Teenaged kids of lesbian moms are doing as well or better than peers, according to the National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study conducted by Dr. Nanette Gartrell of the University of California-San Francisco. Not only did the study find that the kids in the 79 families still in the study (which started with 84) have higher social competence and lower overall "problem behavior" than the general population of their peers, it also found 80% of them rating their lives as enjoyable and satisfying which, I don't need to tell you, is not typical of teens.
Apparently, the nuances of these responses correlated with how the schools these kids attended handled homophobic incidents. The better the handling of the issue, the better adjusted the children from lesbian families reported themselves to be. It goes to show you that society's homophobia, not same-sex parents themselves, are the probable cause of any sexual-orientation-related trouble our children have.
I found some of the responses a bit implausible, however, such as a finding that of the kids reporting sexual activity of their own (again, less than the general population) 100% of this was opposite-sex activity. Though the researcher says she believes the self-reporting kids are being honest, I have to wonder if they aren't also heavily influenced by the sense of responsibility Abigail Garner found when she interviewed the adult children of same-sex parents for her book, Families Like Mine: Children of Gay Parents Tell it Like it Is. Garner discovered that children with queer parents felt the need to prove to the world that they were normal and healthy and sometimes, most of all, heterosexual. It seems the worst fear outsiders have about same-sex parenting is that we'll turn our kids gay and enough of us have enough internalized homophobia to worry about it ourselves. Could be that a group of 17-year olds aren't ready to break away from protecting the family image enough to admit they are experimenting as much as the rest of the population?
But overall, the study's findings are encouraging. Given all the legal and financial drawbacks to having a lesbian family, a little break during the teen years seems fair enough.
Photo by dellafels
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