A conversation with psychologist Abbie Goldberg
Gay and lesbian parenting: What the studies show
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
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Though Abbie Goldberg's new book has an academic title - "Lesbian and Gay Parents and Their Children: Research on the Family Life Cycle" - she hopes it will find an audience among readers around the country.
Goldberg, 32, earned her doctorate in clinical psychology at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and teaches psychology at Clark University in Worcester. Goldberg says she hopes the book will be of interest to many parents - as well as to people whose work brings them into contact with same-sex couples and their children, such as judges, and others in the legal world, medical professionals and school officials.
The book, which is being published by the American Psychological Association, is the first in-depth compilation and analysis of research to date on gay and lesbian parents and their families. The first of the studies she looked at were done in the 1970s; the most recent were published last year. In all, there have been more than 70, she says.
Goldberg's own research is part of her survey. Using in-depth interviews conducted over a period of years, she has followed same-sex couples as they made the transition to parenthood. She has studied how that life-changing decision affected their relationships and their identities; she has also studied the experiences of adults raised by lesbian, gay and bisexual parents.
Goldberg says that her review of the studies clearly suggests an answer to a common question: What about the kids? Or, put more formally, how does being raised by gay or lesbian parents affect their children's well-being? The simple answer, says Goldberg, is that the children are fine.
"They're not any more likely to be depressed or stressed out," she said during a recent interview, even though a few studies show they are more apt to be teased about their families by other children. "They do just as well in school, they're just as popular, and they have just as many friends. And all the research indicates that they're very well adjusted. They're more likely to be tolerant of differences, because their parents are teaching them certain values that are positive."
Goldberg, who grew up in New York, began her college career at Brandeis University in Waltham. "I fell in love with research there," she said. A growing interest in women's mental health led her to transfer to Wesleyan University in Connecticut to work with Ruth Striegel-Moore, a professor of psychology there.
After graduating, Goldberg came to the University of Massachusetts at Amherst to pursue a doctorate in clinical psychology. Her mentor at the university was Maureen Perry-Jenkins, widely known for her own research on working class families.
While at UMass, Goldberg did extensive research on the experiences of lesbian couples who became parents. She also spent one year at the Yale School of Medicine in New Haven, Conn., where she completed a clinical psychology internship.
Goldberg, 32, lives in Easthampton with her husband, Owen Zaret, and the couple's 7-month-old daughter, Alexandra.
In an interview last week, she talked about her research. What follows are edited, condensed excerpts.
Q: Why did you decide to write this book?
A: The key thing for people to understand is that we're in a time right now when judges and legislators are making decisions without really knowing the data. They hear from "expert" witnesses with axes to grind, who are making moral judgments.This book is for anybody who wants the facts, the data to counter morally and religiously driven arguments.
Q: How do you know the studies are valid and not biased?
A: I actually discuss this in the book. I address the fact that many of these studies included small samples, less than 30 participants, which is arguably a limitation. Other studies used large samples - 100-plus random participants, meaning they were not volunteers. What is key to emphasize is that these larger studies' findings were no different than those obtained in studies using small samples.The data are remarkably consistent in showing that kids of gay-lesbian-bisexual parents are no different than kids of heterosexual couples with regard to mental health, etc.
Q: People around here might say that all these worries about whether gays and lesbians can be good parents, and will the kids be OK - that it sounds very old-hat, that we've long since moved on. So I'm wondering what the research shows about the importance of where you live. Does geography matter?
A: Oh, absolutely, where you live makes a huge difference. I looked at people from all over - Nebraska, Texas, Utah. A couple in rural Pennsylvania, for instance - two gay men with a black son - who are so much more aware of their visibility as a family. Some of them wind up moving to areas that are more progressive or they end up spending all of their money to send their child to private school. People in progressive areas always say, 'we really haven't had any discrimination because of where we live.' But then they say that when they go to other places, they still get the stares, the weird questions, the comments.
Q: How did you get interested in this subject?
A: Ever since high school, I'd wanted to be a psychologist and later on, I got interested in diversity. There are hundreds of studies about the transition to parenthood that heterosexual couples make. But there were none about the parenting challenges facing same-sex couples. In graduate school, I started looking at that.
Q: How did you do that?
A: I found 35 lesbian couples around the country and followed them from before they became parents to afterwards. I did prenatal interviews, with each partner separately. They also filled out 30-page questionnaires, about their families, friends, their expectations and hopes, how they thought they'd divide the work of parenting. Then I interviewed them again three months after the baby was born, and again three years later.
Q: What were some of your findings?
A: In the first months, the non-biological moms had to figure out their role. They weren't the birth mom, they weren't breastfeeding, and they're not the father. They had to invent and explain their role to their families and to the outside world, that they're not less of a parent, or less involved.
Q: How had becoming parents changed their identities?
A: By and large it was that "we're parents now," and that other stuff about being gay is not as relevant.
Probably the most interesting was a distinction between the biological and non-biological moms. The biological moms who were breastfeeding spent more time with the baby - and the non-biological mother often had to go back to work quickly because she couldn't get maternity or paternity leave. They all had high expectations for equality from the start, but the demands of breastfeeding made a difference and that was something a few of them were struggling with at three months.
Q: What about later on?
A: There's much less distinction in their roles, the division of labor is more balanced. Same-sex couples are more likely to have more fluid arrangements in terms of work. One will work part-time and one full-time and then they'll switch off. They're more adaptive. At three years, a minority of them felt the birth mother was still the primary mother, and that the child still preferred her. In a very few couples, it was something they were unhappy with, but they didn't know how to undo it.
Q: You mentioned that same-sex parents are more likely to foster independence rather than conformity in their children.Why is that?
A: I think it's because of the challenges they faced in their own lives. They're much more likely to be tolerant, to encourage, for example, their children to play with a wider range of toys - to encourage a girl to play with both dolls and trucks. Girls (of lesbian parents) are more likely to have higher career aspirations.
Q: What about that hot-button question, are the children of gay parents more likely to be gay?
A: They're just not as gender stereotyped. They're more open, less constrained. The girls are more likely to be open to same-sex relationships, to say, 'I can imagine it.' But that doesn't mean it will translate into future behavior. It means they're saying, 'I don't think it's unusual, I don't think it's gross.'
Q: Does any of the research show the opposite - that some kids of same sex parents want to be anything but gay, not because they don't love their parents, but because they've been dealing with "difference" all their lives?
A: That is exactly what I found. These kids are tired of defending their families and they're very aware that their parents feel this pressure to produce straight kids. They're so aware, growing up in the lens of media scrutiny, they feel they need to say, if I feel like screaming at my mom, it has nothing to do with the fact that she's gay!
Q: What does the research say about the differences between boys and girls raised by two moms. Are the experiences different?
A: They don't appear to be all that different. Boys may be more likely than girls to be teased for having two moms, which may have to do with other kids' issues of masculinity and homophobia.
When I asked couples before they had children whether they had a preference for a boy or girl, I found that some gay men were more anxious about having a boy because of worries that a son will be teased more. Or they'd say, we're not really sports people, what if we can't do that part of parenting? They'd say a girl would just be easier. Lesbian couples don't have that same anxiety.
Q: Does that suggest that dealing with the outside world is harder for two dads than it is for two moms?
A: I think so. When people see a man or two men parenting their kids at the park, they tend to assume that they can't possibly know what they're doing, that they can't be naturally nurturing and caretaking. I can't tell you how many men told me they're asked in those situations, do you need help, are you giving Mom the day off?
"Lesbian and Gay Parents" will be in bookstores in August, and can be reserved now through online retailers. It is also available through the APA Books Website, http://books.apa.org.
Suzanne Wilson can be reached at swilson@gazettenet.com.
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