens living with two adopted parents, or with one natural mother and another woman?
Have the women been living together for the entirety of the teens lives, or for only a short time?
If one of the women is the natural mother, was there a divorce situation, and if so does the teen have contact with the father at all?
Those are all things I'd like to look at, and even so - it's hard to draw conclusions when the sample size is so tiny.
Unfortunately, it's going to be hard to ever get good data on these populations, since the percentage of gays in the overall population is so small. The percentage raising children is going to be even smaller.
Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :
quote: Unfortunately, it's going to be hard to ever get good data on these populations, since the percentage of gays in the overall population is so small.
The number that keeps being bandied about is that 10% are gay. That's pretty big.
Posted by Xaposert (Member # 1612) on :
I've heard 2-3%.
Posted by Belle (Member # 2314) on :
The 10% number has been shown by many reputable studies to be incorrect. 2-3% is the more widely accepted number.
Posted by PSI Teleport (Member # 5545) on :
Well, I suppose that ten percent is pretty accurate for the people that I know, not that that's proof of much.
[ November 16, 2004, 10:22 AM: Message edited by: PSI Teleport ]
Posted by Belle (Member # 2314) on :
The 10% figure comes from Kinsey, and his data was flawed:
quote:Several recent studies call into serious question the 1948 Kinsey research figures often quoted by homosexuals to suggest a 10% homosexual presence in the general population. In their book, Kinsey, Sex and Fraud, (Lochinvar-Huntington House pub., 1990) Reisman and Eichel point out that Kinsey's data base was clearly skewed by his choice to include a high percentage of prison inmates and known sex offenders. (Convicted criminals comprised a full 25% of Kinsey's male sample, though they made up less than 1% of the total U.S. population.) Both practice homosexual behavior much more frequently than individuals in the general population.
The three percent number comes from people who've stated they've had at least ONE homosexual encounter, not people who are exclusively homosexual.
quote:Recent national surveys of about 10,000 subjects conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control report less than 3% of men as saying they have had sex with another man "at some time since 1977, even one time ("AIDS Knowledge and Attitudes for January-March, 1990, Provisional Data From the National Health Interview Survey," Deborah Dawson; Joseph E. Fitti and Marcie Cynamon, op. cit. for April-June, 1990; Pamela F. Adams and Ann M. Hardy, op. cit. for July-September, 1990, in Advance Data, #s 193,195,198, National Center for Health Statistics, Centers for Disease Control, Public Health Service, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, p. 11 in all three documents).
Those that are exclusively homosexual, may be as low as 1%.
quote:Tom W. Smith's much more recent study, Adult Sexual Behavior in 1989: Numbers of Partners, Frequency and Risk, conducted among a full probability sample of the adult U.S. household population, reported that "Overall... less than 1% [of the study population] has been exclusively homosexual."
Even gay activists have admitted that the 10% figure was used to further their political agendas.
quote:Gay activists repeat the 10% figure with broken-record frequency because they know it is key to their efforts to advancing their political agenda. Activist Bruce Voeller said in a recent book:
"I campaigned with Gay groups and in the media across the country for the Kinsey-based [10%] finding that `We are everywhere.' This slogan became a National Gay Task Force leitmotif. And the issues derived from the implications of the Kinsey data became key parts of the national political, educational and legislative programs during my years at New York's Gay Activist Alliance and the National Gay Task Force. And after years of our educating those who inform the public and make its laws, the concept that 10 percent of the population is gay has become generally accepted `fact.' While some reminding always seems necessary, the 10 percent figure is regularly utilized by scholars, by the press, and in government statistics. As with so many pieces of knowledge and myth, repeated telling made it so -- incredible as the notion was to the world when the Kinsey group first put forth its data or decades later when the Gay Movement pressed that data into public consciousness" ("Some Uses and Abuses of the Kinsey Scale," Bruce Voeller, Homosexuality, Heterosexuality: Concepts of Sexual Orientation, The Kinsey Institute Series, June Machover Reinisch, ed., Oxford University Press, 1990, p. 35, emphasis added).
Me, I wonder how anybody could think they have an accurate number.
Surveys and polls are not nearly as accurate as pollsters would have us think, as this election pointed out very nicely.
And how many people are entirely honest when strangers ask them questions about their sex lives? I laugh when I see reports on teenage sexuality because I remember answering such questions when I was in school and my friends and I would compare notes afterwards to see what we said. It was amazing how many of my friends had conveniently out-of-state girlfriends...
How many of the population are gay? How many of the population know they're gay and admit to it? How many of the population don't know they're gay but really are? How many of the population have had homosexual experiences but would self-identify as heterosexual? How many of the population are straight but would totally do Johnny Depp? How many of the population are bisexual? How many of the population are bisexual to some degree? How many of the population have considered themselves gay at one point or another in their lives? How many of the population suspect that they might be gay but fight daily against the impulse? How many of the population have no sexual drive at all, or a very, very low one? (And why aren't they considered even more unnatural than homosexuals?) How many of the population were asked? In what areas of the country? How many of the population would answer any of this to some lady in the mall holding a clipboard?
That last is me being cynical, I'm sure that precautions are taken to relax the subjects. But still, I don't really trust any of the reliable numbers given for homosexual percentage of the population. I assume that gay activists will go with the highest figure they can justify, and that others will prefer the lower figures. Doesn't really matter to me, frankly.
[ November 16, 2004, 10:34 AM: Message edited by: Chris Bridges ]
Posted by Belle (Member # 2314) on :
quote:Well, I suppose that ten percent is pretty accurate for the people that I know, not that that's proof of much.
Well, for the people I know, the 1% is more accurate.
Luckily, there are studies that are much more reliable than our personal contacts.
Of course, it will matter where you live - San Francisco has a much higher population of gays than my tiny Alabama town.
Posted by Miro (Member # 1178) on :
Belle, I was responding to
quote:
quote:quote: who shared the same sex, age, ethnicity, adoption status and family income, among other factors.
You are going to find that there aren't many significant differences.
Posted by Scott R (Member # 567) on :
quote:How many of the population would answer any of this to some lady in the mall holding a clipboard?
I drop kick those old ladies and run.
[ November 16, 2004, 10:39 AM: Message edited by: Scott R ]
Posted by dabbler (Member # 6443) on :
Lets just get this out of the way...
What's a large enough sample?
100 kids? 300 kids?
1 million kids? It's not fair to always say "We need a bigger sample. That's not enough." It's hard enough to find these kids when you make it so difficult for gay couples to adopt.
Posted by Scott R (Member # 567) on :
And yet, dabbler, your assertion does not make this study any more valid.
Interesting.
Posted by Belle (Member # 2314) on :
Chris, I'm skeptical of these things too - I'm never one for relying on the accuracy of population studies.
What I do know, and I think we can agree on this, is that it's incredibly dishonest to keep spouting a number that has been shown to be from an extremely flawed study, when you know otherwise. The Kinsey number is, as far as I know, the only one that asserts a percentage as high as 10%. Far more recent and more reputable studies have shown numbers much, much lower.
whether or not you trust any studies at all, one would think that you would denounce one that has been proven to be inaccurate. (and that's a universal you, not directed at Chris) I don't mind it when people question the validity of studies. I do find it disturbing when people cling to the numbers of one shown to be biased and inaccurate simply for politcal gain.
How can we examine issues, like this study of teens raised by lesbians, if we don't have the facts? And even if we don't have all the facts, let's at least stop using ones we know aren't right.
Posted by dkw (Member # 3264) on :
For the purposes of this study, the percentage of people who are actually gay doesn’t matter. The percentage of custodial parents who are openly gay monogamous couples is the issue, and no one’s arguing that it’s 10%, or even 2-3%.
Posted by Belle (Member # 2314) on :
But mph's post was about the number of gays in the total population, his post was directed at my statement that the number of gays was so small, it would be hard to get a good sample, ever.
His assertion was that with gays being 10% of the total population, that wasn't an insignificant percentage. That prompted me to point out that his number was popularly believed, but statistically unfounded.
This is an important point, I think. When we're discussing social issues, we should be as accurate in our information as possible.
Posted by Bokonon (Member # 480) on :
And yet, Belle, just about anyone with an agenda tends to resort to that sort of cherry-picking to support their case, given enough time.
C'est la vie!
-Bok
Posted by dabbler (Member # 6443) on :
and yet, Scott, I made no assertions about this study.
I just want some ground rules, what will it take to prove that gay couples raise children equivalently to straight couples?
Posted by Belle (Member # 2314) on :
quote:And yet, Belle, just about anyone with an agenda tends to resort to that sort of cherry-picking to support their case, given enough time.
True. And I speak out against it even when it's my side that's doing the cherry picking.
For a recent example, when Sara questioned a figure I posted about viability being 19 weeks, and I did the research, I came back and posted that the number was in fact most likely due to a miscalculation of the dating, and was unproven and highly unreliable.
My cause (pro-life) champions that number of 19 weeks a lot, and I now think they shouldn't. The number is based on a single case, for which no reliable data can really be determined, and that's not enough. Instead, the more accepted number of 22 weeks should re referred to as the current "viability limit."
Bandying about unreliable facts weakens your argument - let's discuss the issues, but let's be accurate when we do to the best of our ability.
Posted by Bokonon (Member # 480) on :
I would also add that 44 respondents may actually be statiscally significant enough depending on how the study is set up. I mean, you realize they can get the presidential race right, within margins of error, a race where over 100 million people vote, by simply polling a couple thousand people. that's 2000/100000000, or .0002% of the population?
-Bok
Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :
Sun, I don't know exactly how large is large enough, and I can certainly understand why they had difficulty in fielding a larger group of subjects. It's just that at some point you get down to the "A third of the subjects experienced dramatic improvement, a third of the subjects showed no improvement, and the other one ran away." problem.
Posted by Bokonon (Member # 480) on :
I did some more math. Let's assume the USA population is 300million (it's likely a bit less than that, but this is a nice round number). Let's assume the % of gays (not gay parents, or just lesbians, the raw number of gay citizens), is 3%, at the high end of the scale. That would be 9,000,000. If you divide the number of respondents (44) into the gay population, thus determining the percentage you end up with a percentage of .00048%, whih is double the rate of the sample in all the polls for president? I'd guess that unless there was a systemic omission or error, that we can draw about as accurate conclusions as we can from presidential polls, which is to say, fairly good. Especially considering we have twice the sample, and children don't change opinion on whther they are being raised in a family of two women in a "marriage-like" relationship, liek people can and do in a presidential race..
Now, there are a few things that could throw it off, some of the 44 could be sibling,s there could be fewer gay folks, there could be more than 300million people in the USA. I'll grant all of those. But are those possibilities likely enough to dramatically skew the numbers to less of a sample than our pollsters?
Posted by katharina (Member # 827) on :
quote:double the rate of the sample in all the polls for president? I'd guess that unless there was a systemic omission or error, that we can draw about as accurate conclusions as we can from presidential polls, which is to say, fairly good.
This argument doesn't work. The exit polls for president were horribly off; almost all of them predicted a solid Kerry win.
Posted by Bokonon (Member # 480) on :
kat, I was talking about the likes of Zogby and similar firms, who poll for national numbers, and get the percentage right every time, within their margin of error.
EDIT: Exit polls I think have been shown to have systemic issues, due to the self-selection of people willing to share their polling decisions.
-Bok
[ November 16, 2004, 11:15 AM: Message edited by: Bokonon ]
Posted by Belle (Member # 2314) on :
quote:what will it take to prove that gay couples raise children equivalently to straight couples?
Honestly, I don't think it can be done. The study, that is - I dont' think something like that can be proven.
It's not only a function of sample size - but rather controlling the variables. Too much is subjective - what does "equivalently" mean?
We can look at hard facts - like whether or not kids from each type of home graduate high school and go to college. But is that a function of the sexuality of their parents? Or their economic status?
We can look at whether or not kids from each home wind up in legal trouble. Again - what is the more likely influence? The socio-economic factors, or the parents' sexuality?
What about whether or not the kids end up in therapy later in life? Again - what is the most likely predictor of that?
How do you say one kid is better than another? Or equivalent? They are individuals.
With large samples that follow the same subjects for years, you can identify trends. The adult children of divorce study is a good example. They followed these kids for years and years and did extensive interviews and were able to identify some trends. Does that prove that all parents should stay married because the trends support that divorce was harmful on kids when they become adults?
Of course it doesn't. Too many variables. What it does is suggest that parents considering divorce should do everything possible to save their marriage, because their divorce will have long-reaching consequences for their children.
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
Its just one more in the long line of studies that have all shown no significant negatives for kids raised by homosexual parents as opposed to those raised by heterosexual parents. Is it an ideal sample? No, but its often quite hard to obtain an ideal sample. Also, statistics are well understood. It may not be an ideal sample, but its perfectly possible to say how not-ideal it is, and any study worth its salt will have done so. Presumably the information was included in this study, though I do not have access to it. You don't just get to say "well, the study's not big enough for me, so I'm going to ignore it", you have to look at how likely it is to be how close to the results in the population as a whole, and assess if those numbers are consistent or inconsistent with your (or another's) worldview.
People keep saying that homosexual parents are worse for kids than heterosexual parents, yet every single scientific study I'm aware of (and a lot of other people are aware of, there have been at least a couple of meta-studies which looked for such studies) has shown that homosexual parents are just as good for kids as heterosexual parents.
I remember posting once on a thread an example of a logical, but invalid argument against homosexual adoption, which basically went like this:
Children need both masculine and feminine influences in their lives to become well adjusted.
Homosexual couples do not provide those influences adequately.
Therefore children raised by homosexual couples will be less well adjusted.
Children should be placed in homes which will best help them become well adjsted.
Therefore, children should not be placed in homosexual homes.
Someone posted after me that she couldn't see the problem with this argument. The problem, of course, can be seen by the fact that there is no experimental evidence to support the idea -- all experimental evidence points to children raised by homosexual parents as being just as well adjusted. The most likely supposition causing error is "Homosexual couples do not provide those influences adequately." This does not affect the logic of the argument because it is a supposition. However, it is a supposition that is, I suspect, inconsistent with reality. Children find influences in many places besides just with their parents, and I rather suspect same sex couples try to ensure their kids are exposed to members of the opposite sex with regularity, on the whole.
Posted by dabbler (Member # 6443) on :
so Belle, should gay couples be allowed and/or encouraged to adopt?
Posted by katharina (Member # 827) on :
quote:Exit polls I think have been shown to have systemic issues, due to the self-selection of people willing to share their polling decisions.
Polls concerning children, happiness, and sex are not less likely to have systemic issues.
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
Uh, Belle, if you control for socioeconomic status, and find no statistically significant differences at each status, then you can be pretty sure (exactly how sure can be determined by doing a statistical analysis of the data) that if there is any influence from homosexual parents doing the raising, it is completely dwarfed by other factors.
Which is really all that matters, anyways. If the influence of homosexuality on how well adjusted a kid is is negligible, what argument is there to prevent a child from being raised by homosexual parents?
Posted by Belle (Member # 2314) on :
Here's what I think about adoption - the primary purpose of adoption should be to put these kids into stable homes. The first priority should always be given to married couples who have completed extensive home studies and shown they can provide a stable home life for the children.
Right now, I have to think that preference should definitely be given to hetero couples, because they have been shown to statistically be more stable. Homosexual relationships don't typically last as long as hetero ones. Don't flame me, it's been shown by more than one study out there.
Let me be clear up front in saying that the link from the frc is most definitely from a pro-family website and that I don't agree with all of their conclusions - I think they do the cherry-picking afore referenced and leap to some conclusions I think may be far-reaching and not supported by the evidence. However, all their claims are footnoted and they do reference the actual studies, so the claims can be examined on their merits.
According to their analysis of the data, homosexual couples are more likely to have brief relationships as opposed to long term, stable ones, they are more likely to be promiscuous, as compared to hetero couples, they are more likely to be less committed in their relationships, and they are more likely to have domestic abuse in their relationships when compared to married heterosexual couples.
While I do think some of their claims may not be supported, I think that certainly there is a strong suggestion for the trends in the above paragraph. Enough to cause concern, when discussing adoption.
With those things considered - I would submit that the chances are higher that a heterosexual, married couple will provide a more stable homelife for adopted children.
A couple considering adoption should be looked at with a high level of scrutiny - and that goes for couples of any combination of gender. We should hold all adoptive parents to a high standard.
We don’t have much data on children raised by homosexual parents, but we do have data on kids raised in homes where parents frequently change partners and there is domestic abuse. Those findings are not favorable for the children’s welfare.
Can a gay couples be committed, loving parents and provide a stable homelife? I’m sure they can. My cousin is raising her daughter with another woman. They seem to me to be a happy family.
Yet the child’s father is also an influence in her life – would she be as well adjusted without him being in her life? I don’t know.
I personally think that both male and female influences are necessary for the healthy development of a child. I can’t prove that – that’s my opinion. I am not convinced that kids raised without a loving parent from both genders are as well adjusted as kids with influences from only one of the genders. The study in the first post doesn’t convince me. For one thing, we don’t even know how many of these 44 kids have fathers that play active roles in their lives. That could right there account for the reason there’s no difference in the two populations.
In other words, I’m not going to come out and say that no gay couples should ever be allowed to adopt. There may be couples out there that would provide good homes for kids. Any time we can find a good permanent home for a child that keeps that child out of the foster care system, that’s a good thing. But it should be carefully considered, high standards applied – the same standards applied to hetero couples, I’m not arguing for different standards. Stricter standards on all couples would make me happy.
But when it comes down to it – if there are two couples being considered, and one is hetero and the other gay, I think preference should be given to the hetero couple, because we have evidence that suggests they are statistically more likely to remain together.
That view may not be politically correct, but I’m much more interested in what’s best for children, rather than being politically correct.
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
Ah, apples and oranges.
That study compares the length of the average homosexual relationship with the length of the average heterosexual marriage. As heterosexuals do this thing called dating which is the analogue to the sort of relationship they looked at in homosexuals, and the study completely ignored this, I can't say I think much of the study. In fact, that pretty much undermines it completely.
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
I'm not sure some people understand the methodologies at play here.
Multivariate analysis is pretty much unnecessary in this case. There is a simple hypothesis that is being tested. To wit, "Children with homosexual parents are significantly different in terms of <whatever we're testing for> than those with straight parents." with the base assumption that gay parented children will have more problems than straight parented ones. To disprove this, all that needs to be done is to compare a random sampling of children of homosexual parents against a random sampling those of straight parents. The null hypothesis here is that we won't find a singificant correlation between being raised by gay parents and "problems". If we prove the null hypothesis, it disproves the experimental one, and thus invalidated the hypothesis.
In this case, you don't need to control for race or SES or whatever else, because they don't enter into the hypothesis. The hypothesis and the actions taken based on this hypothesis are talking about gay parents as a group, not as controlled for these factors. If all gay parents have a high SES and that causes their kids to be as good or better off than a random sampling of straight parents' kids, this is still a significant finding. The experimental hypothesis regards sexual orientation as an important, overwhelmingly determinate factor. The null hypothesis doesn't have to say anything about sexual orientation as a causal factor. It could even have a negative effect, as long as other factors contribute to have the overall effect neutral or superior in comparison.
If we can prove the null hypothesis, we can claim with an appropriate level of confidence that the claim that gay parents as a group have worse children than straight parents is innaccurate. This speaks directly against the idea that children have to have a man and a woman raising them to be "normal".
If you want to control for SES, race, level of education, etc. the hypothesis you are testing is "Comparing across these factors, thre will be a significant difference between the children of gay parents and those of straight parents." With the null being "Nu-huh." There are actually some pretty sophisticated methods of multivariate analysis by which we could get an idea of how much variability each variable accounts for. However, that's a completely different question from determining whether or not there is variability between children raised by gay or straight parents.
Right now, this study and ones like it (assuming they are sound, which I really have no idea about) are giving evidence that if we could assign children to couples, there would be no compelling reason to exclude gay ones, as in an individual case, if we are using gay/straight as our sorting criteria, we have no reason to expect that gay parents (with everything they bring with them like SES, race, education, etc.) would be worse for the child than straight parents (with everything they bring with them).
edit: Of course, this analysis is done with respect to the current social situation and may yield very different results if, for example there was a significant increase in the number of gay couples with children or gays were able to legally marry. All that I said should be taken with respect to the current situation, with a caveat to the potential effect of shifting social realities.
[ November 16, 2004, 12:58 PM: Message edited by: MrSquicky ]
Posted by Frisco (Member # 3765) on :
quote:But when it comes down to it – if there are two couples being considered, and one is hetero and the other gay, I think preference should be given to the hetero couple, because we have evidence that suggests they are statistically more likely to remain together.
Or, they (adoption agencies) could do what they always do, and look at things in a case-by-case basis to determine whether two people are capable of being good adoptive parents.
That, and we should wait until we have some homosexual marriages to compare to hetero ones, instead of, as fugu showed, comparing orange juice to orange soda.
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
In fact, take a look at the language they used: they just asked if they had a "current relationship" and if so what the length of it was. That seems an exact analogue to heterosexual dating relationships. Then they went and compared it to marriage relationships in heterosexuals!
Lets take an example. We have Sallie Sue, who has been married 25 years (she's 55, say, married since she was thirty). Before she got married she was in 12 relationships (1 lasted two years, 2 lasted one year, and 9 were around a month or less -- call it one tenth of a year). The average length of relationship for her was . . . 2.3 years.
Not to mention the skew against lengthy homosexual relationships because of the social stigma against having a homosexual relationship steadily decreasing.
See how ridiculous the study's attempt at comparison is, now?
Posted by Belle (Member # 2314) on :
One study looked at live-in relationships - so a better comparison would be to compare hetero couples that live together to gay couples that live together and see which ones stay together longer. I don't know if that has been done but it would be helpful.
I'm not advocating letting dating couples of any sexuality adopt children. I would like to see only monogamous, committed couples adopt children. I am not seeing any evidence that the vast percentage of live-in gay relationships are long term monogamous ones.
Edit: This is the one:
quote: In Male and Female Homosexuality, Saghir and Robins found that the average male homosexual live-in relationship lasts between two and three years.
They weren't looking at dating relationships, but relationships where people lived together. That's significantly different from dating.
Also - in The Netherlands where civil unions are possible - are there data showing that most homosexual civil unions remain monogamous and stay together long-term? I'm asking, not challenging, I want to know.
quote: A Canadian study of homosexual men who had been in committed relationships lasting longer than one year found that only 25 percent of those interviewed reported being monogamous." According to study author Barry Adam, "Gay culture allows men to explore different...forms of relationships besides the monogamy coveted by heterosexuals."[16]
· The Handbook of Family Diversity reported a study in which "many self-described 'monogamous' couples reported an average of three to five partners in the past year. Blasband and Peplau (1985) observed a similar pattern."[17]
· In The Male Couple, authors David P. McWhirter and Andrew M. Mattison reported that, in a study of 156 males in homosexual relationships lasting from one to thirty-seven years:
Only seven couples have a totally exclusive sexual relationship, and these men all have been together for less than five years. Stated another way, all couples with a relationship lasting more than five years have incorporated some provision for outside sexual activity in their relationships.[18]
Contrast that with:
quote: A nationally representative survey of 884 men and 1,288 women published in the Journal of Sex Research found that 77 percent of married men and 88 percent of married women had remained faithful to their marriage vows.[9]
· A 1997 national survey appearing in The Social Organization of Sexuality: Sexual Practices in the United States found that 75 percent of husbands and 85 percent of wives never had sexual relations outside of marriage.[10]
These were comparisons of committed relationships to committed relationships. Much closer than apples to oranges, though of course exact parallels aren't possible, I agree.
[ November 16, 2004, 01:04 PM: Message edited by: Belle ]
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
Who said they were?
I'm saying let the long term monogamous ones adopt, not advancing any thesis that homosexual couples have a certain percentage of long term monogamy.
Posted by dabbler (Member # 6443) on :
While the "best-interests" model is the most used, it's easy to question the abilities of adoption agencies to evaluate such things well.
quote:Two empirical studies have explored homophobia among child welfare workers and its effect on adoption placement recommendations (Ryan, 2000; Taylor, 1998). Taylor reported that his sample of 50 child welfare workers in California generally favored allowing adoptions by gay men and lesbians. However, approximately one-third of respondents thought that gay and lesbian adoption applicants should not be able to adopt a child younger than five years, and 25 percent believed the child should be older than 15.
Ryan (2000), in a sample of 80 social workers, found that attitudes toward gay men and lesbians as adoptive parents derive from childhood and familial experiences as well as professional indoctrination. African American workers in his study were more likely to exhibit heterosexist views than workers from other racial or ethnic groups. He reported that these views appear to be related to family and socialization experiences. However, the receipt of special training was highly effective in the formation of positive attitudes and behaviors toward deciding the placement of children with gay men or lesbians. Ryan's research underscores that values and morals developed through primary socialization provide an important framework within which individuals initially evaluate issues. To the extent that child welfare workers use their own standards for decision-making purposes, the best interest of the child is often clouded in the process. Brooks and Goldberg (2001) noted that biased workers can affect placements in a number of ways: by questioning the parenting abilities of gay and lesbian applicants, leaking information to birth parents, and not seeking out lesbian and gay families.
quote:Literature suggests that considerations surrounding gay men and lesbians' suitability as adoptive parents focus first on the applicants themselves. These concerns include the mental health of the applicant (Falk, 1989; Green, Mandel, Hotvedt, Gray, & Smith, 1986), parenting skills (Cramer, 1986; Patterson, 2000a), and his or her relationship quality and stability (Flaks, Ficher, Masterpasqua, & Joseph, 1995; Koepke, Hare, & Moran, 1992). Next, consideration focuses on the effect of gay or lesbian adoption on the child's psychological and psychosexual development (Allen & Burrell, 1996; Falk, 1989; Gibbs, 1988; Green et al.; Knight & Garcia, 1994; Patterson, 1992, 2000a), sexual safety (Cramer, 1986; Falk, 1989; Knight & Garcia), and social stigmatization (Donaldson, 2000). In addition, studies have examined permutations of these subthemes among gay and lesbian biological and adoptive families (Sullivan, 1995). Currently, no empirical evidence demonstrates that living with a gay or lesbian parent has any significant negative effects on children (for an overview of the available research, see Patterson, 2000b).
quote:No one has the right to adopt; children do have a right to loving, permanent homes. This article has proposed that one step toward that goal is a critical re-evaluation at the intrapersonal, interpersonal, and organizational levels of the ways in which the best interest of the child standard is defined and applied.
Social Work. 2004 Jan; 49(1): 85-95 "Coming out of the closet: opening agencies to gay and lesbian adoptive parents." Ryan SD, Pearlmutter S, Groza V. School of Social Work, FSU
Do you honestly believe that if it came down to a white couple and a black couple that were similarly qualified, that the white couple should have the child because there's a higher incidence of domestic violence in black couples?
Posted by dabbler (Member # 6443) on :
(At that point, the only differentiation I can think of is having the child choose if the child is old enough.)
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
Assuming gay civil marriage is implemented, I'd be in favor of giving serious preference to married couples.
In fact, I'm intellectually in favor of this now, but the inequality in the civil marriage system means a lot of children are being denied the opportunity to be adopted by a lot of truly committed, loving couples.
Dagonee
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
Maybe this is just carping, but I really don't like seeing "homophobia" used in scholarly journals. I don't think it has any place there as "negative prejudice against homosexuals" or some such is a more definitely defined, less emotionally loaded term. Peer-reviewed, scholarly journals aren't the place for political agendas, which is what that word choice conveys to me.
Posted by dabbler (Member # 6443) on :
I'd have to see it on a case by case basis. Marriages and divorces are easy enough to come by that I'm not convinced it means a significant amount compared to looking at a strong, healthy not-married couple. I guess it depends on their reasons for not getting married.
My sister had no intention of getting married, but is in a very stable relationship. Her opinions on not getting married have nothing to do with the long term viability of her relationship.
Posted by dabbler (Member # 6443) on :
Searching "homophobia" brings up 309 articles in pubMed that use it as a keyword.
Take it up with them.
Posted by Belle (Member # 2314) on :
quote:Do you honestly believe that if it came down to a white couple and a black couple that were similarly qualified, that the white couple should have the child because there's a higher incidence of domestic violence in black couples?
If it came down to that being the only difference between the black couple and the white couple, then most likely the race of the child would be my deciding factor, not a statistical tendency.
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
dabbler, But there has to be some sort of statistical weighing process. You can't take everything as a tabula rasa case by case basis. In your sister's case, not being married should likely weigh against her, but could quite possibly be offset by other factors.
Posted by dabbler (Member # 6443) on :
Just to be a pain, what if the race of the child is neither white nor black?
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
One of my main arguments for civil gay marriage is that it is a convenient legal shorthand that provides useful defaults in a large variety of legal situations without extensive fact-finding. While certainly many unmarried couples will be more committed than many married couples, the willingness to take on the legal restrictions and responsibilities of marriage are a good indication of intent. Fact finding on something as nebulous as "intent to stay together" is too likely to be inconsistent for me to be comfortable with it when an acceptable legal alternative is available.
Dagonee
Posted by dabbler (Member # 6443) on :
Squick: I think the take-home-point is that statistics is not the be-all and end-all of the decision process. It's not a good enough breakpoint because it will always favor one side. If the statistical difference is 7% between two populations, should one population always be given the benefit of the doubt, and the other one held to be inferior?
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
dabbler, Oh no, I do agree with statistics being good as a guide but not as a determiner. As for a 7% difference, it would depend, for me, as to how solid (i.e. how much variability there was) this number was. If, in the hypothetic case, there was no deviation in this number (i.e. the members of the one population are always, in each individual case, 7% better than the members of the other) then, yeah, I'd establish that as a good determing factor. A flat difference has to be fleshed out with degrees of error and variation before you could actually use it, but if there were no error or variation (and this never happens in real life) then even a small difference is something that could be relied on.
edit: You may be getting that I'm very dry when takling about theoretical stuff. That's how I was taught. Real world application is quite different, but I'm a big believer in passionless rigor when it comes to theoeretical and experimental analysis (witness the homophobia thing). It makes my writing about stuff like that boring as all get out, unfortunately.
[ November 16, 2004, 01:24 PM: Message edited by: MrSquicky ]
Posted by dabbler (Member # 6443) on :
And I'll answer my own question the best I can. All things being equal, two qualified couples that differ by sexual orientation or by race,
1) If the child's old enough, the child decides. 2) Flip a coin?? 3) Try to determine which couple gets this child based on their interests in the kind of child to adopt, then fit the next appropriate child to the other couple. After all, they're both quite capable sets of parents. If there's a queue, Couple A and Couple B are one right after the other.
Posted by dabbler (Member # 6443) on :
The problem with statistics is that it's impersonal. It doesn't take into account the knowledge you've already gathered on this couple. What they do is derive data from a pool of people who are presumably reasonably similar to another pool of people except for your topic of interest. But that pool of people isn't the couple you have standing in front of you, who has already proven themselves quite capable and loving.
I don't think it's been proven that if you take two pools of well qualified and practically identical couples (minus topic of interest) that one sexual orientation, or ethnicity, or hair color will have significant difference from the other.
That couple stands outside the statistics.
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
The problem with personal knowledge is that it is so very often wrong. When talking average cases, statistical reasoning is usually going to give you a better result. I'm not saying that each individual case shouldn't be weighed on it's specific merits, but that statistical reason is almost necessary when talking about often-made, time constrained decisions and is a useful check on the bias and incomplete issues of using personal knowledge. That isn't to say that there are important issues of false positives and negatives. Acknowledgemet of these are built into statistical analysis and hopefully combining it with personal information will help reduce these errors.
In this case, the statistical analysis is saying that there is no reason to deny homosexual couples the ability to adopt based on them being homosexual, while if people were unconstrained by this, many many of them would want to deny homosexuals this ability because they "know" that it would be bad for the child.
[ November 16, 2004, 01:52 PM: Message edited by: MrSquicky ]
Posted by dabbler (Member # 6443) on :
True.
Posted by Olivetta (Member # 6456) on :
I can guarantee that the divorce rates are actually MUCH higher for heterosexual couples than for gay couples. *delicately places finger beside nose*
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