Rejection of common sense biological and evolutionary observations are much in vogue among the social engineers and their activist counterparts. But it bears repeating — yet again — that wishing something were so, because in your mind a just world would make it so, does not, in fact, replace what is. And yet it is we who are labeled anti-science — albeit by those whose idea of science is the politicized kind that can be “settled” and based around contemporary consensus when empirical data doesn’t fall their way.
Which is what got Galileo, that racist teabagging apostate, into so much trouble way back when.
There is a new and significant piece of evidence in the social science debate about gay parenting and the unique contributions that mothers and fathers make to their children’s flourishing. A study published last week in the journal Review of the Economics of the Household—analyzing data from a very large, population-based sample—reveals that the children of gay and lesbian couples are only about 65 percent as likely to have graduated from high school as the children of married, opposite-sex couples. And gender matters, too: girls are more apt to struggle than boys, with daughters of gay parents displaying dramatically low graduation rates.
Unlike US-based studies, this one evaluates a 20 percent sample of the Canadian census, where same-sex couples have had access to all taxation and government benefits since 1997 and to marriage since 2005.
While in the US Census same-sex households have to be guessed at based on the gender and number of self-reported heads-of-household, young adults in the Canadian census were asked, “Are you the child of a male or female same-sex married or common law couple?” While study author and economist Douglas Allen noted that very many children in Canada who live with a gay or lesbian parent are actually living with a single mother—a finding consonant with that detected in the 2012 New Family Structures Study—he was able to isolate and analyze hundreds of children living with a gay or lesbian couple (either married or in a “common law” relationship akin to cohabitation).
So the study is able to compare—side by side—the young-adult children of same-sex couples and opposite-sex couples, as well as children growing up in single-parent homes and other types of households. Three key findings stood out to Allen:
children of married opposite-sex families have a high graduation rate compared to the others; children of lesbian families have a very low graduation rate compared to the others; and the other four types [common law, gay, single mother, single father] are similar to each other and lie in between the married/lesbian extremes.
Employing regression models and series of control variables, Allen concludes that the substandard performance cannot be attributed to lower school attendance or the more modest education of gay or lesbian parents. Indeed, same-sex parents were characterized by higher levels of education, and their children were more likely to be enrolled in school than even those of married, opposite-sex couples. And yet their children are notably more likely to lag in finishing their own schooling.
The same is true of the young-adult children of common law parents, as well as single mothers and single fathers, highlighting how little—when you lean on large, high-quality samples—the data have actually changed over the past few decades. The intact, married mother-and-father household remains the gold standard for children’s progress through school. What is surprising in the Canadian data is the revelation that lesbian couples’ children fared worse, on average, than even those of single parents.
The truly unique aspect of Allen’s study, however, may be its ability to distinguish gender-specific effects of same-sex households on children. He writes:
the particular gender mix of a same-sex household has a dramatic difference in the association with child graduation. Consider the case of girls. . . . Regardless of the controls and whether or not girls are currently living in a gay or lesbian household, the odds of graduating from high school are considerably lower than any other household type. Indeed, girls living in gay households are only 15 percent as likely to graduate compared to girls from opposite sex married homes.
Thus although the children of same-sex couples fare worse overall, the disparity is unequally shared, but is instead based on the combination of the gender of child and gender of parents. Boys fare better—that is, they’re more likely to have finished high school—in gay households than in lesbian households. For girls, the opposite is true. Thus the study undermines not only claims about “no differences” but also assertions that moms and dads are interchangeable. They’re not.
Every study has its limitations, and this one does too. It is unable to track the household history of children. Nor is it able to establish the circumstances of the birth of the children whose education is evaluated—that is, were they the product of a heterosexual union, adopted, or born via surrogate or assisted reproductive technology? Finally, the census did not distinguish between married and common law gay and lesbian couples. But couples they are.
Indeed, its limitations are modest in comparison to its remarkable and unique strengths—a rigorous and thorough analysis of a massive, nationally-representative dataset from a country whose government has long affirmed same-sex couples and parenting. It is as close to an ideal test as we’ve seen yet.
The study’s publication continues the emergence of new, population-based research in this domain, much of which has undermined scholarly and popular claims about equivalence between same-sex and opposite-sex households echoed by activists and reflected in recent legal proceedings about same-sex marriage.
Intellectual honesty dictates that, no matter your position on same-sex marriage, you acknowledge that there are in fact differences in the sexes — something I’ve always found ironic about the gender feminists’ messaging, in that they simultaneously claim that the sexes are equal, and yet they continue to demand special dispensation for one over the other, and speak in academic jargon about differences in, for instance, the way logic works based on physiology (mostly concentrated on the naughty bits) and chemistry.
But then, antifoundationalism is an excuse to argue expediently, not with any degree of consistency or rigor.
It’s a progressive thing. You wouldn’t understand.
And besides, the study being referenced here is obviously homophobic, else it would cater its findings to the preferred scientific outcome of those whose social mission is to map their desires onto the population, no matter the real-world effects. For fairness!
If you don’t count what happens to the kids, that is.
(h/t serr8d)
Stacy McCain has a piece up today that explains the likely response to this study: “EVIDENCE DOESN’T MATTER; GOOD INTENTIONS DO! HATER!“
Intellectual honesty? That’s a white heteronormative male thing, innit?
I like Stacy but he’s nuts if he thinks they’ll feel the need to respond at all. More likely they’ll pretend that it never existed.
To re-iterate Alec above, my money’s on this study being suppressed, and the authors being re-educated/censured/out-of-a-job, take your pick. This epistemology needs a closin’ after all….
It bears repeating that most of the “unfair” difference in outcomes between children of rich folk and poor folk stems from the fact that too many poor children are raised in single-parent homes. Where you find a husband and wife living together, their children are likely to do all right, even if the family lives in terrible poverty.
It’s no mere coincidence that achievement among blacks fell in tandem with the destruction of black families. No more than it’s a coincidence that “blaming the Republicans” became a workable catch-all excuse at the same time that public education went down the shitter.
this is junk science – you can’t make any comparisons without knowing the provenance of kids and at what age they were adopted
we know that foster kids do just as well in homes irrespective of whether the adoptive parents are straight or gay – in spite of the fact that gay parents are more likely to adopt kids with more risk factors
this is an example of science – you compare apples to apples and control for variables…
whereas the study in this post is junk science because you can’t interpret the data with the information provided
And we have the first suppression efforts by a fellow who is most certainly not gay no way no how.
Psychologists are like economists: ask enough of them the same question and you’ll eventually get an answer you’ll love and embrace and refuse to let go of it even in the face of FACTS that undermine the fantasy.
But that’s okay. Just go out a hunting another one to agree with. Preferably, one who is old and held a certain sway in a now discarded realm. Thus, his science can be trumpeted as “ahead of its time” no matter how shoddy and piecemeal his research and unethical his methodology.
It’s all good when it’s in service to the Cause™.
Canada? This guy will be lucky if he isn’t sent off for re-grooving.
I did not expect to see a difference in high-school graduation rates, but I guess finishing school is a fairly good proxy for a multitude of emotional-health factors. And I definitely did not expect to see that girls fared worse among lesbians and boys better. I’da thought just the opposite.
There’s also the fact that poor people in this day and age are simply unlikely to have ever picked up the habits that lead to betterment of one’s circumstances. The parents never learned them; the schools never teach them and instead teach contrary lessons.
Where it’s a single-parent household, the crappy judgment of the one parent (illustrated by, for example, getting pregnant out of wedlock) isn’t offset by potentially better judgment from the other.
Thing is, even in two-parent households the advantage is diluted by the necessity of being two-income households.
The yellow menace dissents? Who could have seen that coming? Color me shocked.
Besides income issues, there is also the dynamics of the male/female relationships on display in a healthy marriage. Can you get these role-models with a same sex couple? Seems unfair but, even same sex couples are going to have mostly straight kids.
Me too, Pablo. Who’da thunk it?
I’m waiting for tracy to parachute in and tell us how her experiences trump research so shut up.
“Indeed, girls living in gay households are only 15 percent as likely to graduate compared to girls from opposite sex married homes”
Surely this statement sets off your BS detector? Something is pretty wrong with a study that claims that less than 15 percent of any subgroup graduate from high school.
research is research you have to design your studies to yield good data otherwise you don’t have a clean data set at the end
this is not a well-designed study
here are helpful canada adoption facts from canada to help you get started in designing a useful study on this issue
* There are five main categories of adoption in Canada!
– Adopting an infant, child, or youth from the Canadian child welfare system (Public)
– Adopting an infant or child (Private)
– Adopting a child from another country (International)
– Adopting a stepchild/children
– Adopting a birth relative (Kinship adoption)
* Different kinds of adoptions cost different amounts of Canadian monies!
– Public (foster care): $0 – $3,000
– Licensed Private Agency: $10,000 – $20,000
– International: $20,000 – $30,000
* Different kinds of adoptions in Canada produce differeing median ages of adoption!
– The process of adopting can range from 9 months to 9 years, depending upon what type of adoption you undertake.
ok you guys that’s a great start. You might also want to ask a lot of questions about income too – you want to know about income when the adoption took place/or the child was born and then get a sense of what that income was during the high school years.
Is median lesbian HHI the same as median gay HHI in Canada? Is it more? Is it less?
There’s other stuff too but I have to do a thing.
Good luck you guys I just know you are on your way to designing a great study what will do a lot to illuminate this important issue.
oops i wanted to bold the other two asterisked points but I forgot
This study appears to be a meta-analysis and contains no new information. Unless we know the structure, number of subjects and length of study of each of the studies that make up the meta-analysis, we know nothing much except the authors conclusion.
Not being able to see the underlying data and a regression hinders my ability to judge this conclusion on its merits.
i agree with leigh
I’m a go have a bagel and chew it thoughtfully
Don’t you knuckle-draggers understand anything? A study of 82 high-risk kids adopted out of foster care is worlds more rigorous and respectable than an analysis of 20% of the entire Canadian census! Because SCIENCE, that’s why!
Even were I to concede the studies findings, and as I am not willing to spend the time to address it completely, I must for the moment accept them.
Let me offer a point (with a now college student daughter of a lesbian couple): there is an aspect of society maybe only noted in passing but fundamental. The vast number of gays are liberals. Spend a few hours with liberal parents and you will get the overwhelming notion that any child of that couple is DOOMED from the start. One of the aspects of opposite sex couples is that the +/- and the -/+ tend to average out/cancel out/balance out. A couple that is all +/- or -/+ CAN get off balance – I call it having no ‘governor’. Mono-groups have the same problems – they reinforce one set of aspects rather than balance them. Just like not finding many examples of both husband and wife being type-A personalities – they just don’t work – having both husband and wife raging lunatic lefties is likely to be damaging. Many gay couples are liberal, mostly it is the lesbians that raise children – most lesbian couples we know are NUTS. Deep end liberals that treat humans as political play-doh. I can EASILY imagine lesbian couples having kids that are socially crippled.
It is one of the reasons why I think V and I did so well with CJ – V was a lib, I am a conservative, our +/- were ‘bent’, twisted. I won’t say we WERE +/- & -/+, but we were much closer to it than most liberal lesbian couples.
99.8% of gays were born to and raised by straights. Income, education, geography and political ideology are all factors that come into play when raising children. The sex of the parents may set the foundation, but construction of the personalities takes places amongst a stew of other issues. Suggesting one has a defining impact misses the interaction of all the others.
(note, I can’t get into a 1000 post discussion this time – I broke both arms 10 days ago and have to give most of my time at typing to work…) :)
I guess finishing school is a fairly good proxy for a multitude of emotional-health factors.
Indeed. Most of the people of my acquaintance who attended finishing school have a myriad of social, emotional, and psychological issues.
Oy. I just read the executive summary and the conclusion. Jargon much?
Eeesh! Get well soon, Tracy!
First:
this is junk science – you can’t make any comparisons without knowing the provenance of kids and at what age they were adopted
Then:
we know that foster kids do just as well in homes irrespective of whether the adoptive parents are straight or gay – in spite of the fact that gay parents are more likely to adopt kids with more risk factors
Maybe Jeff’s post is more correct, and your cite is junk science?
Ouch! I hope you heal up quickly.
Don’t you knuckle-draggers understand anything? A study of 82 high-risk kids adopted out of foster care is worlds more rigorous and respectable than an analysis of 20% of the entire Canadian census! Because SCIENCE, that’s why!
Heh. Those 82 high-risk kids were also self-reports. Self-reports are generally self-serving bullshit. Unless there is a lie test built into the questions, you can usually discount a great deal of what is said.
tracy, while I wish you mend quickly, your claim of being conservative is taken about as seriously as happyfeets claiming to be one. Being able to add and subtract and worrying about overdrawn checking accounts does NOT make you conservative, merely fiscally aware.
When you have repeatedly defended having the US Constitution overthrown by the whims of a severe minority, that is NOT conservative, and your protestations of “Serious You Guys, I totally swearsies” do NOT meet the definition.
“By their works shall ye know them”. Your “knuckle under or ELSE” defense shows you for what you truly are. But hey, Obama is also out and proud of himself, don’t be ashamed. Just quit lying to those who know better.
Mr. Squid that sample of 82 is low, but it provides a data set by which you can make meaningful comparisons between different households, cause of these are all kids from a similar background, with a quantified set of risk factors and supporting demographic data to provide context
the study about Canada is just a mess
I’m a go do some super-conservative stuff right now but I will use my multitasking powers to check back periodically
sample of 82 is low, but it provides a data set by which you can make meaningful comparisons between different households
No, it doesn’t happy. It’s statistically insignificant.
The Canadian study is better researched and includes a longitudinal study within the meta-study. I don’t have time to read the whole thing today, but I would have accepted it as a proposed project by one of my students. The 82 foster kids and extrapolate thinger? No.
I said the sample was low, but nevertheless it is a well-designed study. You could easily expand the sample of that study by pulling in participants from other large cities.
Whereas even with a huge sample the Canadian study is crap.
This is why study design is so very very important.
are only 15 percent as likely to graduate
Surely this statement sets off your BS detector? Something is pretty wrong with a study that claims that less than 15 percent of any subgroup graduate from high school.
Statistics are so easily misunderstood that even experts get their feets tangled in them, so to speak.
The statement means that if Group A is 85% likely to graduate, then Group B is, uh, 15% of 85% = 17%? Or is it 70% likelihood of graduation for Group B. rrrrr
I can tell when a turn of phrase is tricky, but I can’t for the life of me manage the math.
Help?
I would think foster kids have wildly different backgrounds. They all have one thing in common, ending up in foster homes, but I’d think their experiences would be everything from complete neglect to 24/ 7 abuse.
I’ll have to ask the missus when I get home, she has extensive foster kid experience.
This is why study design is so very very important
Yes, it is. It is impossible to extrapolate to the entire population of foster children from a sample that small. By “pulling in” participants from different cities/states you are changing the dynamic of the study. The original intent of the foster kid study (it isn’t an experiment, happy. Human experimentation is illegal and unethical. It’s a convenience sample like college students and prisoners.) is okay, it’s just too small to be significant.
You’re not materially changing the sample if you pull in foster kids from different cities in the same state. You will still be able to compare kids raised in different kinds of homes (though yes you’ll need to check and see that the city in which they live is not skewing the data)…
But for the Canadian study there’s absolutely no way to make meaningful comparisons.
The adoption rate among gay couples is vastly higher than among lesbian couples which is vastly higher than among opposite sex couples. (This is a weird unexplained phenomenon that would need to be the subject of a whole other study.) And within that subset of adoption are a number of variables that come into play as well – what avenue of adoption was used, how old the kids were at the time of adoption, income factors, etc.
The Canadian study is a mess they should apologize for it profusely.
Mr. Lee the foster kids study tagged the little foster monkeys as possessing up to I think 9 risk factors in terms of the different kinds of baggage they tend to bring to the table.
I grant you though that the foster kids study can’t be representative at that base size, but it’s still worth looking at the directional findings.
I doubt there’s really a big enough sample of gay-parented foster kids to work with under the umbrella of any given foster program to achieve representativeness, but if you keep finding the same directional observations in similar populations you’ve still done a we small bit o Science.
a *wee* small bit o Science I mean
the stupid Census site is down so good luck creating *any* representative sample frames
pouty Census faggots is pouty
I say the foster kid study is not a good one. Too small, too after the fact. All the former foster kids (FFK) are adults and are relying on memory to answer the questions put to them by the authors. Confidentiality laws prohibit a longitudinal study of the FFKs since they are too young to consent at the time they go into care. For instance, I did an experiment (an actual one) on intelligence with kindergarteners when I was in grad school. I had to get informed consent from their parents that included explaining the experiment and showing the materials.
Not gonna happen with foster kids.
this is junk science – you can’t make any comparisons without knowing the provenance of kids and at what age they were adopted
Oh, crimeny … I just start reading and see that grieferfeet is shrieking more nonsense. This Canadian study confirms an American study by Mark Regnerus that was shouted down from the rooftops and subject to Inquisition-type hysteria.
On the alter of Left-liberal political correctness and its accompanying hubris that human behavior is malleable (well, GENDER is malleable but SEXUAL ORIENTATION is not … heh), any data to the contrary is to be destroyed with extreme prejudice.
And just to remind the electric banana hamster, the LGBTQQ leftists are really into saying that their members reproduce all the time …either turkey baster or surrogates. So “adopted” means pretty little here.
the foster kids study *did* have a longitudinal piece though…
I’m not sure what the recall piece was or if there even was one, but the noise contributed by the recall-based methodology should be the same among kids of both populations of households, so they are still comparable
I think the big takeaway really is that it’s a good thing to be adopted out of a foster home environment no matter who is doing the adopting
This Canadian study confirms an American study
no Darleen this Canadian study is a crappy study because it does not take into account that the populations of kids in the groups that they want to compare are of a dissimilar composition – the gay guys are more likely to adopt than lesbians or straight people, the lesbians are more likely to have kids from a previous relationship than either straight people or gay people, it can also be hypothesized that both gays and lesbians are more likely to go the public adoption route –
We know that international adoption is by FAR the most common route of adoption in Canada, but those kids would skew towards the straight couples since so many countries disallow gay adoption. The corollary to this skew would suggest that gay and lesbians are far more likely than straight couples to adopt through public avenues such as the foster system, and likely are placed with children markedly older than the median average age of those placed with the straight couples.
So that is the story of the Canadian study. It is crappy. I disdain it.
One cannot disdain facts, only the conclusions drawn from them, based on the suppositions behind the conclusions.
First you say that it is not a representative sample, then you proceed to use it as such. Your suppositions are faulty, and your use of a non-representative sample would be like me using you as a representative of all lunatic Democrats. While there might be some interesting correlations, causation cannot be inferred from the facts.
But it is the larger study that you should pay attention to, as it shows you for the liar that all lunatic Democrats reveal themselves to be, time after time. There is the clear likelihood of material harm in any other form of family than “mother and father and kids”. Policy that claims to be made “for the greater good”, yet refuses to acknowledge the realities behind these numbers is diametrically opposed to its own claims, and should be shouted down with voices as loud as we can get.
But the only response we are likely to receive in response? “H8RHOMOPHOBE”.
Well, fuck you.
Longitudinal study equals 20 + years, happy. Not 20+ months.
I read you comment you made I don’t understand all of it
I said the Canadian study had a huge sample but it was poorly designed.
I said the foster kids study did NOT have a representative sample but was well-designed to make the sort of comparison the Canadian study aspires to make
I have awesome suppositions
this Canadian study is weak is all
the gay guys are more likely to adopt than lesbians or straight people
Where’s your data substantiating that assertion?
longitudinal just means over time – the foster kids study was looking at the transition from the foster home environment to the adoptive homes of different kinds of families
I think they make the assumption that a final snapshot at the two year mark is sufficient to assess a meaningfully large percentage of cases and that after two years whatever happens is less and less meaningfully correlated to that transition and is therefore outside the study aims
Credit where due, Darleen, gay men can’t have children, no matter how many times they are inseminated, while even lesbian women can get pregnant if they choose to try, either the regular way (even with a gay man) or through IVF, if they have money to burn.
gay people have a dickens of a time having kids without adopting them Darleen, whereas lesbians have different strategies and straight womens take to it like a duck to water
I think Bill Moyers did a special on it
yes what Mr. Drumwaster said
they make the assumption that a final snapshot at the two year mark is sufficient to assess a meaningfully large percentage of cases and that after two years whatever happens is less and less meaningfully correlated to that transition and is therefore outside the study aims
They assume wrong.
Darleen, gay men can’t have children, no matter how many times they are inseminated.
Just ask Andrew Sullivan. And lord knows he’s an expert on the whole baby-making thing, at least as it applies to politically undesirable Alaskans.
That doesn’t make you right, feets, so don’t sprain your shoulder. I was merely pointing out the likelihood of gay men needing to adopt if they want to have pictures to show around the water cooler to their co-workers, compared with the lowered need of lesbian and straight women to need to do so. However, that need (as I explained) does not correlate to actual events occurring (which is what you implied), and so you are still lacking as far as backing up your claim.
which claim Mr. Drumwaster I am having trouble following you today
Drum
Two men can’t make a child together. However, there are many men who “discover” they are gay after they’ve already had a child with a woman. So many of these children in gay households will have at least one bio-dad.
Also, gays adopting totally unrelated children is a fraction of the already some fraction of committed gay couples of the fraction that gays represent in the population at large (approx 3%)
But it is the woman who has the child, not the man. The likelihood of a woman, of either preference, having a child is INCREDIBLY higher than that of a man of any preference at all.
Arnold Schwarzenegger movies notwithstanding.
which claim Mr. Drumwaster I am having trouble following you today
The claim you made above. The one Darleen pointed out where you lacked the data to support your assertion. (Is that in simple enough language for you?)
but Darleen in those cases the kid almost always goes with the mom
but even if that’s the case then that kid will be the damaged goods product of a broken home, which is something that needs to be accounted for
and if gay households with kids are mostly comprised of divorce-ravaged products of broken homes then yeah the straight couples are gonna have a leg up in the parenting competition
and you shouldn’t need a study from Canada to know that
but I think it’s more plausible that gay people have adoption rates disproportionate to straight people
but even there it’s likely that on balance they’re adopting different kids from different environments
I’m sure I trust the assertion monkey’s asssertions over the regression models and controlled variables Douglas Allen employed to prove statistical significance.
I mean, liars, damned liars and statisticians, right?
there are too many unquantified variables to do a meaningful regression here Mr. Ernst
all they have is Census data
but without knowing more about the characteristics of the populations of the kids they’re comparing you can’t make any conclusions about the causation behind high school completion rates in Canada
but even if that’s the case then that kid will be the damaged goods product of a broken home, which is something that needs to be accounted for
Um, griefer, don’t you understand that ANY child in a same-sex household has to be, by definition, the product of a “broken home”. At least one of the members, if not both, are not the bio-parents.
There is never two bio-parents of the same-sex. Ever.
Well, this is one thread I can skip after seeing all the radioactive yellow comments.
It’s sort of our own “amber alert system”.
Darleen a broken home is when mommy and daddy don’t love each other anymore and it almost always has nothing to do with the gays
it’s very painful for everyone and it’s particularly harmful to the children, who are apt to become surly, and Dr. Phil has some very specific opinions about it
and Dr. Phil
::snort::
it’s more plausible that gay people have adoption rates disproportionate to straight people
You’ve said that more than once now. Where are you getting this information? I know a lot of adoptees (including relatives) and also adoptive parents who are straight. The only lesbians I know who have a child had him through IVF. I don’t know any gay couples who have kids and they generally don’t want them, at least in my experience.
Since gays are such a small part of the total population and gays who adopt, an even smaller number, your claim doesn’t seem to be supported by simple observation.
and Dr. Phil ::snort::
No kidding, Dar.
but I think it’s more plausible that gay people have adoption rates disproportionate to straight people
This is the claim you have to prove. Repetition is NOT proof.
Put up or shut up, half-wit.
leigh
a cursory google shows this HUGE HUGE and did we mention HUGE increase in same-sex couple adoption …
from 8% of ss couples to 18% … now, gays constitution about 3% of the population at large. Of that, monogamy is exotic not default so generously lets say 1% of the population can be described as “committed” ss couples. So 18% of 1% is disproportionately adopting as in greater than among married (ie man/woman) couples?
feh
Sounds like that there Obama-math, Darleen.
.005555% of gay married couples adopt, eh?
>HUGE increase in same-sex couple adoption …<
almost like
robots attacking a targetbut I think it’s more plausible that gay people have adoption rates disproportionate to straight people – happyfeet
This is the claim you have to prove. – Mr. Drumwaster
***
ok Mr. D so let’s roughly compare the adoption rate among gay people and married straight people
Ok that was easy.
The adoption rate among gay couples with kids is 25%. Yes. They have adopted 25% of their children.
So when you compare how kids in same-sex households do vs. opposite-sex households, 25% of the kids in your sample of kids living in same-sex households will have been adopted.
We could posit that since Canada is much more amenable to gay adoption than America, their rates of adoption are likely higher than their American counterparts.
We could also point out that the 25% statistic is conflating the adoption rates of both lesbian and gay households here in America. The study in Canada looks at gay households, lesbian households, and opposite sex households. Is it likely that gay households with kids would have an even higher rate of adoption than
their lesbian counterparts? I think so, yes. But let’s leave that aside for now.
But let’s keep it simple for leigh and Darleen.
Let’s review:
My claim that gay people have adoption rates disproportionately bigger than the rate that prevails among straight couples is true IF less than 25% of all kids living in opposite-sex households are adopted.
Well in America we know that overall, 2.5% of kids are adopted.
So if overall, 2.5% of all kids are adopted, but 25% of kids in gay households are adopted, one can easily see that the adoption rate is far higher among gay couples with kids than it is among opposite-sex couples with kids. Maybe it’s different in Canada.
But if you were to do that study here in America, when you compared how kids fared in same-sex vs. opposite-sex homes, you should control for the variable that 25% of the kids in gay households were adopted compared to roughly 2.5% in your sample of kids in opposite-sex households.
If you wanted to get good data anyway.
Now was that so hard?
Don’t accuse me of being simple, happy. I just asked you to show your work.
As McGehee said, was that so hard?
– In other news…..
– Gloria proves for the umpteenth time that money buys the Left every time. Boy what a difference 60 years makes.
– Wish there was a way you could block any pop icon by the name or subject, but yahoo, and all the rest as well, are all about ads and pop icons for their chiefly young audience.
– Asiana Airlines, Pilots Association, and Boeing corp. play musical chairs for legal liabilities in SF crash.
– Pay close attention people: Fuck the passengers, the facts, and safety, its all about whos gonna have to pay.
So the thesis here is that its adopted kids who are less likely to complete high school, rather than the children of same-sex couples?
That ought to be easy to control for.
Unless heterosexual couples don’t adopt in Canada.
I don’t know about anyone else, but I bet if one were to go digging in to the weeds of the study, the author(s) did exactly that.
– Let’s review: happytoes has some very heavy investment in gayes so he’ll go to his grave defending what he knows only too well is an aborition…he seems to have no choice in the matter.
It seems to me that the study isn’t so much homophobic as misogynistic, since the core finding seems to be that moms and dads matter, but dads matter more than moms.
Obama was forced to cancel a four-nation swing through Southeast Asia, including attendance in back-to-back summits in Bali, Indonesia and Brunei, to grapple with a budget deadlock that sparked a partial shutdown of the U.S. government. Secretary of State John Kerry filled in.
– Or maybe he didn’t want to have to sit there red faced while the Chinamen tell him to grow up and at least pretend to lead. Of course sKerry, being the quintisential ass-kisser, was a perfect substitute for leading from behind.
– Bumblefuck seems to be having mondo problems with “optics” lately, having has to cancel a fundraiser for the same reason just this week.
i’m sorry leigh i got a little frustrated and then every website i usually go to for stats was down cause of the hostage crisis where the rethuglicans are holding a gun at the head of the whole country and I just
I just worry is all
i did also learn that 70% of kids are adopted by married couples, but like 21 or so percent – 20-something I’d have to google again – are adopted to single moms
nobody tells me anything 1 in 5 kids goes to a single mom?
who knew
That ought to be easy to control for.
you’d think so huh
Which is why I’d guess they did.
Not that you’d know it though from Public Discourse.
i bet they didn’t cause i bet census canada doesn’t ask cause why?
adopted kids are not a useful monolithic group like cholos or sephardic jews at least not til first you cut them by type of adoption and age at which they were adopted
No, she’s far more credible on that score. Surely, there are blind spots, but she can at least articulate a conservative argument. Like an adult, even.
Her name is Madonna Louise.
she only has two dopted ones mercy and david
Angelina has quite the lil brood though
and I’m super conservative Mr. Pablo I’m doing conservative stuff right no you just can’t tell cause you can’t see me
so what do you do?
you leap to the exact wrong conclusions but I forgive you cause that’s what jesus would do
right *now* i mean
except i’m not anymore now I’m microwaving veggie meatballs made by the kellogg company
*** Breaking: CNN (or as Leigh calls it “Chicken noodle network”) ha tweeted, and then followed with a web site story, that the WH/Bumblefuck are getting ready to pull Egyptian aid.
– WH quickly denies report.
– Have we ever seen an example in all of our history of a more “transparent” administration? NEVAH!
– Oh, and the ostensible reason for the drop in aid: Bumblefucks “concern” over the harsh crackdown on his Brotherhood homies.
TY Pablo. and to others for the well wishes.
Drumwaster, because I hold positions different than you does not make me not-conservative. I often specify the distinction of ‘classical liberal’ for myself, while many people here are more atuned to the classical conservative point of view…frankly, I think the majority of what people call social conservatives are in fact classical conservatives and deserve ‘ownership’ of the term ‘conservative’.
I think the concept ‘the individual is sovereign’ is one that most social/classical conservatives can not accept for themselves, placing God as their sovereign. It is in this place that my ‘conservatism’ differs from others.
I think the concept ‘the individual is sovereign’ is one that most social/classical conservatives can not accept for themselves, placing God as their sovereign.
– That only works if the person in question is confused about mans realm versus Gods…..Render onto Ceasar….
– Disneys answer to Crotch itch: The magic rabbit hole.
– The cancelled fund raiser.
– OTOH, this is unsettling, since I have zero trust in the faker-in-chiefs motives for anything he ever does. Conservative journalists covorting with the enemy?
[…] Jeff Goldstein notices that facts are unfashionable nowadays: […]
Stop right there. Foster kids are already victims of ‘parents’ who weren’t.
Foster kids, by definition, were screwed up already. We’re speaking of families, married, a female mother and a male father, with the intent of raising their children for the duration of the event.
That’s the ideal model anyone who has a desire to raise a family correctly should strive to meet.
Foster kids need love too, of course. But do try to avoid scenarios that create ’em. Our current ‘enlightened’ mindset allows for the creation of ‘foster kids’, ‘single-parent kids’ as a norm. Damned shame, that.
I have to second BBH on sovereignty. Jesus himself distinguished between the secular State and the Kingdom of God.
Where socons differ from others is on the understanding of the difference between a secular government and a secular society.
I am normally apt to go outside and check the sky when hf says it’s blue and to assume that he’s wrong until I have done so. That said, this:
I agree with pretty much entirely.
Studies of this kind absolutely have to, as hf mentions, compare apples to apples. If you just compared e.g. gay adoptions to heterosexual, two-parent adoptions in e.g. Florida, you would not be comparing apples to apples. Because gays in Florida, IIRC, tend to adopt older kids that have been bouncing around the foster-care system for a while, which means they are starting with fundamentally different sets of conditions. Which confuses things.
Just by way of example, I mean. Even when examining only infant (or up to toddler) adoption, you have to control for where the kid came from. Were they special needs? Did they come from a place such as Russia where fetal alcohol syndrome is much more widespread than it is here?
Anyway. I think that putting aside the question of whether gay parents are as good as straight parents at producing outcomes, the big question for me is whether gay parents are better than no parents at all. I would tend to assume that they are.
I think this concept “we all create God in our own image” is one that most libertarian conservatives can not accept for themselves, since they don’t believe in God.
He snarked.
And you’re only sovereign if your a law unto yourself.
Which is neither civil nor social.
Really? Run into a lot of “throne and altar” types do ya?
Drumwaster, because I hold positions different than you does not make me not-conservative.
I never said anything of the kind. It is because you espouse and defend non-conservative positions that I say that you are not conservative, much like Mr. MILKYGLUTES Sullivan. I could put on a police uniform and go around breaking the law, but that wouldn’t make me a cop, would it? When your words and your works conflict, “by their works shall ye know them”.
Fred: “Children do better in traditional homes.”
Wilma: “That’s because kids in non-traditional homes generally start at a significant disadvantage.”
Fred: “Exactly! Thank you.”
Just curious why we need a study to prove what is obvious.
“Rejection of common sense biological and evolutionary observations are much in vogue among the social engineers and their activist counterparts.”
Oh yeah, right, as if any number of studies will ever actually convince these nuts that they’re wrong. Trust me, if telling someone “That will burn you” isn’t a simple enough instruction to keep an idiot from sticking his hand in a fire, then showing him statistics, studies, and proof of same will not deter him, either.
Geez, the radioactive rat on October 8, 2013 at 8:38 pm actually used whole sentences, paragraphs, punctuation and a plausible argument. However, on October 8, 2013 at 10:16 pm, he/she/it reverted to form/babytalk.
I think I’ll follow JohnBradley’s amber alert advice. But I thought that it was defunded.
[…] From Protein Wisdom, via Robert Stacey Stacy McCain: […]
why we need a study to prove what is obvious.
I think it all started with that sun going around the stationary earth dealio: Save the appearances!
slart – “the big question for me is whether gay parents are better than no parents at all. I would tend to assume that they are.”
Except that’s not what’s being debated – the claim is that there is no difference in the effects of parenting by heterosexual couples and parenting by homosexual couples.
Nice try.
Nice try
This presumes I was trying something, which is even less polite than my first inclination at response to it.
Fortunately, I overcame the impulse.
On the off-chance you’re considering a response, you should go back and reread what I wrote and see if you can understand it. Because you failed to, the first time. In fact, your response assumed that I was making some point that I most definitely never attempted to make.