(How) Does the Sexual Orientation of Parents Matter?

By J. Stacey, Timothy J. Biblarz. American Sociological Review, 2001

806 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Opponents of lesbian and gay parental rights claim that children with lesbigay parents are at higher risk for a variety of negative outcomes. Yet most research in psychology concludes that there are no differences in developmental outcomes between children raised by lesbigay parents and those raised by heterosexual parents. The analysis here challenges this defensive conceptual framework and analyzes how heterosexism has hampered intellectual progress in the field. The authors discuss limitations in the definitions, samples, and analyses of the studies to date. Next they explore findings from 21 studies and demonstrate that researchers frequently downplay findings indicating difference regarding children's gender and sexual preferences and behavior that could stimulate important theoretical questions. A less defensive, more sociologically informed analytic framework is proposed for investigating these issues. The framework focuses on (1) whether selection effects produced by homophobia account for associations between parental sexual orientations and child outcomes; (2) the role of parental gender vis-a-vis sexual orientation in influencing children's gender development; and (3) the relationship between parental sexual orientations and children's sexual preferences and behaviors.

Subfields: Demography, Reproductive Medicine, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/bfcd28de58f431efa05e0c5b8c0c34923b2f5942

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Citations in the corpus

Social Work Students' Attitudes toward Homosexuality and Their Knowledge and Attitudes toward Homosexual Parenting as an Alternative Family Unit: An Australian Study (2006, background): “There have been a range of studies conducted into this question which have been assessed in a number of review articles such as Allen & Burrell (1996), Patterson (1997), Parks (1997), Fitzgerald (1999), Stacey & Biblarz (2001) and most recently by Anderssen et al. (2002).”
Individual Differences in Gender Development: Associations with Parental Sexual Orientation, Attitudes, and Division of Labor (2008, background): “Stacey and Biblarz (2001) suggested that it might, in part because of the different environments relevant to gender that may be provided by lesbian versus heterosexual parents.”
The USA National Lesbian Family Study: Interviews with Mothers of 10-Year-Olds (2006, background): “, 2002); in some studies, children raised by lesbians demonstrate even greater mental health (Gartrell et al., 2005; Patterson, 1994; Stacey and Biblarz, 2001).”
Adoption and Foster Care by Gay and Lesbian Parents in the United States (2007, background): “Studies of child-rearing by GLB people have necessarily focused on relatively small samples and share some other possible limitations that are common to studies in those fields (Stacey and Biblarz, 2001; American Psychological 4 Association, 2005; Rauch and Meezan, 2005).”
Mothers, Fathers, Families, and Circumstances: Factors Affecting Children's Adjustment (2012, background): “Like children and adolescents in other nontraditional families, children and adolescents with same-sex parents may sometimes have less sex-stereotyped beliefs, and be more open in their views of societal norms and standards about appropriate behavior for males and females (Stacey & Biblarz, 2001 ).”
Why Could Father Involvement Benefit Children? Theoretical Perspectives (2007, neutral): “This research provides little support for the notion that children of two lesbian parents show poorer developmental outcomes (see reviews in Patterson & Chan, 1999; Stacey & Biblarz, 2001).”
Unscripted motherhood: Lesbian mothers negotiating incompletely institutionalized family relationships (2004, background): “…abundance of research on childhood outcomes (for reviews of this literature, see Belcastro, Gramlich, Nicholson, Price, & Wilson, 1993; Parks 1998; Patterson 1995; Victor & Fish 1995; and for a critique see Stacey & Biblarz, 2001), fewer researchers focus on lesbian mothers’ parenting experiences.”
Lesbian Couples’ Relationship Quality Across the Transition to Parenthood (2006, background): “…couples has found that nonbiological lesbian mothers may have an easier transition to the parental role than nonbiological fathers, thus highlighting the gendered nature of parenting and underscoring some basic similarities between biological and nonbiological mothers (Stacey & Biblarz, 2001).”
Children and Adolescents With Same-Gender Parents: A Meta-Analytic Approach in Assessing Outcomes (2015, background): “The authors of this review note that sons and daughters respond differently to parental sexual identity when it comes to their gender role behavior (Stacey & Biblarz, 2001), although we did not find these differences to be moderated by child gender.”
A Meta-Analysis of Developmental Outcomes for Children of Same-Sex and Heterosexual Parents (2008, background): “The significant difference in favor of same-sex parent–child relationships could, thus, likely be due more to female gender than sexual orientation of the parent given that mothers are typically more involved in child-rearing than are fathers (Stacey & Biblarz, 2001).”
The division of labor and perceptions of parental roles: Lesbian couples across the transition to parenthood (2007, background): “Stacey and Biblarz (2001) estimate that between 1 and 9 million children are currently being raised by at least one gay or lesbian parent in the US.”