Non-Traditional Families the Two Scholarly

Non-Traditional Families

The two scholarly articles critiqued in this paper bring very different perspectives into view. They offer very different conclusions. And yet they are linked in the sense that they investigate and evaluate family success vs. family failure vis-a-vis the raising of children. Essentially, the Wu / Martinson piece goes into great detail, using empirical strategies to investigate how children's domestic upbringing in certain family situations works out in terms of whether or not girls grow up to have babies prior to marriage. The Stacey / Biblarz piece, on the other hand, looks into the bias in various research articles regarding whether or not children raised by gay / lesbian parents have normal social lives as opposed to children raised in heterosexual families with a father and a mother at home.

The Sexual Orientation of Parents -- Does it Matter?

The Stacey / Biblarz article is eleven and a half years old, and much has happened since then in the same-sex marriage debate in America, and several states have legalized same sex marriage subsequent to this article being published. However, the points the authors raise in this piece, especially regarding the ideological bias shown in some of the so-called objective research projects, are profound and honest. The "passionate divisions" between researchers that have an anti-gay bias and researchers that are more open-minded or flat out supportive of same sex marriages are enormous. The research that existed eleven years ago reflects those prejudices and biases, and the authors insist that the "consequences" of research -- driven more by ideology than objective science -- are "…by no means 'academic' but bear on marriage and family policies…" that are at the heart of the society's discussion of sexuality, gender, and parenting (Stacey, et al., 2001, p. 160).

One body of the "youthful" research available for this article -- that was conducted by psychologists -- "almost uniformly" reports discovering "no notable differences between children reared by heterosexual parents and those reared by lesbian and gay parents" (Stacey, 160). This body of research, Stacey continues, presents the idea that lesbian and gay parents are as "competent and effective as heterosexual parents" (160). The strategy of using research conducted by qualified psychologists in court to argue for the rights of gay / lesbian parents to adopt, or to "defeat preemptive referenda against such rights" has achieved "considerable success," Stacey explains (160).

However, there are "researchers" and political campaigns that arrive at distinctly different results, including the research by a law professor at Brigham Young University, Lynn Wardle. Stacey notes that Wardle has been harshly critical of the research on the children of lesbians and gays, and Wardle has written brutally anti-gay and anti-same-sex marriage reports. Stacey explains that Wardle has presented a "harshly critical assessment of the research and argued for a presumptive judicial standard in favor of awarding child custody to hetero-sexual married couples" (160).

What Stacey does not bring forward about Wardle (perhaps because Stacey's article is from 2001 and the writer didn't know that much about Wardle at the time or Wardle's more nefarious right wing advocacies have only been in public view in the last few years) is that he is deeply connected to the Mormon Church (outspokenly anti-gay on the marriage issue), and that he is involved in a right wing group called "National Organization for Marriage" (NOM). Hence, it is the viewpoint of this paper that Wardle is in no position to pass judgment on the objectivity of psychological studies that show children raised by gay and lesbian parents are quite normal and healthy and in most cases happy. In fact he appears to be an intellectual homophobe, smart enough to be a lawyer and write scholarly papers, but bigoted enough to embrace Neanderthal ideas that spring from the keyboards and mouths of people like Limbaugh and Sean Hannity.

Of course anyone alert to ideological passion put forward by homophobes cannot be surprised to find out that Wardle actually believes some of the smears and hateful rhetoric vis-a-vis the right wing. According to Stacey, Wardle believes the myth that gays and lesbians are "more sexually promiscuous than heterosexual parents and are more likely to molest their own children"; moreover, Wardle buys into the smear that the children of gay and lesbian parents are more likely to get AIDS, to become drug addicts, to suffer from depression and become suicidal (Stacey, 161).

While Stacey gently admits to departing "sharply from the views of Wardle," as a scholar she correctly asserts that "…ideological pressures constrain intellectual development in this field" (160). She also emphasizes the fact that "…the pervasiveness of social prejudice and institutionalized discrimination against lesbians and gay men" presents a powerful influence in psychological research (160). The attack on gay and lesbian parenting research is amazingly similar to the attack on climate change by the right wing (conservatives say the scientific research is biased); and it is similar to attacks on laws prohibiting lead bullets in California Condor habitat (the NRA insists the research is biased against gun owners). The pattern is clear: if a group or political party disagrees with a policy, then they attack the research as biased.

Females Raised in a Single-Parent Family: is there a Risk of Early Pregnancy?

Meantime, Lawrence Wu and Brian Martinson have conducted empirically-based research in a seemingly honest, forthright way to reach some kind of consensus on what happens in a girl's childhood and upbringing that causes her to become pregnant out of wedlock. This takes on the tired "teen pregnancy" debate but includes a great deal of math and careful digging into research that existed at the time of publication, 18 years ago. Instead of asking whether a set of gay parents (or lesbian parents) are good for children, Wu and colleague search for answers to statements like "…Family researchers have argued that two-parent families exercise greater supervision and control than do single-parent families" and hence, a daughter in a two-parent family is less apt to stray from family morals and get pregnant prior to marriage (Wu, et al., 1993, p. 212). However, this viewpoint -- from the "social control hypothesis" -- assumes that adolescence is such a "trouble-prone period" in the lives of youth it takes two parents to keep kids out of trouble (Wu, 212).

After doing an impressive amount of research, the authors admit (213) that "The empirical evidence is largely indirect" and that "particularly little" is really known "about the long-term consequences" of family instability. But they go on to embrace data from the National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH) to provide a "probability sample" of what might cause a young woman to get pregnant out of wedlock. From the NSFH data, they studied 3,372 white women, 978 black women, and 426 Hispanic women; 10% of white women had a baby out of marriage; for blacks it was 50% and Hispanics 25% (214-215). Moreover, for white women raised by two parents, 2% got pregnant prior to 18 years; for blacks it was 25%; Hispanics, 13% (Wu, 224). What does this mean? Actually until a similar study is done in 2012, and the numbers are compared, these are data from 18 years ago that may not hold true or be valid today.