Adoption is an effective intervention for at-risk kids, and this holds true for those placed with gay and lesbian parents.



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PROBLEM: Should we allow highly at-risk children in the foster care system who are in need of homes and loving families to be adopted by homosexual couples? The quick answer is "yes," but it's always good to have some science to back that up.



METHODOLOGY: This is the first study to compare children who were adopted out of foster care by gay men, lesbian women, and heterosexual couples, and to track their progress over time, explains lead author Justin Lavner, a doctoral candidate at UCLA. The researchers followed 82 children in Los Angeles County -- 22 of whom were adopted by homosexual parents at the average age of 4 -- and evaluated them after two months, one year, and two years after they were placed with their adoptive families.

While studies have previously been done in which children who were adopted by gay parents as infants, the children followed here started out with a number of biological and environmental risk factors acting against them -- like premature birth, prenatal substance exposure, and abuse or neglect -- which the researchers identified from public records.