I think this thread has begun to shed more heat than light. I suggest the two of you move on.

-Your humble administrator

There is no need for you to try to make this personal nor to disparage other bloggers who have not commented here.

I sought clarification. I gave clarification. If you wish to swap citations, we can do that, too. But you appear to wish to disengage in the substantive discussion of the very questions that started the conversation.

According to Gates only about 5% of children in same-sex households were attained via adoption, yet you suggested focussing on that tiny segment of that particular child population.

Please explain how the sexualized component of a lesbian pair makes their parenting superior to that of the parenting of a mother-daughter household. Both lack fathers in the raising of their children.

As I said, even where a mother-daughter household includes the daughter’s father, married to her mother, the outcomes are not on par with the intact married household. In such a scenario there is an intimately familiar “male role model” in the household, not just a neighbor down the street or an occassionally visiting male friend. You might hope to discount this, Fannie, by mere assertion of your default position, however, you still need to explain the basis, apart from some political notion of a divide between gender and sex, that convinced you of your position in the first place.

Although it funny that for all the claims you’ve made in your previous comments, you didn’t actually provide citations. I’ll just take your word on everything though, don’t worry.

Fannie, you dismissed this as getting in the way of the point you were supposedly making on the topic of parenting.

So we can also dismiss, I suppose, third party procreation since for the same-sex scenario this would require segregating either mom or dad from the family circle. Your emphasis is on child-raising rather than responsible procreation.

So you looked to adoption as a framework for discussing sex differentation and parenting.

The adoptive homes that do best, in terms of outcomes for the children, are those which are comprised of husband, wife, and children of their marriage. Adding adopted children to such a family has proven to be the best way to makeup for the shortfall experienced by children in need of parents. This cuts across ages and other differences based on hardships experienced by the adopted children.

Our society has not done enough to recruit more of these kinds of families. We put obstacles in the way. So we broaded the pool from which to recruit prospective adoptors.

The next best scenario is the married man and woman who have experienced infertility. Interstingly, such families often eventually adopt multiple times and, almost as often, also procreate. The key is the stability and so when a couple has suffered greatly due to extended efforts to overcome infertility there can be problems to overcome within the marriage.

Now, the best we can do is act on the available evidence without automatically lowering our standards for the sake of satisifying needy adults by assinging them children in need. This goes for the prioritization of types of adoptors as well as for the evidence of stability on a case-by-case basis. So, of course, there are no truly hard and fast rules when it comes to meeting the best interests of a given child.

The presence of a second adult in a home is not automatically an advantage. This is so whether or not that second adult is of the opposite sex of the first adult. Yet this is too often deeply discounted by those who advocate for ‘same-sex parenting” in the name of gays and lesbians. In fact, such advocates often cross the line in asserting an adult right to adopt. No such right exists.

How children are attained is no trivial matter. The both-sexed basis of human generativity is what gives special meaning to David’s question: “So if gender matters in selecting a partner, shouldn’t it matter in parenting, too?”

It adds meaning to his second set of questions: “If a child’s parents died, all else being equal, would you rather she was raised by an aunt and an uncle or two aunts (sisters)? Would it matter? Why or why not?”

If the same-sex scenario is not superior due to the sexualized aspect of a lesbian or a gay arrangement, then, should we not be looking at outcomes where children have been raised by nonsexualized same-sex arrangements, such as mother-daughter combinations?

And we might also compare with arrangements in which a mother-father have combined with either a son or a daughter to raise children. These are often very stable arrangements, but not always. And, despite the mother and father being married, the children of their daughter or their son do experience outcomes that are substandard — because the children lack either a mother or father.

The point I made about most of the children raised in same-sex households having migrated from the previously procreative relationships is that these children have lots in common with those in blended families. And those in single-parent households. They are seperated, for whatever reason, from one of their parents.

Now, if one takes the view that a parent is the person raising the child, then, I guess, the nonresident father or mother would counts less. But the experience of children says otherwise.

No accusations have been made. No “SQM” routine.

You expressed disdain when for the both-sexed nature of human generativity when you said: ” I think all of us here understand reproductive biology. I believe you’re missing my point.” And then refused to make your point clear even when asked for clarification.

Sex differentiation manifests itself in social, cultural, as well as human biological and physiological ways. It is the height of naivete to take the default position that you do, that sex differentiation is irrelevant to parenting, especially in light of the social socientific evidence regarding outcomes based on family structure.

Asking the questions I asked, and your giving the nonanswers you have given, demonstrates that you have different standards for yourself than you have for others in this discussion.

Fathers, far more than mothers, directly influence the psycho-sexual development of their daughters. Fathers, much more than mothers, directly influence the development of restraint in the expression of aggressiveness. There are many other such noted differences. There are obvious overlaps which I guess do not fit your expectation for absolutes from those who recognize the value of integrated fatherhood and motherhood.

The influence of fathers on sons extends beyond childhood and reaches into the parenting their sons provide the next generation. At the same time, the maternal influence is not an isolated influenced, set apart from that of her husband’s, but one which complements the paternal impact on boys becoming men.

Now, sure, if you are determined to neutralize the very idea of “boys becoming men”, based on some ideological hostility toward sex differentation, then, as you have in regard to both-sexed nature of human generativity, you might indulge in over-estimating your ideology and under-estimating the lived fact of integrated fatherhood and motherhood. Afterall, single mothers raise good children, too, right?

But having exprienced firsthand the corruptive influence of identity politics in a totalitrian society, I can attest to the fact that even children deprived for the basics can rise above their disadvantages and become wonderful adults — provided that they have learned the hard lessons of their experience. Sadly, when deprived, human beings more often regress to a pre-civlized condition. And, so, as much as single mothers are true heroes for doing all that they can, and the best that they can, the lack of a father does adversely impact their children. That some turn out very well, is a testament to something other than the identity politics that runs through your various blogposts on your blog and in your comments here and elsewhere.

Sex differentation is influential — as I said, this is observed whether it is due to culture, social factors, or some balance of nature/nuture. It is not a fact that parenthing is sex-netural. That’s why I return to the fundamentals of the way humankind is designed to create new human beings through the combination of the sexes. More than that, civilization itself is founded on the unity of fatherhood and motherhood. Where there is increased sex segregation, there is increased instability socially, culturally, and even in terms of the continued vitality of a given social system.

So look to the measured outcomes of child well-being. This ought to give you some pause since the lack of either moms or dads does have a measurablely adverse impact. As does the attempt to blend families. Some people can rise above those disadvantages but I don’t think that adding disadvantages is the wonderful thing that you do when you take the default position that fathers are irrelevant so long as there is a mother, or more than one mother, and some vague “male role model” in a child’s life. Note that fathers who acts as vague male role models are a disadvantage, as well.

My purpose here is not to have a general discussion of the merits same-sex parenting, least of all with you. David asked two specific questions of “SSM supporters” and I answered him. Read and re-read my comments if you don’t understand something, but I have no interest in voluntarily subjecting myself to your condescending Socratic Question Master routine and I certainly have no interest in your paranoid accusations.
For, I think it’s strange that, in the middle of a civil conversation, you accuse me of having deep “disdain” for the “both-sexed nature of human generativity” of reproduction. You have little understanding of my position if you think that’s how I feel.

So, sorry man, I just do not have time for you. You’ve proven time and time again that it’s virtually impossible to get a single straight answer out of you and that, in the process, my presence whenever you guys are around necessarily involves being met with all sorts of defensive accusations.

You said dismissively: ” I think all of us here understand reproductive biology. I believe you’re missing my point.”

Implicit in your default position is that women can imitate fathers well enough that children will not be adversely influenced by the lack of a father.

How does a woman know what to imitate if she has not some concept of fatherhood? In other words, is she merely to behave as an asexual parental unit with no concept of the unity of fatherhood and motherhood? Or is your point, your bedrock point, something else entirely?

One place you could begin is with the available social-scientific evidence. You emphasized adoption as one means for attaining children.

By the way, a tiny minority of children in same-sex households were attained via adoption (see Gates’ estimate).

Meanwhile most children in such households, by far, have a great deal of significant factors in common with children raised in blended families.

Perhaps you think there is evidence that blended families headed by lesbians, for example, are superior to those led by cohabitating or married both-sexed couples?

Also, children raised in the absence of either mom or dad are not residing exclusively in households of lesbians and gay men. In fact, there are more children in nonsexualized households (for example, mother-daughter arrangements) than in same-sex sexualized households. Perhaps you think there is evidence that the sexualization is the basis for producing better outcomes?

Anyway, you pointed to adoption. I deferred to your default position and asked for the evidence that might have convinced you of your position.

My view of the available evidence, across cultures, is that whether or not the influence of sex differentiation is merely a social construct (you still owe a nonpolitical explanation of the actual difference between gender and sex), a cultural adaptation to human physiology, or some combination of nature and nurture, the outcomes are different for children when raised by their biological parents in a married household.

As I said earlier, social science is limited to measuring what is measurable. So we miss lots. We do have a given that is the norm for humankind: children are born of men and women, not of some asexual phenomena. From this we also see sex differentiation and its influence, one way or another, even where we compare lesbian co-parenting and gay co-parenting.

We see lesbian women acknowleding the importance of “male role models” even as they deeply discount the participation of their child’s father as part of united mom-dad duo. There is a sense, even there, that sex-segregation is not a good thing when it comes to raising children. The nature of human community is both-sexed, afterall.

You’d do better to emulate David, who is very good at giving straight answers.

Can you please cite the social-scientific evidence that children in adoptive homes have the same outcomes as children in intact married homes with low-conflict?

Then please cite the evidence for children in adoptive homes that lack fathers.

Thanks.