Point/Counterpoint: Lessons Learned From the Lesbian Family Study

Data Are Limited but Valuable.

The U.S. National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study has provided a treasure trove’s worth of much-needed data about the children being raised by lesbian mothers. Initiated in 1986, the current wave of the study reports on a mere 78 adolescents at age 17 years.

This study lands in the middle of an intense political debate around issues of marriage equality and adoption by gay and lesbian parents. Though the American Psychiatric Association supports the right of gay and lesbian adults to adopt, the law on this issue in many states is unclear, and, in a few states, expressly prohibited.

Though the sample size is small, several of the findings in this study deserve comment. First, none of the teenagers reported any sexual or physical abuse by their parents (Arch. Sex. Behav. 2010 [doi:10.1007/s10508-010-9692-2]). This finding is a direct rebuttal to the claim that gay and lesbian parents are more likely to abuse sexually their children.

However, as the authors point out, most perpetrators of childhood sexual abuse in the home are heterosexual males. About four-fifths of the kids in the NLLFS study had no adult males in the household. The stereotype about gay adults sexually abusing children is quite gender-specific (toward males), and this study cannot directly address this misperception.

The study also begins to address questions around sexual identity and sexual behavior. In terms of behavior, the children of lesbian moms were significantly older than their peers at the age of first heterosexual contact. None of the girls raised by lesbian moms had ever been pregnant. While the girls were more likely than were their peers to report history of sexual contact with other girls, the boys were not more likely than their peers to report history of sexual contact with other boys.

The lack of matching by race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status does hamper this comparison, as norms about sexual behavior in teens vary by socioeconomic/cultural subgroups.

As for sexual identity, the vast majority of the adolescents in the NLLFS rated themselves a Kinsey 0-1 (exclusively or predominantly heterosexual) (81% of the girls and 91.9% of the boys). About one-fifth of the girls rated themselves in the Kinsey 2-4 spectrum (not exclusively heterosexual or homosexual). None of the girls and 5.4% of the boys rated themselves a Kinsey 5-6 (predominantly homosexual). For this part of the results, there is no comparison group. Research about sexuality in men and women has been confirming long-held general impressions that sexual identity is more fluid in women than in men. A prior study of children of lesbian mothers, compared with children raised by heterosexual mothers, noted that more of the young adults raised by lesbian parents reported a sexual experience with someone of the same gender. However by age 23.5 years (on average), there was no difference in self-identification as lesbian or gay between the two groups. What if, in fact, the girls in the study continued to report a relatively high rate of bisexual identity in successive waves of the study? There should be nothing inherently threatening about that. Emphasizing that most studies have shown that kids of gay and lesbian parents do not seem to grow up disproportionately gay serves only to appease those who still feel that homosexuality is an illness or a moral failing.

One thing to keep in mind: The subjects in this study represent a particular cohort of families, that of lesbians who planned to conceive in the 1980s, when planned lesbian families were much less common than they are today. The wave of children being raised by gay men started even later. Although the prospective design of the study helps to eliminate recall bias, the subjects are not a randomized sample. Both moms and kids in this study are surely well-aware that they are representing lesbian families to an unfriendly nation.

Although unlikely in the current climate, it would be ideal if further studies could be funded to do similar work with children being born today, to both lesbian parents and gay male parents.

Dr. Volpp is a clinical associate professor of psychiatry at New York University. She is the unit chief of the residency training unit at Bellevue Hospital, also in New York, and serves on the board of the Association of Gay and Lesbian Psychiatrists.

Findings Challenge Old Assumptions.

In a recent film, "The Kids Are All Right," two lesbian moms (Julianne Moore and Annette Bening) each conceive a child using the same anonymous sperm donor and then raise the children together. At the film’s outset, the children, aged 18 and 15 years, seek out and find their sperm donor (Mark Ruffalo). This "reunion" provides the dramatic tension of the film (no spoilers here).

The film, critically acclaimed and commercially successful, increased public awareness of same-sex couples’ using assisted reproductive technologies to create new family arrangements. While somewhat eye-opening to heterosexual moviegoers unfamiliar with these families, these trends are not news. In the 1970s, at the modern gay liberation movement’s start, women leaving heterosexual marriages took their children and raised them with lesbian partners. By the 1990s, a veritable gay baby ("gayby") boom ensued, as male and female same-sex couples, never heterosexually married, had children.

Children of the gayby boom are the subjects of the recently published study under discussion, "Adolescents of the U.S. National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study: Sexual Orientation, Sexual Behavior, and Sexual Risk Exposure." The NLLFS study was launched to provide prospective data on a cohort of lesbian families" from conception until adulthood, includes "84 planned lesbian families [with] a 93% retention rate to date," and includes 39 adolescent girls and 39 adolescent boys conceived through donor insemination.

Among other things, the study found "no reports of physical or sexual victimization by a parent or other caregiver." That’s good to know, but why look for evidence of "victimization" in the first place? The authors say their goal was to "contradict the notion, offered in opposition to parenting by gay and lesbian people, that same-sex parents are likely to abuse their offspring sexually."

Studies like these are the interface between scientific research and the culture wars. Sadly, opponents of same-sex couples as parents frequently appeal to cultural stereotypes of homosexuals as predatory and potentially harmful to children. These kinds of assumptions (like asking "When did you last stop beating your wife?") put potential parents in the position of defending themselves against unwarranted character defamation. Increasingly, courts have struck down state bans on gay and lesbian adoption that make broad, stereotypical assumptions about these parents as members of a group rather than looking at a potential individual parent or couple’s actual qualities.

The study does not address parenting by gay male couples and more research is needed in this area as well. The authors note the study’s limitations: a nonrandom sample; neither matched nor controlled for socioeconomic status, race/ethnicity, or region of residence; and a small sample size.

I would add a further limitation in the social context that led to doing this study. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, about 581,000 same-sex couples lived in the United States in 2009. Although no reliable surveys exist about how many U.S. children are living in homes with gay and lesbian parents, estimates range from 1 million to 14 million. The numbers are growing, and the important research issues should not be whether millions of gay parents are harming millions of kids or making them gay. Instead, further research must focus on the kind of effective care, social policies, and legal protections these children and families need.

Dr. Drescher is a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and serves as president-elect of the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry. He is also coeditor of "Uncoupling Convention: Psychoanalytic Approaches to Same-Sex Couples and Families" (New York: The Analytic Press, 2004).

Data Are Limited but Valuable.

The U.S. National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study has provided a treasure trove’s worth of much-needed data about the children being raised by lesbian mothers. Initiated in 1986, the current wave of the study reports on a mere 78 adolescents at age 17 years.

This study lands in the middle of an intense political debate around issues of marriage equality and adoption by gay and lesbian parents. Though the American Psychiatric Association supports the right of gay and lesbian adults to adopt, the law on this issue in many states is unclear, and, in a few states, expressly prohibited.

Though the sample size is small, several of the findings in this study deserve comment. First, none of the teenagers reported any sexual or physical abuse by their parents (Arch. Sex. Behav. 2010 [doi:10.1007/s10508-010-9692-2]). This finding is a direct rebuttal to the claim that gay and lesbian parents are more likely to abuse sexually their children.

However, as the authors point out, most perpetrators of childhood sexual abuse in the home are heterosexual males. About four-fifths of the kids in the NLLFS study had no adult males in the household. The stereotype about gay adults sexually abusing children is quite gender-specific (toward males), and this study cannot directly address this misperception.

The study also begins to address questions around sexual identity and sexual behavior. In terms of behavior, the children of lesbian moms were significantly older than their peers at the age of first heterosexual contact. None of the girls raised by lesbian moms had ever been pregnant. While the girls were more likely than were their peers to report history of sexual contact with other girls, the boys were not more likely than their peers to report history of sexual contact with other boys.

The lack of matching by race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status does hamper this comparison, as norms about sexual behavior in teens vary by socioeconomic/cultural subgroups.

As for sexual identity, the vast majority of the adolescents in the NLLFS rated themselves a Kinsey 0-1 (exclusively or predominantly heterosexual) (81% of the girls and 91.9% of the boys). About one-fifth of the girls rated themselves in the Kinsey 2-4 spectrum (not exclusively heterosexual or homosexual). None of the girls and 5.4% of the boys rated themselves a Kinsey 5-6 (predominantly homosexual). For this part of the results, there is no comparison group. Research about sexuality in men and women has been confirming long-held general impressions that sexual identity is more fluid in women than in men. A prior study of children of lesbian mothers, compared with children raised by heterosexual mothers, noted that more of the young adults raised by lesbian parents reported a sexual experience with someone of the same gender. However by age 23.5 years (on average), there was no difference in self-identification as lesbian or gay between the two groups. What if, in fact, the girls in the study continued to report a relatively high rate of bisexual identity in successive waves of the study? There should be nothing inherently threatening about that. Emphasizing that most studies have shown that kids of gay and lesbian parents do not seem to grow up disproportionately gay serves only to appease those who still feel that homosexuality is an illness or a moral failing.

One thing to keep in mind: The subjects in this study represent a particular cohort of families, that of lesbians who planned to conceive in the 1980s, when planned lesbian families were much less common than they are today. The wave of children being raised by gay men started even later. Although the prospective design of the study helps to eliminate recall bias, the subjects are not a randomized sample. Both moms and kids in this study are surely well-aware that they are representing lesbian families to an unfriendly nation.

Although unlikely in the current climate, it would be ideal if further studies could be funded to do similar work with children being born today, to both lesbian parents and gay male parents.

Dr. Volpp is a clinical associate professor of psychiatry at New York University. She is the unit chief of the residency training unit at Bellevue Hospital, also in New York, and serves on the board of the Association of Gay and Lesbian Psychiatrists.

Findings Challenge Old Assumptions.

In a recent film, "The Kids Are All Right," two lesbian moms (Julianne Moore and Annette Bening) each conceive a child using the same anonymous sperm donor and then raise the children together. At the film’s outset, the children, aged 18 and 15 years, seek out and find their sperm donor (Mark Ruffalo). This "reunion" provides the dramatic tension of the film (no spoilers here).

The film, critically acclaimed and commercially successful, increased public awareness of same-sex couples’ using assisted reproductive technologies to create new family arrangements. While somewhat eye-opening to heterosexual moviegoers unfamiliar with these families, these trends are not news. In the 1970s, at the modern gay liberation movement’s start, women leaving heterosexual marriages took their children and raised them with lesbian partners. By the 1990s, a veritable gay baby ("gayby") boom ensued, as male and female same-sex couples, never heterosexually married, had children.

Children of the gayby boom are the subjects of the recently published study under discussion, "Adolescents of the U.S. National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study: Sexual Orientation, Sexual Behavior, and Sexual Risk Exposure." The NLLFS study was launched to provide prospective data on a cohort of lesbian families" from conception until adulthood, includes "84 planned lesbian families [with] a 93% retention rate to date," and includes 39 adolescent girls and 39 adolescent boys conceived through donor insemination.

Among other things, the study found "no reports of physical or sexual victimization by a parent or other caregiver." That’s good to know, but why look for evidence of "victimization" in the first place? The authors say their goal was to "contradict the notion, offered in opposition to parenting by gay and lesbian people, that same-sex parents are likely to abuse their offspring sexually."

Studies like these are the interface between scientific research and the culture wars. Sadly, opponents of same-sex couples as parents frequently appeal to cultural stereotypes of homosexuals as predatory and potentially harmful to children. These kinds of assumptions (like asking "When did you last stop beating your wife?") put potential parents in the position of defending themselves against unwarranted character defamation. Increasingly, courts have struck down state bans on gay and lesbian adoption that make broad, stereotypical assumptions about these parents as members of a group rather than looking at a potential individual parent or couple’s actual qualities.

The study does not address parenting by gay male couples and more research is needed in this area as well. The authors note the study’s limitations: a nonrandom sample; neither matched nor controlled for socioeconomic status, race/ethnicity, or region of residence; and a small sample size.

I would add a further limitation in the social context that led to doing this study. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, about 581,000 same-sex couples lived in the United States in 2009. Although no reliable surveys exist about how many U.S. children are living in homes with gay and lesbian parents, estimates range from 1 million to 14 million. The numbers are growing, and the important research issues should not be whether millions of gay parents are harming millions of kids or making them gay. Instead, further research must focus on the kind of effective care, social policies, and legal protections these children and families need.

Dr. Drescher is a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and serves as president-elect of the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry. He is also coeditor of "Uncoupling Convention: Psychoanalytic Approaches to Same-Sex Couples and Families" (New York: The Analytic Press, 2004).

Data Are Limited but Valuable.

The U.S. National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study has provided a treasure trove’s worth of much-needed data about the children being raised by lesbian mothers. Initiated in 1986, the current wave of the study reports on a mere 78 adolescents at age 17 years.

This study lands in the middle of an intense political debate around issues of marriage equality and adoption by gay and lesbian parents. Though the American Psychiatric Association supports the right of gay and lesbian adults to adopt, the law on this issue in many states is unclear, and, in a few states, expressly prohibited.

Though the sample size is small, several of the findings in this study deserve comment. First, none of the teenagers reported any sexual or physical abuse by their parents (Arch. Sex. Behav. 2010 [doi:10.1007/s10508-010-9692-2]). This finding is a direct rebuttal to the claim that gay and lesbian parents are more likely to abuse sexually their children.

However, as the authors point out, most perpetrators of childhood sexual abuse in the home are heterosexual males. About four-fifths of the kids in the NLLFS study had no adult males in the household. The stereotype about gay adults sexually abusing children is quite gender-specific (toward males), and this study cannot directly address this misperception.

The study also begins to address questions around sexual identity and sexual behavior. In terms of behavior, the children of lesbian moms were significantly older than their peers at the age of first heterosexual contact. None of the girls raised by lesbian moms had ever been pregnant. While the girls were more likely than were their peers to report history of sexual contact with other girls, the boys were not more likely than their peers to report history of sexual contact with other boys.

The lack of matching by race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status does hamper this comparison, as norms about sexual behavior in teens vary by socioeconomic/cultural subgroups.

As for sexual identity, the vast majority of the adolescents in the NLLFS rated themselves a Kinsey 0-1 (exclusively or predominantly heterosexual) (81% of the girls and 91.9% of the boys). About one-fifth of the girls rated themselves in the Kinsey 2-4 spectrum (not exclusively heterosexual or homosexual). None of the girls and 5.4% of the boys rated themselves a Kinsey 5-6 (predominantly homosexual). For this part of the results, there is no comparison group. Research about sexuality in men and women has been confirming long-held general impressions that sexual identity is more fluid in women than in men. A prior study of children of lesbian mothers, compared with children raised by heterosexual mothers, noted that more of the young adults raised by lesbian parents reported a sexual experience with someone of the same gender. However by age 23.5 years (on average), there was no difference in self-identification as lesbian or gay between the two groups. What if, in fact, the girls in the study continued to report a relatively high rate of bisexual identity in successive waves of the study? There should be nothing inherently threatening about that. Emphasizing that most studies have shown that kids of gay and lesbian parents do not seem to grow up disproportionately gay serves only to appease those who still feel that homosexuality is an illness or a moral failing.

One thing to keep in mind: The subjects in this study represent a particular cohort of families, that of lesbians who planned to conceive in the 1980s, when planned lesbian families were much less common than they are today. The wave of children being raised by gay men started even later. Although the prospective design of the study helps to eliminate recall bias, the subjects are not a randomized sample. Both moms and kids in this study are surely well-aware that they are representing lesbian families to an unfriendly nation.

Although unlikely in the current climate, it would be ideal if further studies could be funded to do similar work with children being born today, to both lesbian parents and gay male parents.

Dr. Volpp is a clinical associate professor of psychiatry at New York University. She is the unit chief of the residency training unit at Bellevue Hospital, also in New York, and serves on the board of the Association of Gay and Lesbian Psychiatrists.

Findings Challenge Old Assumptions.

In a recent film, "The Kids Are All Right," two lesbian moms (Julianne Moore and Annette Bening) each conceive a child using the same anonymous sperm donor and then raise the children together. At the film’s outset, the children, aged 18 and 15 years, seek out and find their sperm donor (Mark Ruffalo). This "reunion" provides the dramatic tension of the film (no spoilers here).

The film, critically acclaimed and commercially successful, increased public awareness of same-sex couples’ using assisted reproductive technologies to create new family arrangements. While somewhat eye-opening to heterosexual moviegoers unfamiliar with these families, these trends are not news. In the 1970s, at the modern gay liberation movement’s start, women leaving heterosexual marriages took their children and raised them with lesbian partners. By the 1990s, a veritable gay baby ("gayby") boom ensued, as male and female same-sex couples, never heterosexually married, had children.

Children of the gayby boom are the subjects of the recently published study under discussion, "Adolescents of the U.S. National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study: Sexual Orientation, Sexual Behavior, and Sexual Risk Exposure." The NLLFS study was launched to provide prospective data on a cohort of lesbian families" from conception until adulthood, includes "84 planned lesbian families [with] a 93% retention rate to date," and includes 39 adolescent girls and 39 adolescent boys conceived through donor insemination.

Among other things, the study found "no reports of physical or sexual victimization by a parent or other caregiver." That’s good to know, but why look for evidence of "victimization" in the first place? The authors say their goal was to "contradict the notion, offered in opposition to parenting by gay and lesbian people, that same-sex parents are likely to abuse their offspring sexually."

Studies like these are the interface between scientific research and the culture wars. Sadly, opponents of same-sex couples as parents frequently appeal to cultural stereotypes of homosexuals as predatory and potentially harmful to children. These kinds of assumptions (like asking "When did you last stop beating your wife?") put potential parents in the position of defending themselves against unwarranted character defamation. Increasingly, courts have struck down state bans on gay and lesbian adoption that make broad, stereotypical assumptions about these parents as members of a group rather than looking at a potential individual parent or couple’s actual qualities.

The study does not address parenting by gay male couples and more research is needed in this area as well. The authors note the study’s limitations: a nonrandom sample; neither matched nor controlled for socioeconomic status, race/ethnicity, or region of residence; and a small sample size.

I would add a further limitation in the social context that led to doing this study. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, about 581,000 same-sex couples lived in the United States in 2009. Although no reliable surveys exist about how many U.S. children are living in homes with gay and lesbian parents, estimates range from 1 million to 14 million. The numbers are growing, and the important research issues should not be whether millions of gay parents are harming millions of kids or making them gay. Instead, further research must focus on the kind of effective care, social policies, and legal protections these children and families need.

Dr. Drescher is a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and serves as president-elect of the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry. He is also coeditor of "Uncoupling Convention: Psychoanalytic Approaches to Same-Sex Couples and Families" (New York: The Analytic Press, 2004).