Flawed Research Is Shaping the Debate on Gay Parenthood

In the film, you are meant to sympathize with Allen’s character, whereas these days Keaton’s reference to some social science studies would win popular support, casting Allen as a loon for questioning the viability of gay parenthood.

But then again, as Talking Heads’ singer David Byrne once crooned, “facts all come with points of view… facts just twist the truth around”.

In other words, statistical evidence requires interpretation, and this can be done well or very badly. 

When it comes to the case of an influential study cited in justifying gay parenthood, it has been done very badly indeed, reinforcing the idea that having same-sex parents does not negatively affect children.

Traditional Parenthood

It seems absurd to have to state this, but the traditional parenting structure has been built around the presence of a male and female partner. 

There is a simple biological reality underlying this, as prior to recent technological advances it was virtually impossible to have a child outside a heterosexual act.

Scientific developments that enabled the sexual revolution have nevertheless largely rewritten history, beginning with the improvement in the effectiveness of contraceptives and their wide use. 

This has undermined not only the link between sex and conception, but also the relationship between man and woman, such that this binary no longer appears essential. 

If sex is not meant to be life-giving, why does it need to take place within the context of a marriage? And what is the difference between heterosexual and homosexual acts? 

As the conservative American political candidate Alan Keyes explained in a debate with then Illinois State Senator Barack Obama, if marriage can be understood “in principle apart from procreation, you have changed its definition in such a way as in fact to destroy the necessity” of the institution. 

Once contraceptives were embraced, it was a short road to mainstreaming not only gay and lesbian relationships but any atypical kind of relationship or sexual or gender identity, from cohabitation to polyamory and gender fluidity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exKOxOdD6S0

Battling for Gay Parenthood

But although the LGBTQ lobby has long won the battle for the public’s sympathy and support as regards its own relationships, claiming a right to become parents is taking more effort. 

For instance, while almost two-thirds (65%) of Americans support same-sex marriage, according to a 2026 Gallup poll, acceptance for married same-sex couples raising children stood at just under six in 10 (58%), according to a 2023 study from Pew Research Center.

However, there has been a general warming in the public’s feeling toward same-sex parents since 2012, when less than half of American adults expressed support, according to a study from the Journal of Marriage and Family. The same study cited an estimate that, as of 2022, 286,059 children in the US lived in same-sex couple households. 

The trajectory of public policy has largely supported same-sex parenthood, with changes over the past two decades permitting same-sex couples to legally adopt children and participate in foster programs.

The public and political establishment’s view of gay parenthood has been reinforced by social studies, which have fostered a narrative of comparable outcomes for children raised by same-sex and heterosexual couples.

It is at least in part because of the contribution of these studies that the likes of Diane Keaton’s character in Manhattan can, with complete confidence, assert that “two mothers are absolutely fine”.

Truth Behind the Facts

But remember, facts must be interpreted and it can easily become the case that the poorly presented data from a scientific study can twist the truth around, inadvertently or otherwise.

The Ruth Institute, a multi-faith organization that advocates for traditional marital and parenting arrangements, has highlighted the case of one influential study from 2016 in Demography, the journal of the Population Association of America, where two different readings provide completely contrasting results.

When the study, titled Family Structure and Child Health: Does the Sex Composition of Parents Matter?, was first released, the authors suggested that there was little or no difference in the emotional development of children raised by same-sex parents compared with those raised by heterosexual couples.

Just one year later, the authors issued an updated paper, titled The Promise and Perils of Population Research on Same-Sex Families, which revised some of their findings, suggesting that children of same-sex married parents were 3.44 times more likely to experience emotional difficulties.

So what happened? As Jennifer Roback Morse, the founder of the Ruth Institute, explains, it comes down to some rather tedious – to the layman – decisions regarding what methodology you are going to use to interpret raw data.

But while dry and procedural, they are vitally important and unpicking them reveals what Morse describes as the “mischief done in the weeds” of scientific research.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9l6QIMbxEDw

Morse (De)Code

The experienced researcher and defender of ordinary moms and dads patiently picks through the weeds, demonstrating that the original 2016 finding came about because of poorly coded data.

After the 2016 study came out, a 2017 paper from Fr D. Paul Sullins of the Catholic University of America – and later the Ruth Institute – noted serious shortcomings in the researchers' data and methodology.

Sullins noted that the National Center for Health Statistics in the US had issued an advisory in 2015 about the data set used by the researchers for their 2016 paper. 

He reclassified the data and “obliterated the original findings”, Morse says, forcing the authors to admit that the revised data indicated children of same-sex couples were almost four times as likely to experience emotional difficulties.

Sullins also noted that the researchers had tried to control for biological parenthood, grouping children with one or two biological parents together. 

As Morse outlines, this made no sense in a study examining the difference between same-sex and heterosexual couples, as of course a gay couple will not have two biological parents in the same house – only one can be the genetic parent of the child. 

The control was soaking up a difference in outcomes built into the nature of same-sex couples.

Once this control was removed, the actual result was that children of gay parents were 4.16 times more likely to experience emotional difficulties. All told, these revisions turned an apparent equality in outcomes into a significant deviation.

This correction came, but the original conclusions had already been absorbed into the prevailing view of gay parenthood as benign, while the updated analysis and interpretation challenge this claim.

More broadly, even defenders of gay parenthood admit that research on the issue is generally of low quality and produces mixed results. A 2023 review of 17 studies found 11 reporting no statistically significant differences – including the original 2016 study analyzed above – while five found negative outcomes and one reported better outcomes for children of same-sex parents.

Yet these tenuous findings have helped drive a narrative that is overturning a tradition rooted in human nature and stretching back millennia.

Negative Press

The question of gay parenthood is a pressing one, given the number of children who are already living within the context of those relationships.

For some time now, other new family forms have also been emerging: co-parenting arrangements where two “fathers” and two “mothers” want to raise a child together, or transgender people who also claim parenthood. Here, too, the oft-cited narrative holds that what matters is not by whom or by how many a child is raised, but only that the child is loved.

The issue has also received increased attention, largely because of debates over surrogacy, whereby a couple commissions a woman to carry their child for them.

The practice of gay couples purchasing children via surrogacy has been making international headlines. A recent case in England attracted significant negative attention and prompted a parliamentary debate in which one Labour politician warned that changing the nation’s surrogacy law would be “a serious mistake”.

Similarly, high-profile cases involving horrendous abuse of children adopted or fostered by same-sex couples have raised uncomfortable questions for a society that has sought to normalize same-sex parenthood.

However, a body of science building a benign view of same-sex parenthood means that it remains an uphill struggle for defenders of traditional marriage and family life. 

It is not merely a question of singling out gay parents either. As outlined by Keyes in his debate with Obama, the foundations for denigrating marriage and family are rooted in the sexual revolution.

To reverse our present course would mean admitting, Keyes underlines, that we are “playing games” with the “most fundamental institution of our social life and civilization” based on “vague feelings” – and, we might add, bad science.