These Are My Moms

I noticed an October 2005 update (PDF) of the National Lesbian Family Study (NLFS) that follows the progress of children being raised by gay parents (N=74). The results for these kids show that, at 10 years of age, they've turned out completely normal so far:

In social and psychological development, the NLFS children were comparable to children raised in heterosexual families. The NLFS girls demonstrated fewer behavioral problems than age-matched peers. These findings are consistent with other studies demonstrating a high degree of emotional well-being in children of lesbian families (Anderssen et al., 2002; Bliss & Harris, 1999; Golombok et al., 2003).

One notable difference is that half of these children have experienced homophobia from their peers. One child writes:

last year a girl told me my moms were going to hell.

Something that caught my attention was their citation of a previous result that describes the children's character. To me these characteristics seem consistent with a child who is (a) teased by homophobes and (b) has attentive and caring parents:

Teachers in a New Mexico survey (Bliss & Harris, 1999) described children raised by lesbian and gay parents as having more problematic social interactions yet more self-confidence, maturity, and tolerance than their peers.

What everyone's dying to hear is more evidence relevant to nature versus nurture when it comes to homosexuality. Naturally I have my own assumptions on this, but unfortunately we'll have to wait another 7 years before this particular study gets a follow-up <sigh>. We're all curious I suppose but, really, “can parents turn kids gay?” and “can people choose to be straight?” should be completely irrelevant questions—unless you start from the premise that homosexuality is somehow bad.

Grrrr religion.