Grow up in a lesbian family?

[jenn]

Is it mentally damaging for a male to grow up in a lesbian family?

 

[Caitie]

Is it mentally damaging for a male to grow up in a lesbian family?

No, it isn’t. A study that examined every child in the Netherlands born between 1995 and 2005–including 1,200 kids of gay parents and over a million kids of straight parents—found that the gay couples’ kids did slightly better in school. This might be because gay couples don’t often have babies by accident or default—they usually need to adopt or use fertility treatments, and only couples who are very invested in child-reading go to the trouble.

The study didn’t separate gay couples from lesbian couples because the sample was too small to do so, but if boys were disadvantaged by having lesbian parents while the overall effect was still positive, that would mean that boys raised by male-male couples did the best of all, so boys are also “mentally damaged” by being raised by one dad and one mom instead of two dads. I don’t think many people would endorse that claim.

 

[heather]

Is it mentally damaging for a male to grow up in a lesbian family?

If they have good male relatives or other male role models they are likely going to be just fine. The same thing goes for girls growing up in a household without a mother or female, they need good female examples. And they might be just fine anyway, kids raised in any 2 parent household tend to do better than kids in a single-parent one, but kids need good examples from same-sex role models for the best outcome.