Diversity in Parenting Lecture Part I

hello everyone today I will be lecturing on diversity in parenting and specifically we will be talking about same-sex families and lesbian gay family relationships we will start with a short quote from a 12 year old girl who said I'm a 12 year old girl and I have two months I have two people who love me very much take care of me I help me the best I can be I make a straight-a is in school I play the viola and of course love other things that any other two-year-old child should love most of all I love my two months so today we'll be talking about parenting in gay and lesbian families first I will provide some prevalence rates of children growing up and same-sex families then I will discuss regarding their social political context in which these families leave and have to raise their kids and we will talk about some of the myths around same-sex couples and will challenge those myths providing some facts and empirical evidence so basically what the research actually says about parenting among LGBT parents as well as tell outcomes and we will also talk about factors that are related to positive adjustment and then also we'll be talking about gay father's so we want to start talking about the prevalence rates of children going up in same-sex families while talking about this topic it is important that we keep in mind that there is very little research even though increasing currently on this topic and there are only a few studies that provide us with all the information we have so it's very hard to know exactly how many gay and lesbian parents are in the US and we know this is true because of fears of discrimination or losing child custody or visitation rights in actually many gay or lesbian haider *** identity because of those reasons but basically how the prevalence of LGBT families has been estimated is with the US census data however they don't ask questions about *** orientation and if we think about this it can of course create problems when trying to estimate a population that is not exactly identified but overall it is believed that there are about from 1 to 5 million lesbian mothers 1 to 3 million of gay fathers and 6 to 14 million children of gay lesbian parents and I know you're probably thinking this estimates are wide and very variable and this is due to the range in estimates of adults who identify as LGBT ah there's recently there has been two new studies conducted by the Williams Institute the hath provided new estimates regarding the size of LGBT community in the US and the number of people in same-sex marriages and raising children so the Williams Institute is dedicated to conduct our independent research on sexuality gender identity and public policy in the United States an analysis of the 2013 national health Health Interview Survey indicated the following estimates and this survey consistent in four large surveys national and population-based surveys so this survey indicated the following estimates about 200,000 children under age 18 are raised by same-sex couples of whom 30,000 are being raised by married same-sex parents LGBT parents who are not part of a couple are raising between 1.2 and two million children in overall most agree that between one to twelve percent of all children in the US are being raised by gay or lesbian parents so now we're gonna talk about the myths surrounding the negative effects of gay and lesbian parents on child development and the sustainment or myths were gonna talk about have historically aroused from judicial concerns and after related to child custody cases so in the past if a gay or lesbian parent was seeking custody from a child from a previous heterosexual relationship a lot of times these myths actually prevented these parents from getting custody of their child so the first myth are relates to gender roles and it says children raised by gay lesbian parents will show disturbances in gender roles but the fact is that children get their role models from many places besides their parents including grandparents teachers and friends another myth is that children raised by gay lesbian parents will show disturbances in their *** identity for example in terms of the homosexual orientation however evidence from available studies have demonstrated that *** orientation of parents that does not impact children's *** orientation and actually there's some evidence that children of gay and lesbian parents are more tolerant of diversity other means relates to psychological health and says that children raised by gay and lesbian parents will delay psychological healthy the children growing up in heterosexual homes however no difference have been found that support this idea another myth relates to peer rejection and it says that children will have difficulties in establishing social relationships and will be rejected by their peers however children make fun of other children for a variety of reasons and what is important is that children who grow up in a stable and loving environment are more likely to show resilience and then will be less affected by experiences of Rann of period rejection another means is that lesbian and gay parents are more likely to *** the children but actually with the empirical evidence indicates is that child molesters are most often heterosexual white males and also children are most likely to experience intra-familial *** abuse by a heterosexual stepfather than by a homosexual male and then another myth and the final myth we will be talking about today relates to good parenting and that children raised by lesbian and gay parents do not know how to be good parents anger grew up in a amoral environment and actually all the evidence shows that lesbian and gay men can be good parents and as likely to provide support as heterosexual parents and additionally the adoption and foster care process is designed to screen out those individuals who are not qualified to adopt now that we know what are the means surrounded by Gail lesbian parents and that we have indicated that there's no evidence that actually suggests that those myths are actually true we're going to talk about the legal and social political context in which these families live to better understand their experiences and factors they need to consider when deciding to have children or if they already have children you can see in this slide that I have included several links you can click in each of them and it will direct you to the website but now I will briefly talk about each of the links that you should read all of them by your own so first we will start talking about *** orientation and the DSM history we have talked before about what the DSM means in this class and this day the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and now we're going to go back to 1952 and in this year the American Psychological Association listed homosexuality in the DSM as a sociopathic personality disturbance and this view was widely influential in the medical field until 1956 when the psychologist Evelyn *** performed a study that compared happiness and well-adjusted nature of self identify on the *** men with heterosexual men and actually she didn't find any difference between these two groups however it was not until almost 20 years later so it was not until 1974 that homosexuality was not listed as a mental disorder in the DSM in 1973 the American Psychiatric Association we classify homosexuality as a mental disorder and the diagnosis worse replaced with the category of *** orientation disturbance then the American Psychological Association Council follow in 1975 and then other major mental health organizations follow including the World Health Organization in 1990 so this gives you an idea of how I will feel initially tend to pathologize on consider homosexuality as a mental disorder and it was not until more recent that psychological and medical associations have the closest reclassified homosexuality as a mental disorder so we're going to talk now about cumbersome therapy in the last two years there has been two bills that pass out and will prohibit mental health providers from trying to change the *** orientation of minors so for example the President Obama has stated his opinion on the issue and called for an end to so-called compression therapies at this point the medical establishment more or less unanimously agrees that convention therapy does not work and that is abusive and the American Psychological Association has been saying this for well over a decade so gay rights the rights groups argued that parents should not force minors to undergo these treatments and that they have sought to make the services available open and says that such laws violate parental rights as well as religious freedoms so in terms of same-sex parenting the American Psychological Association share their posture on on this issue in 2004 and the American Psychological Association Council of Representatives adopt the policy's resolution that include the following statement based on a review of the best available literature so the following is the statement there is no scientific evidence that parenting effectiveness is related to parental *** orientation lesbian and gay parents are as likely as heterosexual parents to provide supportive and healthy environments for their children so this body of research that informed the statement that I get read is basically saying that the adjustment and development and psychological adjustment and well-being of children is unrelated to parental *** orientation and actually the bullet on the slide will direct you to the full resolution on the APA American Psychological Association stand if you want to read more about it