What do experts on gay parenting say? You’d be surprised.
CommentsThere’s more evidence that children need both a mother and a father whenever possible in an unexpected source: gay parenting manuals. These are the experts at gays and lesbians raising children, and several of them acknowledge that when children have two Moms or two Dads, they miss having a parent of the other sex. Some examples:
• The Lesbian and Gay Parenting Handbook says some children accept their lesbian or gay parents, but “some children do express an intense longing for the other biological parent, talking about it frequently and emotionally…. Adolescents take particular interest in both their heredity and in gender-specific role models.”
• The Lesbian Parenting Book says “It is very normal for children to long about and ask for a father…. It is natural to feel defensive when your child longs for a father. We encourage you to remain patient while she asks questions, sorts out information and comes to terms without knowing her father’s identity, or not having her biological father in her life. She needs to do it…. [Artificially Inseminated] children of lesbian parents may grieve never knowing their biological father.”
• A majority of the Dads in the study described in Gay Men Choosing Parenthood acknowledged “that their children sometimes verbalized a desire for a mother at one time or another.”
• In For Lesbian Parents: Your Guide to Helping your Family Grow Up Happy, Healthy, and Proud, lesbian Moms are encouraged to ask their daughters “if it’s hard sometimes not having a father. Let her know that you understand that sometimes it is hard.”
• In Gay Dads: A Celebration of Fatherhood, a child, Tyler, whose two Dads no longer live together. When he asks if his mother can come live with him, he is told “She would be welcome, but as a friend.”
There are many other examples. It is stunning to me (just like gay enthusiasm for Mamma Mia! (pdf) and Dreams from my Father) that nobody notices the elephant in the room - gay people acknowledge that children need and/or want a parent of each sex, which should mean that whenever possible we should provide that. However, gay EqualityMania™ sets in and nothing could possibly, ever stand in the way of total equality, no matter who it hurts, including children.
Is gender bias really a valid excuse for depriving a child of her own father or mother? Seems cruel and unusual to me…
Note that most of the quotes would make equal sense if you replaced “father” etc with “Wii”. Undoubtedly many if not most kids would “long for” a Wii or “verbalize a desire for” a Wii, but that by itself isn’t any case at all that parents who don’t buy their kids Wiis are bad parents or should have their relationships flagged with a low-prestige label.
Mark-
Is the analogy to a video game really relevant to the situation?
A better analogy would be to “fresh air” or “vegetables.” Yes, a child can get along without one or the other, but it would be cruel and wrong to deliberately decide that because of your own desires your child will never go outdoors or eat greens.
So, this seems to be more an argument against gay parenting or gay adoption, than it does against gay marriage.
Anyway, what I’m wondering is whether any of you have you asked children of gay parents if they are happy with their parents, or if they’d want to trade their parents in for opposite-sex parents?
Marty,
You’re being very over-the-top. I know a lot of same-sex parents who are loving, kind, and wonderful to their children. Their children are happy and loved and they don’t learn that their families are “wrong” until other kids tease them for it. (And gee, I wonder who’s teaching kids to tease children of gay parents….)
It’s not really your place, as someone who probably knows few (if any) children of gay parents, to declare other people you know nothing about to be “cruel and unusual.” In fact, it’s quite ignorant.
Fannie-
Your “What does parenting have to do with marriage” question is an excellent one (but to give him fair credit, Mark asked it before you did), and I plan to answer at length in an upcoming post.
I don’t think the “are you happy with your parents” question is really fair. Many of the children in the Texas polygamy cult compound said they were happy. Children know what they know, not what might have been. In Judaism, I’ve heard a similar question when I have advocated against intermarriage (which I think is good neither for Jews nor for Judaism) - does that mean the children of intermarriage never should have been born? I don’t think it’s a fair question.
DB: ‘A better analogy would be to “fresh air” or “vegetables.” ‘
A priori it might be or it might not be. Your job is to show that it is, but you’ve just assumed it. It’s very effective rhetoric and will probably sway people who aren’t alert to question begging, but it’s logically vacuous.
Sorry, I thought it was obvious. Nobody thinks children need Wiis (is that the plural of Wii?)
Everybody thinks it’s a good thing for children to have (non-poisonous) vegetables, (non-polluted) fresh air, good mothers, and good fathers. The question is whether a child needs all four. I would argue that ideally, a child should have all four, but a child can also grow up just fine with vitamins instead of greens, and indoor air instead of both indoor and out, and two moms, and two dads, and single parents.
I think a child who knows what lettuce is but never gets to taste it, or who never has the joy of a playground, would miss it. Do children have a “right” to vegetables or to a father? I think “rights” language is overused, so I’ll just say children are better off when they have vegetables and a father, and a mother, and fresh air, and if they are denied any one of them it’s unfortunate and kind of sad.
DB: “Sorry, I thought it was obvious. Nobody thinks children need Wiis (is that the plural of Wii?)”
We get it that _you_ think it’s obvious (that parents of both genders are like vitamins rather than Wiis). But it’s not obvious to us, and we’re waiting for you to point out some argument that we’ve overlooked that makes it obvious. This post certainly isn’t it - it’s trivially question begging, and thus logically circular and invalid. Moreover the fact that, even with prompting, you don’t seem to get that it’s question-begging or that that’s a problem is powerful reassurance that most likely we’re _not_ missing anything and you’re just the sort of person who can convince themselves of the obviousness of any old prejudice by chasing their tail.
To draw any conclusions from this article alone rather than that children have a tendency to instinctively want parents of both genders is kinda silly. Yes, there’s the larger debate of gay marriage - one of the arguments against sanctioning gay marriage is that children need the stability of both sexes. As someone who’s parents divorced at an early age and spending most of my time with my mother, I can say that I dreadfully missed having a father figure around and I believe that not having a masculine influence has impaired my ability to an extent to relate to others. I’ve done a lot of work to learn the things that I missed growing up, but at the same time I wish I had been in a family where both genders were present in my upbringing.
I personally don’t know how much any of you speak from firsthand experience, but I still suffer today (though much lesser than in previous years) from not having the influence of both male and female parents at an early age. Prejudice has nothing to do with it. It seems that many of us would like to redefine marriage as the government’s permission to have sex and to get tax write offs, when it’s really about encouraging the rearing of healthy, functioning families. This article is just another scrap of evidence that supports the notion that gay marriage is not conducive to raising a healthy family. I, for one, do not like all the attempts of radical so-called “gay rights” people telling me that I am hateful and/or prejudiced simply for believing that. I do not appreciate the attempts to force a twisted morality on myself or anyone else.
Mark, a good analogy has many key elements of correspondence with the thing being compared.
Please list the points of correspondence with the thing being compared between “evidence that children need both a mother and a father whenever possible” and “that parents who don’t buy their kids Wiis are bad parents or should have their relationships flagged with a low-prestige label.”
Your comparison looks off-target but perhaps you can explain how you percieve it to be on-target.
Who said that these are “bad parents”? Who flagged their relationships as “low-prestige”?
On the other hand, David has listed those who have added to the evidence of which he spoke. Namely, “experts at gays and lesbians raising children”.
Mark,
You seem to want to have your opinion validated, and won’t accept anything else. Perhaps you don’t want to be confused by the facts: Children fare better when raised by both of their biological parents. Feel free to study the peer-reviewed literature of psychological studies at your leisure. Or just look elsewhere to try to get your feelings validated.
CO: ‘Please list the points of correspondence with the thing being compared between “evidence that children need both a mother and a father whenever possible” and “that parents who don’t buy their kids Wiis are bad parents or should have their relationships flagged with a low-prestige label.”’
Err, why? That’s not either of the analogies under discussion. David’s analogy is kids asking for gender contrast in their parents versus kids asking for vitamins or fresh air or something uncontroversially considered worthy of being asked for. My analogy is kids asking for gender contrast in their parents versus kids asking for a Wii or something else uncontroversially considered frivolous and unworthy of being asked for.
Of course my point in making the analogy to a Wii is not to claim that asking for both a mother and a father is necessarily entirely frivolous but merely to dramatize that David has conspicuously evaded attempting to demonstrate that it’s not frivolous. He’s just assumed that having both a mother and a father is a Good Thing in order to “prove” that it’s a Good Thing, which is question-begging and logically vacuous. But the reassurance that I’m getting from him not getting the idea of a question-begging argument is as nothing compared to your not getting what’s being analogized to what.
Am I being over the top Fannie?
I can only think of a few reasons why a child might have to go through life without a mother or a father, and they are all tragic. Is “because mommy doesn’t like men” any less tragic than the others?
Cruel. Unusual. Extremely self-centered.
Mark, so your not really discussing the actual topic.
That is: ” when children have two Moms or two Dads, they miss having a parent of the other sex [...] gay people acknowledge that children need and/or want a parent of each sex, which should mean that whenever possible we should provide that.”
To which you responded with a rather poor anology, by your own admission.
That is: “[It] would make equal sense if you replaced “father” etc with “Wii” [...] [because it would not make the case] that parents who don’t buy their kids Wiis are bad parents or should have their relationships flagged with a low-prestige label.”
You have just now conceded: “my point in making the analogy to a Wii is not to claim that asking for both a mother and a father is necessarily entirely frivolous but merely to dramatize that David has conspicuously evaded attempting to demonstrate that it’s not frivolous.”
Do you think that the topic is frivolous and that your analogy demonstrated that?
The social-scientific evidence, and the wide consensus that has been established, is that outcomes for children are better within a family headed by a both-sexed cople in a low-conflict conjugal relationship.
All other arrangements are compared against this standard and have been found to be sub-standard. The lack of a father, or the lack of a mother, is experienced as a shortcoming as far as outcomes and, as David’s blogpost reveals, also as an experience of emotional deficit.
With social science we can only measure certain things and miss getting a full account of other difficult-to-measure aspects of family formation and family success. In fact, the advocates of same-sex parenting make this claim all the time.
It is noncontroversial to acknowledge that children do indeed need, and feel the need, for both moms and dads.
Have you attempted to show that the lack of a mother or the lack of a father is inconsequential? For that has also been asserted by advocates of “same-sex parenting” but has yet to be demonstrated with social scientific evidence such that there is a wide consensus and the matter rendered noncontroversial.
In fact, since same-sex parenting is far more common in the context of a nonsexualized relationship, advocates need to demonstrate the concrete difference that a sexualized twosome makes on the outcomes for children and on the emotional experience of childlren.
It goes further, Mark, in that double-dad or double-mom scenarios are typically the result of same-sex households attaining children through the previously procreative relationship of one or both of the dads or moms. That is to say, these children are mostly, by far, the children of divorce and have both moms and dads and the protections that children of divorce have. Some smaller portion of this child population were attained via adoption — with about half involved in “second-parent” adoption. These children live in households that have key points in common with blended families — step-parent families (usually of the social rather than official kind). So to make the point, noncontroversially, that these blended families are a cut above other blended families, and possibly on par with intact married families, you need to point to the plausible mechanism.
You haven’t done that. But then you have merely made an analogy on the assumption that it is David who carries the burden of proof rather than the advocates of ’same-sex parenting’.
There will always be problems studying this very small child population in same-sex households. The evidence is far from conclusive as even the advocates acknowlege, when pressed.
Well, Marty, while we’re stating our blanket opinions here, I am of the opinion that your opinion is cruel, bigoted, ignorant, and un-compassionate.
Where you Opiners go wrong is in declaring loving parents to be “selfish” with your endless asinine “selfishness thy name is gay man” posts. Such judgment-laden statements demonstrate nothing but ignorance and I’d be willing to bet that if you came to actually know same-sex parents and saw how profoundly un-selfish they actually are, you’d change your mind.
Like I said before, I know a lot of same-sex parents who are loving, kind, and wonderful to their children. Their children are happy and loved and they don’t learn that their families are “wrong” until other kids tease them for it. If these kids grow up to feel “different” I mostly blame people like you, with your judgmental and unkind words, who make the world a less safe place for us all.
Mark: “He’s just assumed that having both a mother and a father is a Good Thing in order to ‘prove’ that it’s a Good Thing, which is question-begging and logically vacuous.”
OK, OK now I think I understand our crossed signals, and its probably my fault. My analogy was not about having a mother and a father being a Good Thing. It was about a mother being a Good Thing and a father being a Good Thing, and fresh air being a Good Thing, and vegetables being a Good Thing. Good Thing = something virtually everyone agrees is good for children, which doesn’t apply to a Wii. Now, the question is, does it matter if one of the four things is missing. Well, a child *can* grow up just fine with three of the four. But it’s better if the kid has all four.
Now, you may say, I haven’t proven that, I’ve just asserted it. You’re right, I wasn’t aiming to change your mind, I was aiming to clarify what I believe. That’s because tons - tons - of people in this debate think I’m saying something I’m not. If you want to know what exactly I think Moms, and Dads, provide sons, and daughters, check out my next blog post.
CO: “To which you responded with a rather poor anology, by your own admission.”
No, any concession I made was intended to be very minor and I actually think my analogy is rather closer to the truth than David’s.
CO: “The social-scientific evidence, and the wide consensus that has been established, is that outcomes for children are better within a family headed by a both-sexed cople in a low-conflict conjugal relationship.”
No. Anti-SSM advocates routinely misrepresent the evidence. It _is_ true that single-parent families produce worse outcomes, but it is not true that same-sex couples do. The sordid truth is that it’s mostly about resources: poor families tend to have worse outcomes than than rich families because money buys a lot of advantages, not least of which is a better peer group in a better school district, and single-parent families tend to be a lot poorer than double.
DB: “OK, OK now I think I understand our crossed signals, and its probably my fault. My analogy was not about having a mother and a father being a Good Thing. It was about a mother being a Good Thing and a father being a Good Thing, and fresh air being a Good Thing, and vegetables being a Good Thing. ”
No, I don’t see that any signals were crossed. Your analogy is presumably that a mother is a Good Thing in part by virtue of being a parent and in part by virtue of being specifically a female parent, and contrariwise for fathers. That’s not interestingly different from the proposition that “having both a mother and a father is a Good Thing”.
DO: “Now, you may say, I haven’t proven that, I’ve just asserted it. You’re right, I wasn’t aiming to change your mind, I was aiming to clarify what I believe.”
I’m sorry, but I don’t believe that for a moment. Your post starts, “There’s more evidence that children need both a mother and a father whenever possible in an unexpected source: gay parenting manuals.” Evidence is that which does, or at least should, change people’s minds. None of the quotes expressing desire for a mother and a father are evidence of both a mother and a father being independently Good Things unless it’s first been established that the requests are non-frivolous, which is not interestingly different from it having been established that they’re Good Things. That is, it’s not evidence, period.
You are simply mistaken, Mark.
Please cite the source of your evidence on “same-sex parenting”. Not some political statement by an association, but the evidence. Thanks.
1. What the Studies Don’t Tell Us about Same-Sex Parenting
http://opine-editorials.blogspot.com/2005/08/no-basis-what-studies-dont-tell-us.html
For those of you that are confronting people peddling that “mainstream” research shows same-sex parenting is no different than having a mother and father, this article should be considered mandatory reading.
2. Unanimous with insufficient data
http://opine-editorials.blogspot.com/2005/06/unanimous-with-insufficient-data.html
Only a small sample of children of lesbians have been been studied to-date. (And fewer children of gay men). Most were studied as children in lone-parent families, and very few lived in same-sex households. It is difficult to assemble such data on a random sample this very small segment of the child population.
You might be familiar with Gary Gates, a demographer and researcher at the Urban Institute. In May 2004, he appeared at an Urban Institute forum in which he mentioned studies of children raised by homosexual parents.
Gates said:
“I agree there is a body of research [by] some of the leaders in that field. [However] if you combine all the studies of children being raised by same-sex parents, the total number of children studied over the last 20 years is 600 kids. I agree that there is a body of research, but I would challenge that when you frame that against the body of research around how children fare in heterosexual marriage versus single parent versus step families versus all of that, that that literature pales in that comparison, which was really my point.”
[Elizabeth Marquardt acknowledged that I have provided a fair summary of the available studies.]
3. Children in Same Sex Households
http://opine-editorials.blogspot.com/2008/01/children-in-same-sex-households-2000.html
Various surveys of the adult homosexual population indicate that a small portion resides in same sex households with children resident. A significant portion in same sex households have been previously married (i.e. to the opposite sex) and this may account for the children at home. It stands to reason that previously married same sex householders with children would have attained their children via the more traditional means of procreative relationships such as marriage and cohabitation.
Based on the Census estimate of the child population in same sex households, and based on the small number of adopted children and children of ARTs/IVF in such households, the share of children attained by more traditional means is larger, by far, than alternative means. It probably ranges from about 90 to 95%.
4. Children in same-sex households further discussion at Family Scholars Blog
http://opine-editorials.blogspot.com/2006/03/children-in-same-sex-households.html
There is not much data. But data does suggest a difference in what has been called gender dissatisfaction. Also in psycho-sexual development and behavior during adolescence.
Predictably, some say that’s not a negative.
A second woman in the home does not replace the missing father. We know this from experiences of widows and single mothers who join with sisters and grandmothers for the longterm.
Fanny, if they were so “profoundly unselfish”, they wouldn’t be telling their sons “You have no father” simply to justify their own sexist bias. Fatherlessness is always tragic.
CO: “For those of you that are confronting people peddling that “mainstream” research shows same-sex parenting is no different than having a mother and father, this article should be considered mandatory reading.”
I’ve read it. I’m not particularly impressed. They make some fair criticisms but they wildly over-hype their conclusions. The first section on null hypotheses struck me as particularly confused or dishonest. For example they quote this passage from Flaks as evidence that Flaks were committing the methodological sin of attempting to confirm the null hypothesis: “On the basis of prior research, we expected [to find] no differences between the children of lesbian and heterosexual parents in any of the areas evaluated.” But that’s no evidence at all that there wasn’t a non-null hypothesis, or that Flaks et al. were trying to confirm it in the objectionable sense, it’s merely an expression of an expectation that the null hypothesis would fail to be rejected.
Moreover, the problems with confirming the null hypothesis are themselves wildly exaggerated. Failure to reject the null hypothesis is always important information if you interpret it correctly. For example, I’m a working scientist on a project to detect gravity waves. Our null hypothesis is that there are no gravity waves of four particular types in our year of data, and we do not in fact expect to reject that hypothesis, because our best guesstimates of the source strengths and event rates are below the sensitivity of the current detector. And if indeed that’s how it turns out, we will report it as the positive claim that there are probably no gravity waves of those types of strength more than such-and-such or rate more than so-and-so.
In the same way, failure to detect differences by the variety of different measures considered in the various studies is also important information. It’s not proof that there are no differences of any sort or magnitude whatsoever, but it’s evidence that any differences are probably small and/or obscure.
CO: “There is not much data. But data does suggest a difference in what has been called gender dissatisfaction. Also in psycho-sexual development and behavior during adolescence. [//] Predictably, some say that’s not a negative.”
Well why wouldn’t we? It’s trivially question-begging: assuming that non-conformity to traditional gender roles is Bad Thing in the context of arguing that non-conformity to traditional gender roles (specifically raising kids as a same-sex couple) is a Bad Thing.
Oh Marty, I don’t see much of a point continuing this conversation with you knowing that you believe homosexuality to be nothing more than “sexist bias” against those of the opposite sex.
I encourage you to seek to understand what it really is, preferably from gay people themselves as opposed to those like you who invent these theories in your own clouded un-compassionate minds.
Thanks.
I think those who wish to drag themselves into the weeds of the (limited & falwed) research on gay parenting miss the point.
Whatever ones occlusions on that research is, one has to admit that the much larger research about the outcomes of natural married intact families is wide and conclusive.
If we truly had cultural elite that carried on jot about “child-outcomes” and the like we would have confronted illegitimacy and divorce rates lonf ago.
The fact of the matter is that the social scientific consensus about the natural married family runs counter to the ideologies of feminists, sexual revolutionaries and homosexual activists.
It is those considerable forces on the cultural left in our universities, government, and media that have consciously chosen not to make family formation a public social problem.
Rather they have spent 30 odd years apologizing for this family breakdown, calling it progresses and hailing it an inevitable and unalterable consequence of “modernity”.
This is (sadly) the intellectual terrain we inhabit. Were these same forces to surrender there ideology and start caring about people rather than idea’s…not only would same-sex “marriage” be put to rest…. But the serious social problems of illegitimacy and divorce could start to be addressed.
Mark, there are significant flaws in each of the studies that have been cited in favor same-sex parenting.
I said: “But data does suggest a difference in what has been called gender dissatisfaction. Also in psycho-sexual development and behavior during adolescence.”
Contrary to your reply, this is not a finding of “non-conformity to traditional gender roles”. Or perhaps I misunderstood you and you will clarify what you meant to say.
For a starter, gender dissatisfaction denotes unhappiness with one’s sex.
This is profoundly important to the well-being — and yes to the education — of children. Parents are directly responsible for both and I don’t know of any reason for parents to be happy that their child experiences gender dissatisfaction.
In fact, ask adults who have lived through it and I doubt you’d hear them expressing appreciation for their unhappiness with their “assigned sex”. It is generally not something that one’s desires for one’s children. I think even a “transgendered” parent would sayso.
It appears there is some evidence that there are differences on this score when same-sex sexualized duos have been compared with husband-wife duos.
In any case, it is understandable that you would reply dismissively, if you are not familiar with the study of normal and abnormal psycho-sexual development and behavior during adolescence. It just means that your opinion is not an informed opinion, on that topic.
So you might reconsider your previous remark. You have, afterall, expressed interest in evidence rather than mere assertion of goodness and badness. David has asserted a moral view rather than social-scientific view but you challenged him for evidence other than moral reasoning. So when it comes to gender dissatisfaction, for example, you might seek evidence rather than depend on an uninformed opinion hastily made by yourself.
This issue is NOT just about ‘gay’ and ‘lesbian’ family building. There are several books on ‘donor/vendor’ (surrogate) conception addressing the same ‘it’s hard not knowing your bio/genetic parent(s)’ but ‘with honesty and love you can get through it’ for heterosexuals (married) and single parent by ‘choice’.
This is not just a marriage issue. Of course there are obvious tie-ins (man and woman - loving/committing to each other and taking responsibility for their own sperm/egg when combined to create a new life).
BUT I think the bigger issue is a taboo word that is NEVER spoken during these debates (on various discussion boards/the media etc.) on ‘donor/vendor/surrogacy’ conception and that word is ACCEPTANCE.
A child OR a parent/bio-father/bio-mother/bio-family - cannot do for you what you cannot do for yourself. Go to any infertility blog (or any of the donor conceived blog) and say that word and see what kind of responses you get.
That being said, I do STRONGLY believe that the chicken (the WANTING of the parent(s)) are NOT more important than the egg (the NEEDS of the children who have been INTENTIONALLY disconnected from one or both of the biological/genetic parent(s) and extended family to fill their parent(s) WANT).
I do believe that the children’s wants are also NEEDS (for identity and acceptance and love from ALL the people we come from and belong to. In order to give us meaning in life, a connection to a past/history, and feelings of self worth, pride, belonging, for ourselves and our own children and their children etc. To not feel we were simply a transaction, a commodity, a means to an end. There is a strong spiritual element.). This is not a matter of WANT, this is a NEED that (the children - the adults they grow to be and their own children), should absolutely be given priority over an adults want to fill a void they are unable to fill on their own.
If you are without a partner who wants to co-create with you, if your significant other cannot co-create with you - stop the WANTING and ACCEPT. It may happen naturally or it might not. But the WANTING is what creates the pain. Rise above it and as my mother’s doctor said to me “Count your blessings”. Wise words.
CO: Mark, there are significant flaws in each of the studies that have been cited in favor same-sex parenting.
They’re not perfect, but neither are they rubbish, and they certainly don’t merit the “No Basis” label. They could have turned up all sorts of problems and to my knowledge they did not. That’s important.
CO: “Contrary to your reply, this is not a finding of “non-conformity to traditional gender roles”. Or perhaps I misunderstood you and you will clarify what you meant to say.”
And perhaps I misunderstood. If you think it was important, please elaborate.
Mark Barton,
“They’re not perfect, but neither are they rubbish, and they certainly don’t merit the “No Basis” label.”
Well, allot of them have been exposed as rubbish. Something you should expect given the heated politics of it all.
And yes: They do deserve the “No Basis” label not because it’s ALL rubbish, but rather because it is in it’s infancy. So much so that even gay parenting advocates admit that the studies are not numerous enough and long range enough to have generated a social scientific consensus.
Most importantly – all this stands in marked contrast to the very real and substantial social scientific consensus that has developed around the fact that measured against all indicators the family form that is by far the best predictor of postive child outcomes is the married natural family.
Mark, just clarify what you meant to say in the first place.
As a professor of anthropology at a major research university, it saddens me to see so many statements made out of pure ignorance. Yes, the studies are limited and flawed, in that they usually only posit two choices: a single parent versus a married couple. Yes, in general two parents are better than one, but what the anthropological evidence on childrearing cross-culturally suggests is that the more adults that a child has in close intimate ONGOING bonds of love and support, the better. It does not matter who gave sperm as much as stable ongoing love and support. A close matrilineal kinship system is much superior to only two parents. In such an extended network of kin there are typically several “mothers” and “fathers”. For example, among the Cherokee Indians, both the biological mother who gave birth to a child, and all of that female’s sisters, are addressed by the child as “mother.” And all of her brothers serve as a “father” (but really are uncles). The male who impregnated the mother is not considered important, because he is busy raising his sister’s children and is little involved with the child of his sexual partner. So, in reality, this was a society without literal fathers raising children, but children had a whole slew of adult parents. Cherokee children grew up in a close loving extended family of mother and mother’s kin, and were noted by early explorers as being exceptionally emotionally and psychologically balanced. Of course, early frontier explorers did not conduct statistical surveys, but that does not mean such observations are invalid.
When children grow up in a society that is continually stressing the importance of fathers, of course it is not surprising that some will want to know who contributed the sperm. But in a society like the Cherokee, and many other extended family matrilineages, surrounded by a number of loving adults (mother, mother’s sisters, mother’s brothers, mother’s mother, mother’s mother’s brothers and sisters, and their children, and cousins of all age grades) it is not surprising that they would think very little about whose sperm fertilized the egg from which they grew.
In short, what the research shows is that:
1. single parent rearing is not as good as double parent rearing, when both parents are loving and supportive
2. single parent rearing by one loving parent is better than dual parent rearing, when one or both of the parents is not loving and supportive
3. neither single parent rearing or double parent rearing are as good as multiple adult rearing
The crucial element is a stable household with loving and supportive adults, and the anthropological research suggests the more adults (and adolescents) that are in close intimate bonds with a child, the better.
For adolescents, having one or more mentors, who are separate from parents, are also extremely important at that stage.
The implication is that the mother of a child should strive to have as many loving and supportive adults as possible, of all genders, to become involved in the rearing of her children. If your concern is truly about the welfare of the child, it really makes no difference if one or more of the males involved has sex with the mother. What is important is love and support.
Professor, do your assert there is a social-scientific consensus in favor of your assertion that “A close matrilineal kinship system is much superior to only two parents” ?
You referred to the anthropological record, not to the social-scientific evidence, and then you offered three points.
It is notable that you gender-neutralized those points — which contradicts the very wide and deep consensus that recognizes the integration of fatherhood and motherhood as superior, based on outcomes for children.
Your account of the Cherokee also appears to be ahistorical and highly speculative. No matter, do you assert a wide and deep consensus on the account you presented? Note that extended families are not sex-segregative nor do they disunited fatherhood from child-raising.
Dr. Williams:
Welcome! Your comments about the Cherokee were very interesting. Could you share with us what the anthropological evidence is of whether children need a male parent whenever possible, or whether female parents can raise children exactly as well?
Professor Walter Williams (writes)
“As a professor of anthropology at a major research university, it saddens me to see so many statements made out of pure ignorance. Yes, the studies are limited and flawed, in that they usually only posit two choices: a single parent versus a married couple. Yes, in general two parents are better than one”
The range of studies I am familiar with does not posit the simplistic two choices Professor Williams asserts. Indeed the range of social science corrects for income, race, and education indeed a litany of family forms. More importantly it has cross studied not just one and two parent families but all adequately studied family structures- including single parent families, adopted families, step families, divorced families, divorced & remarried families and the like.
This is of course on the subject of the broader and more accurate social science not on the relatively new and limited studies on gay parenting alone. I would like to know what comments are “made out of pure ignorance.” If there is a flaw in my understanding of the social science, it would need to be corrected for.
As to Professor Williams account of the anthropological record, he seems to have an affinity for large extended kinship networks over nuclear family models. Since we live in post industrial modernity and not small hunter and gathering societies would makes application of this knowledge exceedingly difficult.
Also, Fitz, the nucleus of the extended kinship network remains the union of a man and a woman, bonded with each other and their children.
Parenthood and marriage are intertwined.
As David Blankenorn wrote in The Future of Marriage:
To understand marriage and the family, we begin with sex and birth — with the mother and her infant, and through her the possiblity of social fatherhood, and with fatherhood the possibility of expanded family relationships. These must be our starting points, because they are the baseline dimensions of human generativity and family life. They are the core biological and social facts that have led all human societies to institute marriage. Corporate kin groups are certainly important, but analytically they must come later, because ultimately they are more additive than foundational.
And:
[An apparent] exception to the rule does not prove there is no rule. A possible deviation from the pattern does not prove that no pattern exists. For it is *only* the discernment of an underlying pattern that permits us to see those spots where the pattern may be broken. Scholars who trot out one or several ambiguous cases to suggest that marriage in human affairs has no coherent meaning — that it does not exist as a definable cross-cultural institution — are engaging in an unserious activity.
Also:
[It] is possible for a human group — probaby not an entire society. but a subgroup within a society — to shrink and alter marriage to such a degree that it becomes essentially a simulacrum of marriage. This radical devaluation occurs because the group is corporately preoccupied with other activities that conflict with full-bodied marriage and may be positively served by shadow-marriage.
* * *
It takes a family to raise a village. Hillary Clinton’s assertion, “It takes a village to raise a child,” has been recycled more times than Al Gore’s garden waste, but few admirers have inquired how the village got there in the first place. Without the family, the village itself cannot function. If the family breaks down, or fails to form in the first place, the “village” can not possibly provide adequate help to repair the damage. The family does something the village cannot do for itself, namely bring the next generation into being, and socialise them into the kind of people who can participate in a free society. Without the family doing its job, the state will necessarily grow larger, more expensive and more intrusive.
– Jennifer Roback Morse, Ph.D. is the Senior Research Fellow in Economics at the Acton Institute:
These are some of the themes of her book, Love and Economics: It Takes a Family to Raise a Village.
http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/it_takes_a_family/