Do Lesbian Couples Make Better Parents than Heterosexual Couples?
Douglas A. Abbott

Abstract
There is no unanimity among child and family scholars and mental health practitioners on what family form, family processes, or environmental influences engender optimal child development. One of the currently controversies is if lesbian parents make better parents than their heterosexual counterparts. Is there any validity to the claim that lesbian parents may bemore involved in child activities, are better listeners, less critical and judgmental, and more are flexible on gender identity and sexual orientation issues than heterosexual parents? The author challenges this conclusion and considers it too early for researchers to claim the null hypothesis: that there are no differences on a variety of psychosocial outcomes between children reared by homosexual parents and children reared by heterosexual parents. The data, to date, is ambiguous and has many research limitations includingsmall, non-random samples, lack of longitudinal data, and the inescapable bias that most researchers on lesbigay parenting are self-identified homosexuals.

Full Text: PDF