Children of Gay Parents Just As Likely to Be Popular, Crowned Homecoming King + Queen

Now that gay parents are raising more children more often, there’s more of them to study! And the latest research concludes the children of gay parents “show no increased incidence of psychiatric disorders, are just as popular at school and have just as many friends,” relays Lisa Belkin of psychology professor Abbie E. Goldberg’s new book Lesbian and Gay Parents and Their Children, which looked at more than 100 academic studies of gay parents. “While girls raised by lesbian mothers seem slightly more likely to have more sexual partners, and boys slightly more likely to have fewer, than those raised by heterosexual mothers, neither sex is more likely to suffer from gender confusion nor to identify themselves as gay. [... Meanwhile,] daughters of lesbian mothers are more likely to aspire to professions that are traditionally considered male, like doctors or lawyers — 52 percent in one study said that was their goal, compared with 21 percent of daughters of heterosexual mothers, who are still more likely to say they want to be nurses or teachers when they grow up. (The same study found that 95 percent of boys from both types of families choose the more masculine jobs.) Girls raised by lesbians are also more likely to engage in ‘roughhousing’ and to play with ‘male-gendered-type toys’ than girls raised by straight mothers. And adult children of gay parents appear more likely than the average adult to work in the fields of social justice and to have more gay friends in their social mix.”

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