DOES SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH ON LESBIGAY PARENTING PROVIDE A BASIS FOR PROHIBITING LESBIGAY MARRIAGE OR ADOPTION?
The extant research currently permits the conclusion that lesbigay parenting does not psychologically harm children. A number of studies, including the three recent studies discussed above, have examined whether children raised by lesbigay parents are more likely to have mental health or psychosocial adjustment problems. Despite the methodological limitations inherent in many of these studies (see supra), their findings are remarkably consistent given the vaying samples and research designs, thereby providing a degree of convergent validity. Of course, the finding that lesbigay parenting is not harmful psychologically to children does not resolve the policy debate over lesbigay parenting. Most extant research on lesbigay parenting has focused on whether it harms children, not on whether growing up in a lesbigay household is as positive an experience for children as growing up in a heterosexual household. Some argue that children do best when raised by a mother and a father, and argumen
