VT: Opinion--Study on traditional marriage benefits flawed

Link: Burlington Free Press
By Jacqueline S. Weinstock

Excerpt:

I am writing to take Dr. Patrick Fagan up on his request to engage him on the data, and on that basis, to challenge his use of the data to argue against extending marriage rights to same-sex couples ("Traditional marriage critic gets it wrong," March 8). After careful review of Dr. Patrick Fagan’s argument, I note three significant problems:

-- Dr. Fagan seems to have completely ignored the available research evidence on child outcomes for same sex families.

[...]

-- The same-sex parented family was not one of the family structures Dr. Fagan examined as part of his comparative analysis. Yet this does not stop him from claiming "traditional marriage is a foundational institution for the good of society because it is best for children.? This is an all too common and misleading strategy employed by those against extending marriage rights to same-sex couples: they compare select family structures — for example, two-parent heterosexual households and single-parent households — and then draw the over-reaching conclusion that children do better in families with a biological mother and a father married to each other.

[...]

-- Family structure is a much less meaningful variable than family processes when it comes to helping us understand child outcomes. Indeed, a wide range of human development and family scholars and other professionals have come to recognize that family structure in and of itself is not a meaningful factor. As Dr. Susan Golombok put it in 2000, "in itself, family structure makes little difference to children’s psychological development. Instead, what really matters is the quality of family life."

What this means in the current debate is that we ought not to be focusing on parents’ gender or sexual orientation, but rather on the quality of family life. If we were to bring this focus to the conversation, we would, I believe, reach the logical conclusion that the quality of family life for children with same-sex parents would only be improved with the extension of marriage rights to their parents. In this way, these families might receive the many legal and social benefits of marriage that help support quality family life.

This is precisely the conclusion reached by a large number of major professional organizations, including the Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, American Academy of Family Physicians, American Academy of Pediatrics, American Anthropological Association, American Medical Association, American Psychological Association, American Psychiatric Association, and the National Association of Social Workers, American Sociological Association.

I trust that this will also be the conclusion we Vermonters will reach.

 

Jacqueline S. Weinstock of South Burlington has a doctorate in experimental psychology and is associate professor of human development and family studies at the University of Vermont.

[jw]