Popular Culture Review Vol. 16, No. 1, Spring 2005 | Page 62

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Popular Culture Review
Central regional office in Dallas. “What we are talking about
here are Oklahoma legislators who disapprove of gay people
and lashed out by passing a law that punishes children for
having gay or lesbian parents.”
Specifically, the law says that Oklahoma “shall not recognize an adoption by
more than one individual of the same sex from any other state or foreign
jurisdiction.”
This faith-based political trend is even more disheartening when
contrasted with existing research on children being reared by same-sex parents.
Judith Stacey, professor of sociology at New York University, has reviewed the
research available about children of gay or lesbian parents. Her findings were
reported in “Children of Gay Parents Doing Just Fine” (Advocate.com, April 16,
2004). The title says it all, but Dr. Stacey did report some “modest but
interesting” differences discussed in the article:
A few studies suggest that lesbian parents tend to be more
egalitarian and gender-neutral in their child-raising techniques.
These parents tend to share child care and work outside the
home in a more equal way, according to this research. The
boys in these families “were less aggressive, more tolerant,”
said Stacey. “The girls were more self-confident, with a wider
sense of career perspectives.”
Further evidence that children parented by same-sex couples are doing
just fine came in late 2004 from Charlotte J. Patterson, professor of psychology
at the University of Virginia, Stephen T. Russell, professor of human
development at the University of Arizona, and Jennifer Wainright, Ph.D.
candidate at the University of Virginia, in their longitudinal, comparative study
of children being reared by same-sex parents and those being reared by
opposite-sex parents. Their findings were published in the December 2004 issue
of the Society for Research in Child Development’s journal Child Development.
Patterson and her colleagues based their research on a sample of
twelve-to-eighteen year-old adolescents from eighty-eight families drawn from
the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. Forty-four of the study
participants were parented by same-sex couples and forty-four were parented by
opposite-sex couples. The two groups were matched by demographic
characteristics including age, income levels, social situations and other factors to
ensure they were comparable. Pertinent results included:
•Teenagers of same-sex parents are developing as well as the
children of opposite-sex parents;