To be honest, the study from Child Trends bothered me more than I indicated in my post. The conclusion is rather sweeping and and hard to justify — given the weight of the research to date, it’s more than suspicious. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find out more about the organization, which I suspect may not be as nonpartisan as Blankenhorn claims. (Let’s face it, when someone like Blankenhorn says “nonpartisan,” that translates as “agrees with me.”)

Given the dishonesty of his essay in general, I’m more than prepared to dismiss this “study” but held back because I couldn’t verify that Child Trends has a political agenda.

Except that that’s not the definition of biological. A study purporting to be scientific should go ahead and not promote fallacious conclusions by semantic switcharoos that imply (but fail to prove) that gay parents are bad.

that remark pissed me off, too. the opinion is really frustrating.

In the New York marriage decision, Judge Smith also said that it was “common sense” that opposite-sex couples would parent better than same-sex couples. This remark, made in passing, was the one part of the decision that really pissed me off.

…Marriage is important to the welfare of children.
First, the Legislature could rationally decide that, for the welfare of children, it is more important to promote stability, and to avoid instability, in opposite-sex than in same-sex relationships. Despite the advances of science, it remains true that the vast majority of children are born as a result of a sexual relationship between a man and a woman…such relationships are all too often casual or temporary. It [the Legislature] could find that an important function of marriage is to create more stability and permanence in the relationships that cause children to be born. It thus could choose to offer an inducement — in the form of marriage and its attendant benefits — to opposite-sex couples who make a solemn, long-term commitment to each other.

the opinion went on to say that the Legislature could decide that kids should have both a man and a woman in the house as parents.

so it looks like blankenhorn is using similar logic.

ick.

is that how other folks understood it?

Thus, one wonders just what sort of family(s) the two-biological-parent one was compared to and allegedly trumped.

Seems there was a jump made from “single parenting situations aren’t ideal” to “no other families can suffice.” Sounds like someone had an idealogical axe to grind, and drew conclusions before (and without) collecting appropriate evidence.

The adopted people I’ve known are indistinguishable from the non-adopted people I’ve known on the above difficulties, when similar levels of low-conflict are in effect.

I’d be VERY surprised if adopted-from-birth kids (with heterosexual parents in a low-conflict marriage) have any different experience than those who live with “two biological parents in a low-conflict marriage.”

This probably is true for kids adopted at birth in an open adoption who have contact with the birth parents, but there does seem to be a tendency for adopted kids who have no idea who the bioparents were and have no contact with them to face more difficulties. It is difficult for a child not to wonder what her “real” parents are like, and I imagine this is exacerbated for international and cross-racial adoption.

Or was that not covered either? Ah well who needs control groups.