Study Says Kids of LGBTQ Parents are Thriving, Gay Dads Are Exceptional

Findings show that gay adoptive parents are raising kids just as successfully as their heterosexual counterparts.

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The U.K. government is urging more gay parents to foster and adopt following a study by the British Association of Adoption and Fostering that concludes gay parents are raising their adopted kids as successfully as their heterosexual counterparts.

The study, which chronicles the experience of 130 adoptive families (49 heterosexual, 41 by gay men and 40 by lesbians), showed “markedly more similarities than differences between family types,” says Professor Susan Golombok, director of the Centre for Family Research and co-author of the report, in an article in the Cambridge News. “The differences that did emerge relate to levels of depressive symptoms in parents, which are especially low for gay fathers, and the contrasting pathways to adoption which was second choice for many of the heterosexual and some lesbian parents — but first choice for all but one of the gay [male] parents.”

The study continues to praise gay dads, saying, “The anxieties about the potentially negative effects for children being placed with gay fathers seem to be, from our study, unfounded … Gay fathers, in particular, are extremely committed to parenting.”

Hopefully, with studies like this, we’ll soon be able to change the first sentence of this post to “The U.S. government is urging more gay parents to foster and adopt … ” How great does that sound?

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