Parenting

Kids With Gay Parents Turn Out The Same As Kids With Hetero Parents Because DUH

by Joelle Wisler
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So, to me, this title is the most obvious statement ever made. But because we live in the times we do, I guess someone had to go out and research this nonsense. What the hell, world? I’m offended by this study, and I’m not even gay. Of course the children of gay people turn out the same because, newsflash, gay people and heterosexual people are all just freaking people.

We are all just people who fall in love with someone else, and then maybe someday we decide that we want to have a family together. We work, we go to school, we eat dinner, we tell our kids to stop picking their noses. I would even argue that because gay couples have to put in that extra effort to even have children, I imagine every child they bring into their family is brought in with the greatest amount of love and intention. I definitely know some children of hetero couples who were simply brought into the world on a flowing tide of mojitos.

So the study looked at a bunch of Dutch parents — comparing same-sex and different-sex parent families — to assess the psychological well-being of their children, levels of parental stress, and the parents’ use of informal and formal child-rearing support. The researchers also compared all types of families for both same-sex and hetero households, including divorced, married, and separated.

The study found that there were no differences in the emotional or psychological functioning of children raised in hetero or same-sex parented families. No shit. And in the more obvious news of the day, they also found that the way a family functions is more of a predictor for children’s well-being than whether or the parents are gay or hetero. No shit.

They said, “Our findings are consistent with many international studies using community samples showing that family functioning — not whether the parents are same-sex or different-sex — is the key ingredient for healthy child development.” Well, great. Thanks, scientists, for spending your hard-earned time and money on this flaming pile of no shit.

I get that this research is pretty important to people out there who are so clueless about love and family that they need a research paper and data to tell them they should definitely stay out of other people’s lives. But I figure these are probably the same people who don’t believe in evolution and climate change either, so I’m not sure what good it’s going to do. At the same time, if it helps gay couples have an easier time adopting or otherwise creating a family together, I’m all for it. Because love is love is love.

There were a couple of interesting findings from this study. One was that the more worried parents were about their child-rearing, the more their kids had behavioral problems. I take this to mean that we should just sit back, relax, and let those dang kids raise themselves. Or at least we should not freak out about every little thing.

Another finding was that women in different-sex households and fathers in same-sex households all felt less competent than their counterparts. That basically tells me that anyone living with a man as a partner feels less capable, and lesbians are smarter than the rest of us.

Moving on, maybe let’s go out and research things that aren’t as obvious as this study. Let’s remember that people are people and love is love and family is family, however different it all looks.