The SiriusXM OutQ News Blog

New findings from the longest-running study ever conducted on same-sex parenting show the children of lesbian parents are as well-adjusted, or more well-adjusted than their peers. UCLA’s Williams Institute announced a new report from The National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study, which has been following planned lesbian families since 1986.

Dr. Nanette Gartrell is spearheading the project. She says opponents of gay marriage who claim that “studies show” children do best with a mother and a father are citing studies that didn’t actually include any same-sex parents.

Gartrell: “It’s not that our study contradicts any actual scientific data used by opponents — there are no opposing data. Ours is the first of its kind to show how these adolescents are faring, and they’re doing extremely well.”

Gartrell says the latest results show that a person’s ability to raise a child isn’t tied to their sexual orientation or their gender.

Gartrell: “The ingredients of good parenting are: having a child you want to have, ideally if you can do it at a time that works for you, that’s great too. But providing the love, the nurturing, being involved in the child’s life – really, being a committed parent. Those are the ingredients. They did not relate to the sexual orientation of the parent. Any human being can do that.”

Except … she says … for maybe one thing.

Gartrell: “I had a lesbian mother contact me, who said ‘there is one thing I won’t be able to do. I will not be able to teach my son to write his name in the snow in urine.’”

The latest findings appear in the June issue of the journal “Pediatrics.”

–Aaron McQuade