Troubling trend (updated)

The data presented by a new think tank suggests that lesbians make better parents than "opposite sex" parents, though the methodology isn't shown. It certainly flies in the face of existing data that insists that children do better in a home with a mother and a father. The thinking is tenuous at best:

Research at Birkbeck College, part of London University, and Clark University in Massachusetts suggests that same-sex couples make good parents because children cannot be conceived accidentally - parents must make an active decision to adopt or find a sperm donor.

Well, considering that if sexual activity were reserved for marriage, and couples considered the procreation of children as an intrinsic part of the nuptial union, than all kids would be welcome -- if not minutely planned. The problem is not "opposite sex parents" but a combination of promiscuity and the lack of commitment that parents feel for the children vicariously created in passing unions. 

So whatever the methodology, the above premise seems to limit itself to women who are in the income bracket that allows expensive reproductive technologies (or adoption services, which are also costly). That eliminates the bulk of children being raised by lesbians who had children from previous relationships with men, and especially those who wander from relationship to relationship. Also considering the preponderance of domestic violence that is part of the lesbian landscape, one wonders how the study managed to avoid those households (for they cannot have been factored in honestly).

Finally, without the methodology, one cannot figure out what exactly was used in the comparison. Stable marriages where the husband was the biological father of the children? Single mothers? Co-habitating couples where the man may not have been the biological father? There's a smorgasbord of options, and each has its pitfalls. We have to see the data before we can take this seriously.

What we have to take seriously is the existing trend that such suspect studies bring about:

According to the annual British Social Attitudes Report, more than a third of people now believe same-sex parents are as good as heterosexual couples.

These are people who don't care about methodologies, about child welfare or the crisis of fatherhood. These people want to "be nice" and the results aren't pretty.

UPDATE: Jennifer Roback Morse has very ably parsed the article (and the lack of data behind it) here:

So here are the facts: no new data on lesbian parenting, but new data further demonstrating the superiority of married parents. At a technocratic gab-fest about upskilling the “parenting workforce” one guy spouts his opinion about lesbian parents. And the headline reading "Lesbian parents better at raising children" goes viral worldwide.

The conference and report that were the ostensible subjects of the article had nothing -- repeat, nothing -- to do with lesbians, as parents or anything else. A reporter apparently decided to make a story out of an off-hand comment.

Comments

[H.]

To be honest, I have more of a problem with single parents than I do with same sex ones. What's worse? A sixteen year-old that conceived the child while drunk out of her mind, and forever resents it for inhibiting her party life, or a same sex couple who complement and contrast each other in raising their much-wanted child?

[Renee]

Sometimes I read an 'anti-adoption' blog from an adult who was adopted as a baby, One of the things in terms of emotional baggage is that because they were so wanted/planned by infertile parents, there is an obligation to love the parents in a way babies can not.

Also another is an adult who was conceived via sperm donation... same feelings.

http://cryokidconfessions.blogspot.com/

[Teresa]

I've got a bigger problem with ignoring a troubled drinking 16 year old and resigning her to forever resent her child. We should do everything we can to recover her from alcoholism and help her to love herself and her child.