Same-sex parenting and childrenâ€TMs outcomes: A closer examination of the American psychological associationâ€TMs brief on lesbian and gay parenting

0049-089X/$ see front matter 2012 Elsevier Inc http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ssresearch.2012.03.006 ⇑ Fax: +1 225 578 2697. E-mail address: [email protected] 1 See Table 2; McLanahan and Sandefur (1994) an 2 McLanahan and Sandefur (1994), p. 1 (emphasis 3 Waite (1995). 4 Gaudino et al. (1999) and Siegel et al. (1996). 5 Wilcox et al. (2005, p. 28) and Cutler et al. (2000 6 Bachman et al. (1997), Flewelling and Bauman (1 (2003), and Wilcox et al. (2005). 7 Blackmon et al. (2005), Harper and McLanahan ( 8 Akerlof (1998), Blackmon et al. (2005), Brown (2 9 Amato (2005), Battle (1998), Cherlin etal. (1998), Asbury (1993), and Teachman et al. (1998). 10 Amato (2005), Amato and Booth (2000), Ellis et a 11 Cherlin et al. (1995) and Wolfinger (2005). In 2005, the American Psychological Association (APA) issued an official brief on lesbian and gay parenting. This brief included the assertion: ‘‘Not a single study has found children of lesbian or gay parents to be disadvantaged in any significant respect relative to children of heterosexual parents’’ (p. 15). The present article closely examines this assertion and the 59 published studies cited by the APA to support it. Seven central questions address: (1) homogeneous sampling, (2) absence of comparison groups, (3) comparison group characteristics, (4) contradictory data, (5) the limited scope of children’s outcomes studied, (6) paucity of long-term outcome data, and (7) lack of APA-urged statistical power. The conclusion is that strong assertions, including those made by the APA, were not empirically warranted. Recommendations for future research are offered. 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.