Having a Gay Parent Doesn’t Affect a Child’s Development

A report suggests that the almost two million children being raised by gay couples and single gay parents in the US show as positive outcomes for wellbeing as children raised in straight households.

The report has been co-authored by Benjamin Siegel, a professor of paediatrics at Boston University School of Medicine, and Ellen Perrin, professor of paediatrics and director of development and behavioural paediatrics at Tufts University.

Their study was published in the American Academy of Paediatrics a week before a Supreme Court judge, Justice Antonin Scalia, suggested that sociologists and psychologists were divided over whether safe-sex parents are good for children. However, the paediatrics expert believes the evidence contained in his report shows that there is solid scientific evidence to show that gay parents make no difference to the social and health outcomes of their children.

The report explored and analysed several longitudinal studies of gay and lesbian parents, concluding that a child’s wellbeing is affected more by relationships with their parents and how secure family life is than by either parental gender or sexual orientation.

One study included in the report is the National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study that has been following 154 lesbian mothers since 1986. Recently it questioned 78 adolescents to compare how both mothers and children compared in their self-reported status against national samples.

Mothers said their children were highly socialised, had fewer social problems and showed less aggressive and bad behaviour than other children of their age. For their part, the adolescents’ reported a similar quality of life to children who lived with heterosexual parents.

Other studies analysed for Siegel and Perrin’s report included three in the US and Europe that covered lesbian mothers and adult children with parents in a same-sex relationship. Again there was no difference in outcomes for children of gay people compared to those of children with heterosexual parents.

The report appears to provide hard evidence that children fare no worse being raised in a gay household.

Having a Gay Parent Doesn’t Affect a Child’s Development

Categories: Children, gay parents, heterosexual parents, lesbian mothers, mothers, paediatrics, Parents, report

Discrimination in the Workplace Still Affects Women

The rise of feminism and women’s rights has produced some excellent results with women being taken more seriously and bridging the gap that has existed in society for a long time. But despite impressive improvements in recent years, not everything is as good as it seems. A major review of inequality in the UK has revealed that women face on-going discrimination in the workplace that hasn’t stopped even with advances in equality.

Specifically, it was revealed that a mother who has a partner and who has a child aged under the age of 11 is 45 percent less likely to be in work than a partnered man. This is a clear indication that inequality still holds back too many individuals from realising their potential in the working environment.

The report revealed the surprising truth that women with young children face more discrimination in the workplace than disabled people or those from ethnic minorities. The survey looked at 122 recruitment agencies, and amazingly more than 70 percent of them had been asked by clients to avoid pregnant women or women of childbearing age.

Another fact from the report was that disabled people were 29 percent less likely to be employed than non-disabled people. Also, Pakistani and Bangladeshi women were around 30 percent less likely to be employed than white women with similar ages and qualifications.

The report, however, has revealed a crucial overall truth that is not only people from a minority background or with disabilities that face workplace discrimination – but women in general. The unemployment of women costs the UK an estimated £28bn a year.

It shows that authorities need to do more to ensure that women are treated fairly and that employers are not allowed to discriminate in the way that they have. This will be a long process but it is hoped that women will soon gain equality with men in the working environment.

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Discrimination in the Workplace Still Affects Women

Categories: Gender Discrimination, mothers, Women