Australia’s University of Melbourne recently conducted a study on the health and well-being of children raised by same-sex partners. The study found that the children of homosexual parents are no worse off than the children of heterosexual parents in terms of their emotional and physical health, and in some cases are even “healthier and happier” than their peers.
The study provides significant evidence against the pervasive myth that children will be somehow warped if they grow up in a household without both a male and female parent, or that same-sex partners are somehow not fit to raise children.
Only a few days ago, New Democrat MLA Spencer Chandra-Herbert and his husband Romi Chandra were denied adoption on the basis of their sexuality.
They were originally contacted to foster a child that was being given up for adoption. The couple, who had been eager to adopt for two years, were contacted because they were a mixed-race couple, which made them an ideal candidate for the child. They happily agreed to foster the child, on the understanding that they would eventually be able to adopt.
Soon after, however, they were informed that they had been rejected as candidates. The child’s extended family, which did not want to take any part in raising the child, did not want it raised by a same-sex couple.
Chandra-Herbert and his husband have responded to their loss with grace, but they’re also asking the hard questions. To wit, why is a potential parent’s sexuality relevant in B.C.?
Only last month, Stephanie Cadieux, B.C.’s minister of children and family development, joined representative for children and youth Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond to draw attention to the fact that more than 1,000 children in the province’s care are waiting to be adopted.
B.C. is implementing a new strategy to attempt to place these children at a higher rate, but the province needs families to step up.
It’s a shame that qualified families are being rejected from the process because of irrelevant considerations, such as sexuality.
Indeed, if you look at the University of Melbourne’s findings, there is evidence that suggests that gay couples make better parents.
Obviously, these data don’t point to some genetic child-raising superiority hidden deep within in the “homosexual gene”; it has to do with social realities. Researchers posited that the disparity is caused by the fact that gay couples create partnerships and households built on equality — specifically, gender equality. Gay couples are often more equitable when it comes to things like child-rearing, household chores and overall relationship maintenance, and this has positive results for children raised in these environments.
You see the same thing in heterosexual couples; a recent report by the Association of Psychological Science found that daughters were more likely to have professional ambitions in households where fathers shared equally in the household work.
Alyssa Croft, PhD candidate at the University of B.C.’s department of psychology, says their data suggest that “girls grow up with broader career goals in households where domestic duties are shared more equitably by parents … How fathers treat their domestic duties appears to play a unique gatekeeper role.”
In fact, the University of Melbourne found that the most important negative factor in the lives of children raised by gay parents was the stigma they faced as children of gay parents. So same-sex adoption hurts children when people discriminate against those children for having same-sex parents. Once again, it is the stigma of the thing — not the thing itself — that is harmful.
The ultimate take-away, however, is that children fare well in households where the parents’ relationship is egalitarian and healthy, regardless of sexuality.
All the evidence is pointing one way. Let’s hope Chandra and Chandra-Herbert’s experience will draw attention to this issue, so that other B.C. couples who are hoping to adopt one of the thousand children currently in the system won’t have to face the same hurdles.
