Traditional Families Best For Kids

By Rod Dreher • June 12, 2012, 12:20 AM

There’s a much-talked-about new study out from Mark Regnerus, a sociologist at the University of Texas in Austin, that finds children raised in traditional mother-father homes do better overall than children raised in two-parent, same-sex homes. In fact, the outcomes among those kids track more closely with children raised in a heterosexual stepfamily situation, or a heterosexual single parent home. Regnerus writes about his and his team’s study in a Slate essay. Regnerus says the reason why his study is so much more reliable than previous studies showing no meaningful difference in outcomes, or even better outcomes from lesbian parents, is because the sample size is so much larger. Excerpt:

Let me be clear: I’m not claiming that sexual orientation is at fault here, or that I know about kids who are presently being raised by gay or lesbian parents. Their parents may be forging more stable relationships in an era that is more accepting and supportive of gay and lesbian couples. But that is not the case among the previous generation, and thus social scientists, parents, and advocates would do well from here forward to avoid simply assuming the kids are all right.

This study arrives in the middle of a season that’s already exhibited plenty of high drama over same-sex marriage, whether it’s DOMA, the president’s evolving perspective, Prop 8 pinball, or finished and future state ballot initiatives. The political take-home message of the NFSS study is unclear, however. On the one hand, the instability detected in the NFSS could translate into a call for extending the relative security afforded by marriage to gay and lesbian couples. On the other hand, it may suggest that the household instability that the NFSS reveals is just too common among same-sex couples to take the social gamble of spending significant political and economic capital to esteem and support this new (but tiny) family form while Americans continue to flee the stable, two-parent biological married model, the far more common and accomplished workhorse of the American household, and still—according to the data, at least—the safest place for a kid.

How strange and depressing it is that what used to be common sense is now considered politically dangerous to say among elites. (N.B., William Saletan finds flaws with the Regnerus study, and says even if it’s true, it’s, yes, really an argument for gay marriage.) Ross Douthat says we are going into an unprecedented social experiment — “the final, formal severing of marriage from procreation” — in which, liberal optimism notwithstanding, nobody has any idea how it’s going to turn out. Excerpt:

If gay marriage is simply a basic natural right, of course — the formal legal expression of our right to love as we wish — it shouldn’t be up for reconsideration under any circumstances. This is a widespread view of wedlock, and it may already be the dominant one. But Regnerus’s study is a reminder of why marriage has traditionally been regarded as something other than just a celebration of love and a signifier of civic equality, and why the rationale for the institution has involved a child’s rights to his or her biological parents as well as in two lovers’ rights to one another. Marriage’s purpose, in this sense, has not been just to validate the consenting adults who enter into it, but to provide support and recognition for a particular way of bearing and rearing children – one whose distinctive advantages remain apparent, even as that recognition declines and disappears.

What Ross observes — that same-sex marriage marks the final severing of marriage from procreation — is the reason that so many of us on the social right oppose it. You have read my accounts here, from my late sister and other teachers, about how hard kids today have it in classrooms because they come from such unstable homes. We have deconstructed marriage to the point where for many, many people, it is all about fulfilling adult needs; kids are an afterthought, or an accessory. This is going to cost us.

Posted in Gay Marriage.

69 Responses to Traditional Families Best For Kids

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James says:

June 12, 2012 at 4:13 pm

Actually, Bubba, Erin was being serious. Consider this report from the NY Times:

A study to be released next month is offering a rare glimpse inside gay relationships and reveals that monogamy is not a central feature for many. Some gay men and lesbians argue that, as a result, they have stronger, longer-lasting and more honest relationships. And while that may sound counterintuitive, some experts say boundary-challenging gay relationships represent an evolution in marriage — one that might point the way for the survival of the institution.

New research at San Francisco State University reveals just how common open relationships are among gay men and lesbians in the Bay Area. The Gay Couples Study has followed 556 male couples for three years — about 50 percent of those surveyed have sex outside their relationships, with the knowledge and approval of their partners.

That consent is key. “With straight people, it’s called affairs or cheating,” said Colleen Hoff, the study’s principal investigator, “but with gay people it does not have such negative connotations.”

The study also found open gay couples just as happy in their relationships as pairs in sexually exclusive unions, Dr. Hoff said. A different study, published in 1985, concluded that open gay relationships actually lasted longer.

None of this is news in the gay community, but few will speak publicly about it. Of the dozen people in open relationships contacted for this column, no one would agree to use his or her full name, citing privacy concerns. They also worried that discussing the subject could undermine the legal fight for same-sex marriage.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/29/us/29sfmetro.html
Harrison H.M. Elfrink says:

June 12, 2012 at 5:49 pm

The “traditional” nuclear family was once considered a rather new family structure and didn’t really become commonplace until the 20th century. The extended family, in which you had mom and dad, the kids, the grandparents and perhaps a few uncles and aunts and cousins living under the same roof, helping out with the farm or the family trade was the norm before families were broken off into smaller units during the industrial revolution.

The nuclear family is not the “traditional” family, but it’s a common and the most sustainable family-structure in industrialized societies where macro-operations from large businesses and industries replace cottage industries and specialized craft. (Thus making the extended family obsolete and economically burdensome) A kid will not grow up to be well-adapted without both a nurturing and feminine mother-figure and a stern and masculine father-figure.
Angela Riccetti says:

June 12, 2012 at 8:45 pm

Erin,

I’d like to recommend a book to you: Borrowed TIme: An AIDS Memoir, by Paul Monette. I think you should read it before making any more glib and cruel comments about dying gay people and the partners who care for them.
I’m not criticizing you for being opposed to same-sex marriage. However, it’s possible to oppose SSM and to also refrain from making cracks about “various extracurricular partners” visiting people in their hospital rooms. Comments like yours are the reason that gay folks like me have a hard time accepting the whole “but we’re just against SSM, we don’t mean you any harm!” trope. It rings hollow when people make it clear that they think your relationship is a thing of mockery.
Peter H says:

June 12, 2012 at 9:06 pm

Rod, perhaps the problems with this study would be more clear if you imagined a study that compared the adult outcomes for children who attended traditional schools with children who, for some reason or other, did not attend traditional schools for some length of time.

And then imagine that the study results were touted as proving that “home schooled kids don’t fare as well as students educated in traditional schools.”

And then you find out that while there were a few homeschooled students among the “students educated outside of traditional schools,” the majority of them were students who dropped out of school or were expelled.

Regnerus did not compare children raised in traditional mother-father homes with children raised in two-parent, same-sex homes, and I think you know it.

It’s disingenuous to suggest that his study “finds children raised in traditional mother-father homes do better overall than children raised in two-parent, same-sex homes.”
Ken says:

June 12, 2012 at 9:12 pm

If “Marriage’s purpose, in this sense, has not been just to validate the consenting adults who enter into it, but to provide support and recognition for a particular way of bearing and rearing children,” how is that an argument that we shouldn’t support other ways of rearing children which are taking place and will continue taking place whether they’re best or not? If kids raised in gay homes are already at a disadvantage, isn’t that all the more reason to support their parents?
CapeCodder says:

June 12, 2012 at 9:13 pm

we are unable to read ‘older comments’ Please fix the problem — it has been going on several days now.

Thank you.
Turmarion says:

June 12, 2012 at 9:16 pm

Rod, just FYI, it seems that when the comments get beyond a certain number, you get the second page of the comments with a link that says, “Older Comments”. However, when you click on that, you just get the post with the comment form, without older comments. Anyone else see this happening?
Rod Dreher says:

June 12, 2012 at 9:19 pm

Rod has been out all day shooting a segment for the BBC’s website. I’m exhausted, and will be traveling all day tomorrow, and in meetings till late. That’s what I’ve been doing.
MH - Secular Misanthropist says:

June 12, 2012 at 9:30 pm

Turmarion, I have seen that one three posts now. It’s frustrating because of the lost context.
Erin Manning says:

June 13, 2012 at 12:40 am

Angela, I would point you to James’ comment which cites an NYT article on the subject of open gay relationships. I would also point you to people like Andrew Sullivan and Dan Savage who are prominent supporters of open relationships, and others like them who have said that heterosexuals are just going to have to get used to the idea that for gay couples, the concept of marriage includes multiple sex partners and “mini-relationships” (of all sorts of durations) entered into with the full knowledge and consent of both “real” partners.

I was not making glib or cruel comments (and I spoke merely about hospital visitation privileges, not sole caregivers of a partner who is dying of a sexually transmitted disease, which must be a very difficult situation for anyone). I was speaking about the reality of gay relationships, which are much more fluid in terms of the notion of “fidelity” and much more likely to include multiple sex partners even within the context of a committed relationship than similar heterosexual relationships.

In all honesty–and I’m being very sincere here–I think that many gay couples are going to find gay “marriage” to be a two-edged sword. Sure, they’ll get to harass and intimidate religious objectors into silence and force society to show such acceptances as featuring gay “parents” in kindergarten readers and teaching middle-schoolers gay sex acts and practices along with the lessons on human reproduction, which are not unimportant goals; but they’ll also realize that heterosexuals are going to expect their conduct as “married” people to mirror that of heterosexuals, such that there won’t be a whole lot of support among heterosexuals for a notion of “fidelity” which means “So long as I know about your boyfriends, you don’t have more than a certain number a year, and you don’t take any ‘business trips’ to, say, Thailand without including me, you are practicing what I consider faithfulness…” And so far from having sympathy for the notion that *some* gay couples might want to extend health insurance or hospital visitation to a regular sex partner outside the “marriage,” such a notion is going to be met with derision by most heterosexuals.

I truly don’t get why people think I’m taking cheap shots here. I’ve done quite a bit of reading on these issues, and am very much aware of what the “other side” believes. Just Google and read some of the stuff out there re: “queering marriage;” there are some gay activists who are anything from ticked off to boiling mad that so much gay rights effort has been channeled into creating the myth of the “Ozzy and Harry” upper middle-class white totally monogamous suburban gay male couple raising the transgender ADHD children abandoned by Harry’s divorced and drug-addicted sister, or something–such that Ozzy and Harry clearly deserve to be “married” to each other. As these gay activists are willing to proclaim to anyone who will give them five minutes’ attention, they don’t want gay “marriage” if it means they’ll have to act like straights, get legally “married” as soon as the opportunity arises in their state, define their partnerships in the rigid and inflexible terms that a civil marriage mandates, permit the state to give them a sort of Good Housekeeping ™ seal of approval in exchange for a handful of perks that in their activist vision shouldn’t be coupled to marriage anyway, and so forth.

There is actually a great deal of passion out there in the left-wing activist gay community *against* gay “marriage” precisely because so many gay couples suddenly feel compelled to put so much of their actual practices and ways of living back in the closet in order to convince heterosexual marriages that gay “marriage” is exactly the same thing as a union between a man and a woman–because if they don’t hide their “queerness,” (gay activists’ term, not mine) then straights will not be inclined to see gay couples as exactly like straight ones, a necessary prerequisite for the marriage fight.

I have to admit to having a sort of admiration for some of these gay activists. Sure, we’re polar opposites in terms of theology and philosophy, but at least they get that words and definitions matter, that symbols and status are important concepts, and that it does you no good to win a Pyrrhic victory in which you win a battle (say, over gay “marriage”) but lose the right to that autonomous and rapidly fluxing self-and-relationship definition which has always been so radically important to the gay community–and thus, in the end, you lose the war.
Abelard Lindsey says:

June 13, 2012 at 12:41 am

The best approach to present a case against same-sex marriage would be to show demonstrable evidence that the existence of same-sex marriage will adversely affect how hetero-sexual people treat marriage. I believe this is this only argument that is considered legitimate by most people.

Given that I am hetero-sexual, I don’t have any dog in this fight. My personal preference would be to simply get the government out of the marriage business completely and allow private groups to define marriage as they see fit.
JonF says:

June 13, 2012 at 6:31 am

Re: “With straight people, it’s called affairs or cheating,” said Colleen Hoff, the study’s principal investigator, “but with gay people it does not have such negative connotations.”

Are you really trying to say that gay people do not feel jealousy? Come on, that’s just universal to human nature!

Erin,

There are leftwing feminists who have some rather wacko things to say about marriage too; yet we do not forbid those ladies (let alone all women) from marrying. Why should the political bloviations of radical gays enter into this argument if those of radical feminists are ignored? And even if a straight couple announces to the world that they intend to have an open marriage we do not use that as a reason to forbid their marriage. Indeed, marriage has survived an incalculable number of affairs, mistresses, lovers etc over the centuries. I can’t see that a few gay affairs (and remember we ARE talking a fairly small number relative to the entire population) will be lethal to the institution that managed to take Charles II, Edward VII and assorted other serial bed hoppers in stride.
Bill M. says:

June 13, 2012 at 11:22 am

Erin, You’re having us google all about gay infidelity and multiple partners, something about which you seem to be a minor authority. Perhaps you need to look into what straight people do. You might start googling with terms like “Caliente Nudist Resort” and “swingers”. You don’t get to preclude gays from equal rights just because some of them do the same things that married straight couples do. Even if those things include some that you disapprove of (but are apparently fascinated by).
Mike says:

June 13, 2012 at 1:35 pm

In your googling and extensive research, Erin, have you noticed that lesbians have higher-levels of fidelity and monogamy in their relationships than heterosexual couples and that female couples make up a majority of same-sex marriages?
Erin Manning says:

June 13, 2012 at 2:10 pm

Actually, Mike, lesbians have astronomically higher divorce rates (compared to heterosexuals and gay males) in nearly every country which has legalized gay “marriage,” a situation which is starting to have grave consequences for the children raised in these environments.

I think you’re all missing my point. The end game isn’t to admit same-sex couples to holy matrimony or even mere civil marriage; the end game is to destroy marriage as a legal institution because marriage is a well of heterosexual privilege, sexism, rigid gender identities, and the privilege of biological parenthood over more fluid types of child-rearing. And judging by the number of heterosexuals who now shrug and say, “Let’s just get the government out of the marriage business!” whenever this issue comes up, the radical deconstructors and queer theorists are having a much bigger impact than anyone realizes.
Bubba says:

June 13, 2012 at 7:57 pm

“I truly don’t get why people think I’m taking cheap shots here.”

Your mocking tone.

In all your “research” did you note that about 350,000 gay men died, many of them alone because people a lot like you wouldn’t let their partners in and, worse, families of “traditional Christians” barred anyone from visiting them?

Can you imagine that’s a sore point to a lot of us who survived?

P.S. Do you make holocaust jokes?
Bubba says:

June 13, 2012 at 8:00 pm

Also, the vaunted study mentioned by the NYT was carried out by a research team at SF State. They began the study in an attempt to understand how gay men in open relationships were behaving. The goal was to better address risks of HIV transmission among this subset of gay men and of gay men in relationships.

That the media and few “conservative” pundits were able to spin this into a study about gay male relationships is testament to the dishonest of the latter group and the naivete and lack of seriousness of the first.
CapeCodder says:

June 13, 2012 at 10:42 pm

Erin, you do realize that a gay, conservative, and Catholic man, Andrew Sullivan was one of the ‘founders’ of the gay marriage movement (much to the horror of the leftists and feminists)??

His whole point was based on what was once understood to be “conservatism” [saving something 'traditional'] and even wrote a book or two about it all. Of course, this was before conservatism got thoroughly and totally hijacked by right-wing theocratic jerks, politicians, and yes, bigots.
Erin Manning says:

June 13, 2012 at 10:49 pm

Bubba, I’ve written before that hospital visitation should be up to the person who is hospitalized, period, end of sentence. This doesn’t require marriage, though. It’s not that hard to set up a durable power of attorney for health care, for instance, and even heterosexual spouses may find these sorts of documents necessary given how one tends to leave the sane world behind when one enters the hospital–and that would protect one if one were unconscious. However, I fully support a “Patients’ Bill of Rights” notion that says that aside from unconscious or comatose patients who have been unable to express their wishes from the onset of the hospitalization (e.g., not someone who becomes unconscious later), any competent patient ought to be able to request visits from anyone he or she asks for and specify any one person to remain with him or her through the night–provided all visitors follow hospital policies.

My m-i-l was in the hospital recently, though, and I have to tell you that my f-i-l was just as “excluded” from her side as a gay partner from his or her partner might be when she had to be moved to the ICU, because hospital rules won’t let *anyone* remain in the ICU with a patient. Luckily, she spent little time in the ICU and was back in a regular patient room fairly quickly. My point is that even in my “Patients’ Bill of Rights” scenario a hospital is an environment in which patient safety trumps all–yes, even marital status–and redefining marriage to include gay couples will NOT automatically mean partners will have the full ability to remain together throughout one partner’s hospitalization.