Lesbians Do It Better (Raise Kids, That Is)

Remember that song from Annie Get Your Gun, "Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better?"

Well, there's no word on whether lesbian parents bake better pies, but a new study out today in Pediatrics says they may do one thing better than straight folks: raise kids that are happy, healthy, and chockful of self-esteem.

The research comes from the U.S. National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study (otherwise known as NLLFS), a study that followed a group of children raised by lesbian parents from birth through adolescence. It's the first of its kind, and it's a study that is bound to pack a powerful political punch, because it dispels almost every single talking point that anti-gay groups bring to the table when they talk about LGBT parents.

So just what did researchers find?

The authors (Nanette Gartrell and Henry Bos) found that children of lesbian parents score pretty similar to children of straight parents when it comes to development and social behavior. But the surprising news is that the children of lesbian parents scored off the charts when it came to factors like self-esteem and confidence, academic performance, and behavior problems (or lack thereof).

"We simply expected to find no difference in psychological adjustment between adolescents reared in lesbian families and the normative sample of age-matched controls," Gartrell told TIME Magazine. "I was surprised to find that on some measures we found higher levels of [psychological] competency and lower levels of behavioral problems. It wasn't something I anticipated."

Ah, scientist talk. Gartrell's comments in a nutshell basically boil down to this: the children of the lesbian parents do really, really well.

"The mothers provided healthy, loving and safe environments where their daughters and sons could grow and thrive. We have followed these families since the mothers were inseminating or pregnant, and at each interview, we have been impressed with how well the kids are doing. At 17, we find that the kids are well-adjusted and well-equipped for college and beyond," Gartrell added in a press release circulated by the Williams Institute at UCLA.

These sentiments are consistent with comments that Gartrell made in 2008, when Dana Rudolph spoke to the fine doctor over at Mombian.com. Back then, preliminary results were coming out about the study, and Gartrell was painting a very rosy picture of how well adjusted the children of these lesbian parents turned out to be.

"In terms of overall quality of life, almost 80% (of the kids in the study) say they enjoy, are satisfied with, and find life worthwhile," Gartrell said back then. "I don’t know how your teenage years were, but I wouldn’t have given mine a rating anywhere close to that. That says something pretty remarkable about what the moms are doing in terms of helping these kids navigate adolescence."

True that. I spent most of my formative years doing aerobics to TLC's Creep in the family room, while daydreaming about that Oscar I was going to win, and the speech I was going to give where I'd put that evil Staci T. in her place for getting the entire 8th grade school bus to sing a song about how I'd grow up to never have sex with anything other than a hole in my waterbed. God, kids can be vicious...

But I digress. Gartrell's and Bos's study is actually revolutionary, not because the findings prove anything that we already didn't know (that LGBT parents can rear wonderful children). But because the findings prove the ultimate rebuttal to folks like former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, who said that gays should only be allowed to parent puppies instead of children. Or to anti-gay therapist turned rentboy.com client George Alan Rekers and his buddies at Focus on the Family, who testify in state after state that children shouldn't be allowed to be raised in LGBT households, because it's not what they consider ideal.

But if well adjusted and self-confident kids aren't the ideal, well then, I don't know what is.

Photo credit: skeddy in NYC