Children need loving parents.
Parents who spend time with them, guide them, play with them and set boundaries for them.
What matters, is that parents love their children. What matters a lot less, it seems, is the gender and sexual preferences of said parents.
According to a
new long-term study, research confirm kids raised in lesbian and gay families grow up to be just fine, and basically the same as people who were raise in heteronormative households.
According to the researchers behind the longest-running study of same-sex couples raising kids,
The National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study (NLLFS), concluded that 25-year-olds who grew up with two moms have "no significant differences in measures of mental health" compared peers raised by heterosexual parents.
"When I began this study in 1986, there was considerable speculation about the future mental health of children conceived through donor insemination and raised by sexual minority parents,"
says the study's lead author, Dr. Nanette Gartrell. "We have followed these families since the mothers were inseminating or pregnant and now find that their 25-year-old daughters and sons score as well on mental health as other adults of the same age."
An Italian study recently came up with much the same result.
It seems, what matters isn't the parents sexual orientation, but rather how confident they feel as a parent. In all types of families, parents who didn't feel competent in their own parenting reported more problems with their kids, and less satisfaction in their relationship with their partner.
So basically, children raised by two loving parents who wanted them actually turn out fine? What a surprise. (Not).
