Tag Archives: Child

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Study finds that gay parents are more likely to raise gay kids

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A new peer-reviewed study about gay parents raising gay kids in AOL News.

Excerpt:

Walter Schumm knows what he’s about to do is unpopular: publish a study arguing that gay parents are more likely to raise gay children than straight parents. But the Kansas State University family studies professor has a detailed analysis that past almost aggressively ideological researchers never had.

[…]His study on sexual orientation, out next month, says that gay and lesbian parents are far more likely to have children who become gay. “I’m trying to prove that it’s not 100 percent genetic,” Schumm tells AOL News.

His study is a meta-analysis of existing work. First, Schumm extrapolated data from 10 books on gay parenting… [and] skewed his data so that only self-identified gay and lesbian children would be labeled as such.

This is important because sometimes Schumm would come across a passage of children of gay parents who said they were “adamant about not declaring their sexual orientation at all.” These people would be labeled straight, even though the passage’s implication was that they were gay.

Schumm concluded that children of lesbian parents identified themselves as gay 31 percent of the time; children of gay men had gay children 19 percent of the time, and children of a lesbian mother and gay father had at least one gay child 25 percent of the time.

Furthermore, when the study restricted the results so that they included only children in their 20s — presumably after they’d been able to work out any adolescent confusion or experimentation — 58 percent of the children of lesbians called themselves gay, and 33 percent of the children of gay men called themselves gay. (About 5 to 10 percent of the children of straight parents call themselves gay, Schumm says.)

Schumm next went macro, poring over an anthropological study of various cultures’ acceptance of homosexuality. He found that when communities welcome gays and lesbians, “89 percent feature higher rates of homosexual behavior.”

Finally, Schumm looked at the existing academic studies… In all there are 26 such studies. Schumm ran the numbers from them and concluded that, surprisingly, 20 percent of the kids of gay parents were gay themselves. When children only 17 or older were included in the analysis, 28 percent were gay.

Here’s the paper entitled “Children of homosexuals more apt to be homosexuals?“. It appeared in the Journal of Biosocial Science.

Abstract:

Ten narrative studies involving family histories of 262 children of gay fathers and lesbian mothers were evaluated statistically in response to Morrison’s (2007) concerns about Cameron’s (2006) research that had involved three narrative studies. Despite numerous attempts to bias the results in favour of the null hypothesis and allowing for up to 20 (of 63, 32%) coding errors, Cameron’s (2006) hypothesis that gay and lesbian parents would be more likely to have gay, lesbian, bisexual or unsure (of sexual orientation) sons and daughters was confirmed. Percentages of children of gay and lesbian parents who adopted non-heterosexual identities ranged between 16% and 57%, with odds ratios of 1.7 to 12.1, depending on the mix of child and parent genders. Daughters of lesbian mothers were most likely (33% to 57%; odds ratios from 4.5 to 12.1) to report non-heterosexual identities. Data from ethnographic sources and from previous studies on gay and lesbian parenting were re-examined and found to support the hypothesis that social and parental influences may influence the expression of non-heterosexual identities and/or behaviour. Thus, evidence is presented from three different sources, contrary to most previous scientific opinion, even most previous scientific consensus, that suggests intergenerational transfer of sexual orientation can occur at statistically significant and substantial rates, especially for female parents or female children. In some analyses for sons, intergenerational transfer was not significant. Further research is needed with respect to pathways by which intergenerational transfer of sexual orientation may occur. The results confirm an evolving tendency among scholars to cite the possibility of some degree of intergenerational crossover of sexual orientation.

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News

Battle escalates over homeschooled child seized by Swedish government

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Story from the HSLDA. (H/T Mary)

Excerpt:

On June 25, attorneys with the Home School Legal Defense Association and Alliance Defense Fund filed an application with the European Court of Human Rights asking it to hear the case of a 7-year-old boy seized by Swedish authorities because his parents homeschool.

“We are gravely concerned about this case because of the threat it represents to other homeschooling families,” said Mike Donnelly, staff attorney for HSLDA and one of nearly 1,700 attorneys in the ADF alliance. “In response to our inquiries, Swedish authorities have cited the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child to explain and defend their actions. If the U.S. were to ever ratify this treaty, as the White House and some members of Congress desire, then this sort of thing could occur here,” he added.

Swedish authorities forcibly removed Domenic Johansson from his parents, Christer and Annie Johansson, in June 2009 from a plane they had boarded to move to Annie’s home country of India. The officials did not have a warrant nor have they charged the Johanssons with any crime. The officials seized the child because they believe homeschooling is an inappropriate way to raise a child and insist the government should raise Domenic instead. Social services authorities have placed Domenic in foster care as well as a government school and are only allowing Christer and Annie to visit their son for one hour every five weeks.

Let this be a lesson to all you homeschoolers. Either you are going to have an influence on the world or the world is going to have an influence on you. And whatever you do, don’t think that you can be a social conservative without being a fiscal conservative. If you vote for big government because you like universal health care, then you are voting against your own liberty. Big government means small persons.

My advice is to get a college degree and go to grad school. And remember where you came from when you have influence to do something about it.

News

New study compares donor-conceived vs biologically-conceived children

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The study is here. (H/T Dr. J from RuthBlog)

Dr. J writes:

The Institute for American Values has just published a new study, My Daddy’s Name is Donor, of how donor conceived persons are doing in comparison with those who were born and raised by their biological parents and in comparison with those who were adopted.

And she notes this comment from a gay man who thinks that the fact that he and his partner PLANNED their donor-conceived child, that they are therefore justified morally in doing so.

The gay man writes:

I’m a gay man who has had a child, with my partner of 8 years, through surrogacy and egg donation. The egg donor and surrogate will be known to our son.

One way that I explain to people our experience with the artificial reproduction process is that it is the opposite of being ‘knocked-up’. We were very involved in the planning and conception and the growth and birth of our child. Our child’s conception and birth was considered, thought about, planned for, dreamed about, fantasized about. He was most definitely wanted. He is loved and treasured.

We did not have sex to have our child. We did not have wedded, heterosexual, within marriage, we-want-to-have-a-child-sex. We did not have wedded, passionate, spur-of-the-moment at the wrong time of the month (or the wrong time of our life) sex. We did not have wedded, spur-of-the-moment, right time of the month sex. We did not have any of these types heterosexual sex as unmarried heterosexuals.

But so many children are born to heterosexual couples via each of these eight scenarios. So many. Many more, around the world are born in wider range of unloving scenarios.

And then one of the authors (Elizabeth Marquardt) of the new study responds by citing evidence.

I just want to note that one way of looking at the My Daddy’s Name is Donor study is as a study of three groups: The first completely one hundred percent wanted and intended — that is, the donor offspring. The other two groups made up of a lot of unintended pregnancies — that is, the adopted and those raised by their biological parents.

Which group is faring the worst? The 100 percent wanted, planned, intended group. The donor offspring, overall, even with controls, are twice as likely to have struggled with substance abuse and delinquency, and 1.5 times as likely to have struggled with depression, compared to those raised by their biological parents (and these differences are significant). The adopted generally fall in between except with regard to depression in which case they were higher than both the donor conceived and the raised-by-biological.

No one is saying, T, that “all” of those raised by biological parents are doing great. But when you look at these populations, measured by our study, you find that, contrary to today’s conventional wisdom, being wanted isn’t enough. What the child is born into — who the child is raised by — matters.

Some more stats from Maggie Gallagher.

Excerpt:

Forty-five percent of these young adults conceived by donor insemination agree, “The circumstances of my conception bother me.” Almost half report that they think about their donor conception a few times a week or more. Forty-five percent agree, “It bothers me that money was exchanged in order to conceive me.”

Nearly half of donor offspring (compared to about a fifth of adopted adults) agree, “When I see friends with their biological fathers and mothers, it makes me feel sad.” Similarly, 53 percent (compared to 29 percent of adoptees) agree, “It hurts when I hear other people talk about their genealogical background.”

This is not fair to children – it treats them like a commodity instead of as a gift from God to be treasured and nurtured.