How many studies have been done on gay parenting?

“Gay parenting”. Wow. Why not, “blonde parenting”, “tall parenting”, “parenting with eyeglasses”?

Anyway, I am coming up with some stuff on a quick google search, such as this, this, and this.

Edit: Wait – are you looking for statistics on the number of children raised by same-sex parents?

I doubt that there is a single number that would be up to date.

@tom_g I don’t see how blond parenting, tall parenting, parenting with eyeglasses, is in the same realm as gay parenting. I fully support gay couples and parenting, but you ignoring why people would be curious about the children raised by gay parents seems a little dismissive. People would want to know the same as they want to know how children fare with divorced parents, single parents, biracial couples, etc. Since it is outside of the statistical norm, or also we could say simply something that is discussed, why not have stats on it? It does not judge the parents, it can be society making things difficult for the children, but there still might be stats worth looking at.

@JLeslie: “but you ignoring why people would be curious about the children raised by gay parents seems a little dismissive.”

Sure. I have a tendency to be dismissive at times. This one seems to be a justified case, however. Sure, I’d love to see studies on parenting that breaks down variables of all kinds, such as political ideology, religious belief, IQ, education, military vs. non-military, etc. The list would be huge. My eyes do the uncontrollable roll when we’re trying to figure out if it’s ok to have kids raised by gay/lesbian couples. I think a justification of heterosexual marriage and child rearing is in order before addressing the statistical outliers.

@717richboy: “If you’re going to whine about the way I posed the question, please go elsewhere.”

Wow. Listen, kiddo. I provided you some links. I’ll interpret the comment above as “thanks Tom!”. You’re welcome.

@tom_g I agree I would like to see various parameeters on parenting. But, I will say this, I think gay parents would want to know where their children might be at risk, to focus on those areas. Every divorced parent I know worries about the effect on the children. The parents themselves seem to want the information.

I read in one article that a single sociologist conducted 81 studies on same-sex parenting. I was looking for an approximation of the total amount of studies done. I guess I’ll just have to go with “many,” though. Thank you all for the effort.

@717richboy Woah, hold on there, you just wrote the question. You will probably get more answers.

I have no trouble with an area being researched. And researched again. From everything I’ve read, there is simply no issue to gay parenting in terms of child happiness and ‘success’.

I appreciate the input thus far, and any input that follows. Thanks, all.

What you want to do is look for “meta-analysis” papers. These are papers that look at a lot of studies about the topic.

You are not going to find one number because it matters how you define the topic. I conducted a search for you but my computer crashed and I lost the reference. It found some seventy or so studies done by 2011 or so. 30 were about two-parent gay households and 40 were about 1 parent gay households. Or maybe it was the other way around.

There are studies all over the world. The number of studies you find depends on the time period you look at as well as how you define “gay” and “parenting” and some other terms. It also depends on what outcomes measures you look at. Finally, it depends on what journals you look at.

You should use the search term I gave you, and then draw your own conclusion. You could easily say dozens. I bet you could say 100s, too.

Thank you so much!