The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has issued what appears to be a politically motivated statement suggesting that children raised by same-sex parents do just fine. In fact, the AAP goes so far as to suggest that children are more affected by the health of the relationship between the people raising them than by whether they are being raised by their own mother and father.

...To be clear, this recent announcement is not science, but propaganda rooted in social activism regarding the family, which is the foundational unit of humanity. That such a credentialed and well-known organization would play politics with this issue should grieve all of those who are committed to the integrity of science when it comes to the future of our children. Their well-being and health is far too important an issue to play politics with, especially of such a radical nature.

The AAP would be well-advised to stick to what the reliable and time-tested body of research tells us about what kinds of families promote the robust array of child-health: a family where children are raised by their mother and father who are in the midst of a healthy marriage.

“The American College of Pediatricians reaffirms that the intact, functional family consisting of a married (female) mother and (male) father provides the best opportunity for children. The College, therefore, disputes the American Academy of Pediatrics’ (AAP) claim that supporting same-sex unions promotes the “well-being of children.” In its newly released statement, “Promoting the Well-Being of Children Whose Parents Are Gay or Lesbian,” the AAP ignores important research on risks to children in favor of the wants of adults.

“The College does not support the alteration of this time-honored and proven standard to conform to pressures from “politically correct” groups. No one concerned with the well-being of children can reasonably ignore the evidence for maintaining the current standard, nor can they or we ignore the equally strong evidence that harm to children can result if the current standards are rejected,” says Den Trumbull, MD, President of the American College of Pediatricians.  “The AAP ignores generations of evidence of health risks to children in advocating for the legality and legitimacy of same-sex marriage and child-rearing.”

I’m neither surprised at the statement by the American Academy of Pediatrics endorsing gay marriage nor at its timing. Whether the statement adequately captures the consensus of pediatricians across the country is, of course, unknown. The report points out the strengths and weaknesses of the social science in this area, and notes correctly that causal arguments here are very difficult to make. The science on same-sex parenting remains comparatively new, unable to keep up with political and legal developments. But those few population-based studies that exist — that map what’s going on across the country — seem to foster skepticism about moving quickly or universally to deny children their right to a mom and a dad. It’s not a popular position, of course. In the end, we all want children to thrive. Many organizations and scholars assert that same-sex marriage is a step toward that end, ensuring household stability. Others remain skeptical, and wonder whether this isn’t more about parents’ wishes than those of children.

"...a look at SF925 reveals that something much more insidious than advocates let on is underway. This bill would strip the words “mother” and “father” of meaning under Minnesota law. Henceforth, the bill states, these words — among the most beloved and culturally freighted in the English language — “must be construed in a neutral manner to refer to a person of either gender.”

Of course, “mother” and “father” aren’t “gender-neutral” words. That’s a fiction. All Minnesotans have a mother and a father — female and male, respectively. Our state’s legislators may view themselves as powerful, but they can’t repeal this fact of human biology. Yet same-sex marriage advocates must pretend this is possible, if they are to convince the rest of us that a “union” of two people of the same sex is identical to that of a man and woman whose sexual complementarity is the only thing that produces the next generation.

This stripping of meaning from “mother” and “father” is just one signal of the tectonic shift our society will undergo if we try to redefine marriage in a way that portrays the anatomical, social and psychological differences between men and women as irrelevant to human life — just as shoe size and eye color are. We urgently need a conversation at the State Capitol that grapples seriously with the unknown implications of such a step — as they unfold next year and 50 years from now.

Legislators should begin by considering why marriage has been a male/female institution throughout recorded history. Is it really because people in the past weren’t as smart as we are, or were “bigots?” Of course not. It’s because marriage has a vital public purpose: It binds fathers to mothers and the children their sexual union creates. This bond is crucial to children’s well-being — and to society’s future."

If you have not yet contacted your representative and senator, please do so today!

The Obama Justice Department is arguing in the United States Supreme Court that children do not need mothers.

The Justice Department’s argument on the superfluity of motherhood is presented in a brief the Obama administration filed in the case of Hollingsworth v. Perry, which challenges the constitutionality of Proposition 8, the California ballot initiative that amended California’s Constitution to say that marriage involves only one man and one woman.

The Justice Department presented its conclusions about parenthood in rebutting an argument made by proponents of Proposition 8 that the traditional two-parent family, led by both a mother and a father, was the ideal place, determined even by nature itself, to raise a child.

The Obama administration argues this is not true. It argues that children need neither a father nor a mother and that having two fathers or two mothers is just as good as having one of each.

Although the American Psychological Association (APA) boasts scholarly objectivity, the social-science guild has for years conducted studies that generate the results—from the alleged benefits of the “good” divorce to the virtues of homosexuality—that progressive activists’ itching ears want to hear. Consequently, it often falls to one brave solider to challenge the groupthink.

Indeed, Mark Regnerus of the University of Texas has done exactly that, conducting the first methodologically rigorous study of homosexual parenting, the latest cause of American elites. Exposing the discredited studies hailed by the APA, the sociologist establishes that children raised by homosexual parents—like all children raised by anything but a married mother and father—suffer risks that should not be overlooked or minimized.

Unique to Regnerus’s study is the data source: his New Family Structures Study, a new research instrument that yielded a data sample of 2,988 randomly selected Americans between the ages 18 to 39, including 175 adults with lesbian mothers and 73 with homosexual fathers. The cross-sectional study queried respondents about their social and economic behaviors, health behaviors, family of origin, and current relationships. Based upon their answers, the lone Texan quantified how the 248 adult children who reported parental homosexual behavior prior to age 18 differed from their peers from six other family-of-origin types.

In spite of other disagreements, there is one aspect about marriage that both the left and the right can find to agree on.  Marriage is a valuable anti-poverty program.

The Brookings Institution says that if we had the marriage rate today that we had in 1970, there would be a 25 percent drop in poverty.  The Heritage Foundation says that marriage drops the probability of a child living in poverty by 82 percent.

This week we focus on Valentine’s Day; and while a celebration of romance is great, we should also celebrate marriage as a valuable culmination of romance, because it’s not just about love, but ultimately about providing a better life for the children of America.

... Let’s start a movement where more and more Americans seek out relationship education and marriage enrichment classes as often as we seek out other forms of self improvement such as home renovation, book clubs, grooming, fashion, décor, or cooking.

If we can change the public’s thinking and habits on recycling, smoking, exercise and healthy eating, how much more does America need a campaign to improve the public’s thinking and actions about the benefits to our country of encouraging healthy marriage?

The benefits of intact biological families were emphasized on a "Building a Marriage Culture" panel at the National Review Institute's 2013 Summit, "The Future of Conservatism." One of the panelists, Doug Mainwaring, spoke of his personal experience as a gay man who came to realize that his own children need both a mother and a father.

"For a long time I thought, if I could just find the right partner, we could raise my kids together, but it became increasingly apparent to me, even if I found somebody else exactly like me, who loved my kids as much as I do, there would still be a gaping hole in their lives because they need a mom," Mainwaring, co-founder of National Capital Tea Party Patriots, said.

Mainwaring is now living with his ex-wife so they can co-parent their two teenaged sons.

"I don't want to see children being engineered for same-sex couples where there is either a mom missing or a dad missing," Mainwaring explained. "Somebody needs to stand up for the rights and needs of children in an age when the selfishness of adults seems to be trumping those rights."

Mainwaring receives many surprised reactions when he explains that he is both gay and a conservative. Someone asked him once, "You're gay, how can you be a conservative?"

The audience laughed and clapped as he recalled his reply: "You're an adult, you have children, how can you be a liberal?"

A Florida judge has approved the adoption of a 22-month-old baby girl that will list three people as parents on her birth certificate -- a married lesbian couple and a gay man.

The decision ends a two-year paternity fight between the couple and a friend of the women who donated his sperm to father the child but later sought a larger role in the girl's life.

The ruling means the child's birth certificate will include a biological father and both women as parents in an unusual arrangement approved recently by a Miami-Dade Circuit Court judge.

The women, Maria Italiano, 43, and Cher Filippazzo, 38, had made several unsuccessful attempts to become parents using fertility clinics.

They then turned to Italiano's hair dresser, Massimiliano Gerina, and asked if he would provide his sperm for artificial insemination.

More details of the arrangement:

Under the judge's decision, the two women will have sole parental rights, although Gerina will be allowed to visit the child. He will not be expected to provide child support.

"We're trying to do the right thing for Emma," Filippazzo said. "We want Emma to have it all, and we believe by doing it this way, including him in a birthday or Thanksgiving, it'll be a nice addition for her."

"We believe the best interest for Emma is for him to have a role in her life, but not as a parent," she said. "The role is this is mommy's good friend who helped your moms have you because they wanted you so badly."

"...Why this new law? The task force appears to presuppose that bullying is a pervasive and growing problem. In fact, however, incidents of bullying and intimidation have dropped markedly in recent years, according to surveys by the Department of Justice.

And while the task force gives the impression that LGBT students are a primary focus of bullying, evidence suggests that the vast majority of bullying is directed at other students. The DOJ surveys indicate that the percentage of 12- to 18-year-old students who reported being targets of hate-related words based on their sexual orientation fell from 1.0 percent in 2007 to 0.6 percent in 2009.

... Not surprisingly, the task force's proposed new antibullying regime would not treat all children equally, despite lip service to this goal. Instead, it focuses on students in "protected classes," including sexual orientation and "gender identity or expression."

Under the task force's vague and overbroad definitions of bullying and harassment, students could be punished for "direct or indirect interactions" that other students --especially those in protected groups -- claim to find "humiliating" or "offensive," that have a "detrimental effect" on their "social or emotional health," or even that promote a "perceived imbalance of power."

By this standard, a student who voices reservations about same-sex marriage could be accused of bullying LGBT students." (Star-Tribune)

The journal Demography has just published a very interesting article that reexamines the claims of a 2010 study that suggested (and was widely reported) as showing that children raised by same-sex couples experienced no academic disadvantages. The catch of the earlier study was that it was significantly different from previous studies on same-sex children and their parents since it used a large sample from the Census rather than a small self-selected one which is more typical of this body of research.

The 2010 study had excluded children who were not biologically related to the head of household and who were not in the same home for at least five years. This reduced “the sample size by more than one-half.” The 2012 study explains that putting the children who had been in unstable households (lived at the same address less than five years) back into the sample increases the sample “by more than 80 percent.” This fact alone seems important. The new study’s conclusion is that “children being raised by same-sex couples are 35 percent less likely to make normal progress through school.”

"...What exactly is the NLLFS and why do I say it should be retired?

... the reason is that its sample — 78 kids growing up in activist households — is no longer a source for valid, reliable information. Why?

... The “Hawthorne effect” refers to the tendency of study participants to work harder or perform better because they know they are being studied. While it is typically applied to experimental research studies of worker productivity, the same could be true here. It’s a cousin to “social desirability bias,” which is closer to what I’m suggesting. In this case, I’m concerned that the kids feel pressure to give better-than-accurate portrayals of their household and personal life. When the adolescent children of lesbian parents are being intermittently interviewed for a study whose results have proven quite politically important — and almost always covered favorably by the mainstream media — it’s prudent for scholars to be skeptical about whether respondents are still offering valid and reliable responses years after they were first contacted. Some kids will always offer valid information, but given the fishbowl these 78 have lived in, I’m concerned that social desirability bias will affect disproportionate numbers of them, especially in contrast to far larger survey projects.

... I just don’t believe the 78 kids in the NLLFS are capable of reporting unbiased information any more, not after a childhood and adolescence spent entirely in a fishbowl. Even the NLLFS’s principal investigators suggested that 25 years of data collection may be enough. I would concur, and — since the study commenced in 1986 — we eclipsed that mark in 2011. Perhaps it’s time to commit significant funds — and a panoply of research perspectives — to a very large (and hence expensive), longitudinal, population-based data-collection effort that would make fans of the NLLFS and fans of the NFSS alike content with its methodology.

I’m all for more information. But if the data are to be valid and reliable, the study needs to be as free of source bias as is humanly possible. I won’t hold my breath, though, because in the case of lesbian parenting, a nationally representative sample is not what many of my scholarly, rational, and allegedly dispassionate colleagues in the social sciences appear to want."

BREAKING:

"A Harris County judge has reached a decision in an unusual custody battle involving a surrogate and two Houston men. The judge has determined the woman who gave birth is, in fact, a mother."

For background, see Jennifer Lahl and I writing about the case in HuffPost, "Are Women Easy Bake Ovens?”

In response to Jean Marbella ("Just who's 'teaching' gay marriage?" Oct. 31), I would point out that in a teacher-student relationship, teaching happens actively and passively. If the idea of "values" has been taught, and there is the expectation that the teacher will identify evil values from good, then some kind of active and passive communication applying values will be given on relevant topics as needed. I cannot imagine a literature analysis course being taught without active and passive values analysis and judgment given to the characters in the books. So when in elementary school, the class reads, "Heather has two mommies," values will be examined and assigned.

Teachers do not teach as values neutral agents regarding human behavior choices just because something seems to be simply "a choice" without harm to another. When teachers give tests, they do not remain values neutral if a student pulls out a cheat sheet during the test. Using the cheat sheet is just a choice of response to the test, and brings no harm to any others, right? But teachers, at least the ones I know of, do not allow such personal choices. Instead, they address that response — a response that does not interfere with anyone else's "values response" — as unacceptable.

I am in schools 95 percent of the days they open. I see what students actively and passively infer about protocols, behavior and values. And if the teacher says nothing, or does nothing regarding a particular behavior, they infer that it is acceptable. Teachers know this and consciously attach values once they realize that if they are passive, then a student might default to a wrong value.

"Yesterday on Public Discourse, I described the controversy that followed the publication of the New Family Structures Study (NFSS), led by University of Texas sociologist Mark Regnerus. During a summer of unusual abuse, Regnerus remained largely silent but with his head unbowed. As autumn arrived, he found himself vindicated as an honest scientist by his university, with continued support from the journal editor who published his research.

Seldom has the publication of a dry, factual report in sociology caused such a storm of controversy. In June 2012, the bimonthly peer-reviewed journal Social Science Research published an article by University of Texas sociologist Mark Regnerus titled, “How different are the children of parents who have same-sex relationships? Findings from the New Family Structures Study.” The answer to his title’s question was: quite a bit different, and most of the differences are not good.

Within minutes, it seemed, Professor Regnerus, a gifted and highly productive scholar with two previous books published on related subjects, was denounced as “anti-gay,” attacked personally and professionally, and his thoughtful, measured research conclusions were buried under an avalanche of invective, abuse, and misunderstanding. For the remainder of the summer months, Regnerus withstood an onslaught of criticism, but as the autumn arrived, it became clear that his reputation and the soundness of his research had been vindicated.

What had happened? [Continue reading...]

"On Nov. 6, Maryland voters will decide on whether to change the definition of marriage to include same-sex couples. The potential implications of this amendment for our society are profound. Same-sex marriage is a polarizing issue and, in some instances, has deteriorated into an "us against them" debate. We must respectfully consider all viewpoints, which evoke strong emotions from both sides, because we cannot afford to get this wrong. It should be less about who is right or wrong and more about what is best for our society today and going forward. Let us seek truth, not victory.

Before we talk about redefining it, let's talk about what marriage is and what it isn't. Marriage is an institution that predates our government, society and any religion. It legitimizes the only way to create, and the best way to raise, our next generation. Marriage originates from the unique relationship between a man and a woman, and their exclusive ability, grounded in nature, to conceive children and to nurture those children as a mother and a father. In short, marriage protects the source of life. Marriage is not simply something that validates the love that two people share for each other. It's much more than that.

Government has a vested interest in ensuring that our children, the next generation, are raised in the best way possible. Unfortunately, we all know that this isn't always achievable, but that doesn't mean that we give up and stop seeking the best. It means we try harder. We shouldn't dilute the institution of marriage by expanding its definition.

There are many studies that show a child's best chance for success in life is to be raised by both a mother and a father, but we don't need statistics or data to know this. Common sense tells us. We may not all be blessed with a mother and a father, but we know it nonetheless. We feel the void when one is missing. We know the roles of mothers and fathers are not interchangeable or genderless. Each brings something distinct yet complementary to the family unit. Mothers and fathers play with their kids differently, discipline differently and love differently. Children need and deserve a wholeness and completeness that comes from both a mom and a dad..."

"...Politicians at both state and federal levels often focus their debates on whether policies will help or hurt children. Even courts are guided by the legal principle that family conflicts should be adjudicated to provide for "the best interests of the child."

It seems everyone realizes that what's best for kids should guide our governmental policies and social institutions. This is because children really are our most precious resource, and government and society have a compelling interest in seeing them thrive.

It is surprising, then, that the conversation about what the definition of marriage in Minnesota should be has left many who speak up about the best interests of kids labeled as "bigots," "haters," "discriminators" and worse.

Marriage is the most prochild institution we have -- and the only institution that connects children with their parents. Through marriage, men and women come together complementarily to form one union, not only for the benefit of the couple, but also for the children who benefit from being loved and raised by their mother and father.

Marriage says to society as a whole: For every child born, there is a recognized mother and father, accountable to the child and each other. Indeed, the U.S. Supreme Court has said that marriage is "fundamental to the very existence and survival of the [human] race."

The overwhelming body of social science supports what we already understand to be true -- children do best when raised by their married mother and father. As the journal Child Trends affirms, "[R]esearch clearly demonstrates that family structure matters for children, and the family structure that helps children the most is a family headed by two biological parents in a low-conflict marriage."

Every child has a right to know and, to the extent possible, be cared for by the two people who brought them into the world. Not every marriage produces children, but every child has a mother and father. And we all have a right to live in a society that recognizes the importance of mothers and fathers for a child's well-being."

See more ads at www.StandForMarriageAmerica.com.

There’s been a strange turn of opinions about fatherhood—at least in recent public debates. Decades of research have now documented the tremendous challenges children face when they grow up without their fathers. But you would never know it by looking at some of the recent public arguments for “genderless parenting.”

So what do the decades of research on fathers say? Boys from fatherless families are twice as likely to end up in prison before age 30. Girls raised in homes without their fathers are much more likely to engage in early sexual behavior and end up pregnant as teenagers—for example, girls whose fathers left home before their daughters turned six are six times more likely to end up pregnant as teenagers. Children who grow up without married mothers and fathers are also more likely to experience depression, behavioral problems, and school expulsion.

...Canadian scholar, Andrea Doucet, has explored this question in her book Do Men Mother? Her extensive research with 118 male primary caregivers, including stay-at-home dads, led her to conclude that fathers do not “mother.” And that’s a good thing. Although mothering and fathering have much in common, there were persistent, critical differences that were important for children’s development.

To begin, fathers more often used fun and playfulness to connect with their children. No doubt, many a mother has wondered why her husband can’t seem to help himself from “tickling and tossing” their infant—while she stands beside him holding her breath in fear. And he can’t understand why all she wants to do is “coo and cuddle.” Yet as Doucet found, playfulness and fun are often critical modes of connection with children—even from infancy.

Fathers were also more likely to encourage children’s risk taking—whether on the playground, in school work, or in trying new things. While mothers typically discouraged risk-taking, fathers guided their children in deciding how much risk to take and encouraged them in it. At the same time, fathers were more attuned to developing a child’s physical, emotional, and intellectual independence—in everything from children making their own lunches and tying their own shoes to doing household chores and making academic decisions.

...Arguments for the non-essential father may reflect an effort to accept the reality that many children today grow up without their dads. But surely a more effective and compassionate approach would be to acknowledge the unique contributions of both mothers and fathers in their children’s lives, and then do what we can to ensure that becomes a reality for more children.

See all the ads playing in the four states about to decide marriage here.

"The fundamental public purpose of marriage is to provide the ideal environment for children to be raised by the people who brought them into the world, their parents. The drive to redefine marriage to accommodate the political demands of same-sex couples separates the interests of children from the purpose of marriage."

"...Stable relationships are, of course, vitally important for the well-being of children and the good of society, but simple stability is not enough. Equally important is the loving presence of both mom and dad, even as it must be acknowledged, with great pain, that in certain circumstances such an ideal is impossible. But tragic exceptions should not provoke us to ignore the basic fact that children crave and long for the presence of both a mother and a father. The marriage amendment implicitly acknowledges this fact, a claim of reason and common sense."

Dr. Kion Hoffman of Cohasset, who has practiced family medicine for 23 years, the past 19 of them in Deer River, and was an adjunct faculty member for the universities of Washington and Minnesota in the rural-training tract of family-practice residency program, reminds them about some of the findings of the new Regnerus study:

How does your methodology compare with those used in previous surveys on this topic?

This is the key area of distinction between my study and most others. Almost all studies that came before this one were small and "nonrandom." That is, we have no idea how similar most other studies' research participants are to the general population they seek to study. And with many previous studies, I think it's fair to be skeptical. For example, if you know you're participating in a small study on gay parenting and that it'll make the news and perhaps have political ramifications, I think it's fair for scholars to wonder whether such a study will yield valid, reliable data.

The NFSS, on the other hand, is much larger than most others, and is a random sample of the population of American adults ages 18–39. I focused not on their parents' sexual orientation—after all, it was a quite different era back then—but on their parents' relationship behavior. So I compared how young adults whose mothers or fathers had a same-sex relationship fared when analyzed alongside other types of arrangements, including the traditional, biologically intact married mother and father.

Value depends on scarcity. In the world of human reproduction, the most valuable entity is the fertile female—specifically, her eggs and her womb.

The fierce politics surrounding female fecundity and women’s reproductive rights rests not only on a woman’s ability to create new life, but also on the incredible amount of commitment and risk involved when her eggs and her womb are accessed for procreation. Since women are fertile for a shorter period than men, since gestation takes forty long weeks, and since labor and delivery pose life-threatening risks, young women always will face disproportionately high demands for access to their bodies. But those demands are rising in unexpected ways, and from unexpected people.

... Our gay friends and family members may now also be after our daughters’ bodies. These are the only men in the world we thought we could trust because they weren’t interested in our bodies. That is, until they grew older and discovered they wanted to be parents. Today, more and more often, gay men are using egg donors and surrogates to create motherless children on purpose.

... Proponents of redefining marriage call marriage equality “the civil rights struggle of our time.” TV shows such as The New Normal promote surrogacy arrangements with dialogue such as “a family is a family, and love is love.” Characters that criticize the use of surrogacy and egg donation are explicitly depicted as unsympathetic, racist, close-minded bigots.

What these shows (and other memes) do is insist that in order to be a friend to gay people, one must approve, or at least stay neutral toward, all forms of third-party reproduction.

So now, young women must do more than simply defend themselves against aggressive heterosexual males who want to use them for sex. They must also navigate a world filled with new, never-before-seen predators—people they thought they could trust—who aggressively target them for their eggs and their wombs.

"... in Washington State and elsewhere the terms "husband" and "wife" were made to be gender-neutral. That means can be a man can legally be called a wife and a woman can legally be a husband. That might just be a laughable oddity until you think it through. Do you want your children or grand children being taught that men can husbands and women can have wives? Traditional roles in marriage will no longer be taught because they will no longer be available. Gay activists are already at work trying to do the same thing here in Minnesota. In California and Canada, children are taught they can actually choose their own gender."

"In the marriage debate, people frequently argue that how one chooses to define marriage doesn't affect other people's definitions of marriage, and because my definition is as good as yours, it should also be promoted by society.

Many times it is stated: "What I choose to do in my marriage doesn't affect your marriage." However, same-sex marriage affects all of our marriages.

...For many of us who favor traditional marriage, marriage is about raising children in a healthy environment. Thus, any change to the definition of marriage affects our marriage. Our "traditional" marriages and the children they produce are our greatest source of happiness, and we desire that our children will live in a world that will promote their ability to make the same choices that brought us happiness.

There are many who tout the modern definition, and we are susceptible to these influences. As we listen to these influences, we change our view of marriage and our marital relationship accordingly. Same-sex marriage will only increase these influences and make it harder to promote traditional marriage.

Although not all are able to participate in a traditional marriage that yields children, we all benefit by its establishment in creating strong homes for the next generation with strong direction from self-sacrificing parents. The disestablishment of this ideal affects us all."

The draft law states that "marriage is a union of two people, of different or the same gender".

It says all references to "mothers and fathers" in the civil code – which enshrines French law – will be swapped for simply "parents".

The law would also give equal adoption rights to homosexual and heterosexual couples. -- UK Telegraph

Judith Shulevitz’ opinion piece on September 9 (“Why Fathers Really Matter”) underscores the important role that fathers play in the lives of their children. As Schulevitz explains, fathers shape their children “not just by way of genes,” but also in terms of “cognitive style,” “character,” “psychological dimensions,” and a host of other important ways. This November, the definition of marriage is on the ballot in four states (Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, and Washington). If marriage is redefined to be a genderless institution, children are the ones who would suffer. Such a paradigm shift says to children that mothers and fathers don’t matter (especially fathers) – any two “parents” will do. It proclaims the false notion that men and women are exactly the same in rearing children. And it undermines the marriage culture by making marriage a meaningless political gesture, rather than a child-affirming social contract. We urge voters to reject redefining marriage.

In a move that has taken some parents by surprise, the school department has announced that it is banning traditional "father-daughter" and "mother-son" activities, saying they violate state law.

Supt. Judith Lundsten said the move was triggered by a letter ifrom the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of a single mom who had complained that her daughter had not been able to attend her father-daughter dance.

Lundsten said school attorneys found while federal Title IX legislation banning gender discrimination gives an exemption for "father-son" and "mother-daughter" events, Rhode Island law doesn't.

MOTHERHOOD begins as a tempestuously physical experience but quickly becomes a political one. Once a woman's pregnancy goes public, the storm moves outside. Don't pile on the pounds! Your child will be obese. Don't eat too little, or your baby will be born too small. For heaven's sake, don't drink alcohol. Oh, please: you can sip some wine now and again. And no matter how many contradictory things the experts say, don't panic. Stress hormones wreak havoc on a baby's budding nervous system.

All this advice rains down on expectant mothers for the obvious reason that mothers carry babies and create the environments in which they grow. What if it turned out, though, that expectant fathers molded babies, too, and not just by way of genes?

Biology is making it clearer by the day that a man's health and well-being have a measurable impact on his future children's health and happiness. This is not because a strong, resilient man has a greater likelihood of being a fabulous dad - or not only for that reason - or because he's probably got good genes. Whether a man's genes are good or bad (and whatever "good" and "bad" mean in this context), his children's bodies and minds will reflect lifestyle choices he has made over the years, even if he made those choices long before he ever imagined himself strapping on a Baby Bjorn.

Doctors have been telling men for years that smoking, drinking and recreational drugs can lower the quality of their sperm. What doctors should probably add is that the health of unborn children can be affected by what and how much men eat; the toxins they absorb; the traumas they endure; their poverty or powerlessness; and their age at the time of conception. In other words, what a man needs to know is that his life experience leaves biological traces on his children. Even more astonishingly, those children may pass those traces along to their children. -- The New York Times

Children living in single-parent households face a greater risk of living in poverty, according to a report released Wednesday by The Heritage Foundation.

A child’s probability of living in poverty is reduced by 82 percent when his parents are married to each other, according to “Marriage: America’s Greatest Weapon Against Child Poverty.”

Author Robert Rector said the government should work harder to educate the American public about the value of marriage.

... Heritage Foundation Research Associate Rachel Sheffield told CtizenLink that young people benefit greatly by learning more about marriage.

“The government should provide information to youth about the value of marriage, and help connect them with community resources that will help them relearn the skills needed to sustain those healthy marriages,” she said.

Almost 40 percent of all single-parent families with children were poor in 2009; less than 7 percent of married couples with children were poor.

According to the report, nearly 75 percent of poor families in the United States are headed by single parents.

Can a child have three parents? If California State Senator Mark Leno has his way, children in California will be able to have three legal parents. Before we dismiss SB 1476 as another example of California Weird, we had best look into it more closely. After all, the bill has passed both houses of the California Assembly and is awaiting Governor Brown’s signature or veto.

I believe this development was inevitable, more inevitable in fact than the much-vaunted inevitability of gay marriage. Once we started trying to normalize parenting by same-sex couples and redefine marriage to remove the dual-gender requirement, we had to end up with triple-parenting.

A deeper look at the whole picture surrounding SB 1476 reveals that not only should the three-parent law fail, same-sex “marriage” should fail as well. As we will see, embedded in this bill is an appalling power-grab by the state, and a grotesque misrepresentation of the facts by the bill’s authors.

"A professor who came under attack over a critical research paper about children of gay-marriages will not be fired after being backed up by his school.

The University of Texas-Austin came to the defense of Professor Mark Regnerus after his controversial journal article was published, claiming children of same-sex parents are more likely to be on welfare or depressed than the offspring of heterosexual couples.

His work featured in the July issue of Social Science Research and prompted public outcry after gay rights advocates criticized it as being one-sided and biased.

‘The university expects the scholarly community will continue to evaluate and report on the findings of the Regnerus article and supports such discussion.’

...Rose now plans to pursue his claims with the American Sociological Association, not happy with the findings of a four-member advisory panel who trawled through Regnerus' computers and 42,000 emails before deciding to back his methodology.

'Since it's a sensitive subject that offers quite different conclusions from previous studies, it's not surprising that it has drawn critics,' he told FoxNews.com.

Regnerus’ New Family Structures Study sampled 3,000 people ages 18-39, of whom 248 said their mothers or fathers had a same-sex relationship while they were growing up.

He claimed his study was unique because of its large sample size and that previous studies 'seemed designed to conclude there are no differences between children of the two groups'."

When it comes to supporting his son's unconventional wardrobe, Nils Pickert talks the talk and walks the walk.

The German dad explains in Emma magazine that he wears women's clothes (including nail polish) to help his 5-year-old son feel good about going out in dresses and skirts.

... Pickert is not the only parent to speak up for a child whose dress preferences stand out from the norm. American mom Cheryl Kilodavis, who wrote a picture book called "My Princess Boy" about her son Dyson, went on The Today Show in January 2011 to discuss the importance of accepting children for who they are -- no matter what they wear. "Sooner or later my hope is that the world will embrace the uniqueness that is really within all of us," she told Meredith Vieira.

"Gay marriage advocates have maintained for a long time that there are no differences in outcomes for children raised by same sex parents as compared with those raised by a married mom and dad but two important new academic studies show that the no differences claim is false."

A married woman whose husband donated sperm without her knowledge is calling for clinics to be forced to ask for a wife's consent.

The unnamed mother-of-one from Surrey said she feared that children fathered with the sperm – who would be half-brothers or sisters of her son – may one day 'disrupt' the family by getting in touch.

She has written to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority calling for guidelines on sperm donation to include the spouse's views – and says the sperm should be treated as a joint 'marital asset'.

A controversial ruling in 2005 meant all children born through sperm donation – up to ten families are allowed per donor – have the right to trace their biological father when they reach adulthood.

In her heartfelt letter to the fertility watchdog, she told how her husband had donated sperm against her wishes after suffering Post Traumatic Stress Disorder following the birth of their child.

But if the children he fathers – to help infertile couples or single women – contacted her in the future, she would 'not feel able to push them away'.

The businesswoman said: 'I am personally in this situation with my husband having donated sperm against my wishes when he was suffering from PTSD.

Here are highlights from the new paper [by Mark Regnerus] (which is unfortunately not available free online, though you can find the abstract and some tables here):

Regnerus calls the audit of his study—by Darren E. Sherkat of Southern Illinois University at Carbondale—a “rather uncommon and disturbing experience in social-science research.” He writes that Sherkat “has long harbored negative sentiment about me.”

Regnerus writes that the criticism of his decision to label parents “lesbian mothers” and “gay fathers,” regardless of whether or for how long their children lived with them, is “the most reasonable criticism” made of the paper. He says that, “[i]n hindsight,” he wishes he had given them different labels. “I recognize that the acronyms LM and GF are prone to conflate sexual orientation … with same-sex relationship behavior.”

Regnerus cites a study of same-sex marriages in Norway and Sweden that found that “the divorce risk is higher in same-sex marriages” to bolster his case that same-sex relationships are less stable.

He writes that the “science here remains young” and contends that previous studies that have shown “no difference” between same-sex couples and heterosexual couples ought to have a “stronger burden of proof.”

Regnerus concludes the paper with the following sentence:

"Until much larger random samples can be drawn and evaluated, the probability-based evidence that exists—including additional NFSS [theNew Family Structures Study, Regnerus's project to study same-sex families] analyses herein—suggests that the biologically intact two-parent household remains an optimal setting for the long-term flourishing of children."

You can read the full report here (PDF).

When it comes to parenting, three's a crowd. SB 1476, the "Parent-Child Relationships" bill introduced by state senator Mark Leno, which seeks to clarify judges' ability to recognize more than two legal parents for a child, is well-intended but flawed. It has passed the senate and could reach the assembly floor this month. California legislators should not support this bill.

... And why stop at three? Senator Leno's bill places no limit on the number of possible parents. If three's a crowd, four or more is a mob.

...Prominent LGBT rights organizations have come out in support of this bill, but the issues it addresses are not limited to same-sex couples. For example, In Re M.C. would not have been different if already-pregnant Melissa had married a man. The ambiguity about who is the legal parent, the biological father or (in that case) the husband, would remain. And in either case, the court should make that decision.

Courts are dealing with complex and often tragic situations. The search for responsible adults can tempt judges into "discovering" additional parents. But the law should continue to use, and refine, more precise instruments to assist children without warping the sound "rule of two."

A judge in this small northern Ontario town has ruled that allowing a biological father access to his 22-month-old son, who is being raised by his biological mother and her lesbian partner, is not in the best interests of the child because of “the risk of there being an adverse affect to the child.”

Citing arguments that introducing the child to his father would cause the boy confusion and insecurity, Justice Norman Karam of the Ontario Superior Court in Cochrane said, “Despite the child’s young age, it is impossible to know what disclosure of [the father’s] status as his parent might mean. All circumstances considered, the risk of there being an adverse affect to the child is too great to ignore.”

Justice Karam said he considered allowing access, but imposing limitations on what the child was told about his father, but decided that, “attempting to enforce such limitations would be virtually impossible.”

... Rene deBlois, the biological father of the boy, had requested interim access to his son in January, 2011 pending the outcome of the trial scheduled for October 22, 2012. That trial will look into the paternity rights muddle created when deBlois and the boy’s lesbian mother, Nicole Lavigne, entered into a home-made written agreement that deBlois, who had known Lavigne since childhood, would provide sperm so she could artificially inseminate herself, with the understanding that he agreed to relinquish his paternity rights.

According to a National Post report, part of deBlois and Lavigne’s agreement was that Lavigne would provide deBlois with a child of his own using his sperm following the birth of the first child. deBlois alleges that Lavigne reneged on her offer to carry a second child for him because it was not part of the written “Donor Agreement” that he signed.

In his application to the court for paternity rights, filed three months after his son Tyler’s birth in October, 2010, deBlois stated that he had been coerced into signing the Donor Agreement by Lavigne, who he described as a “bully” who forced him to sign “under duress.” -- LifeSiteNews

"...In the 1930s, many prominent scientists and engineers in Germany lost their reputations, their jobs, and some eventually their lives because of a non-scientific reason: they happened to be Jews, or outspoken Christians, or simply opposed to some political aim of the government. Everyone now agrees that this was a grievous violation of human rights, an early warning sign of the greater wrongs the German government would do in World War II. While that situation differs from the one Regnerus finds himself in by degree, does it differ in kind from what Jewish scientists suffered in Germany in the 1930s?

Regnerus has reached scientific conclusions that oppose the prevailing political winds. Though his punishment has come from activists rather than official government sources, it is no less politically motivated and no less unjust. Smith thinks the integrity of the social-science research process is threatened by the “public smearing and vigilante media attacks” mounted against Regnerus. If such attacks are successful, we have taken a long step away from scientific integrity and a long step toward the encouragement of a political atmosphere that is totalitarian in its effects."

The children of same-sex couples have a tough road ahead of them--I know, because I have been there. The last thing we should do is make them feel guilty if the strain gets to them and they feel strange.

Between 1973 and 1990, when my beloved mother passed away, she and her female romantic partner raised me. They had separate houses but spent nearly all their weekends together, with me, in a trailer tucked discreetly in an RV park 50 minutes away from the town where we lived. As the youngest of my mother's biological children, I was the only child who experienced childhood without my father being around.

After my mother's partner's children had left for college, she moved into our house in town. I lived with both of them for the brief time before my mother died at the age of 53. I was 19. In other words, I was the only child who experienced life under "gay parenting" as that term is understood today.

Quite simply, growing up with gay parents was very difficult, and not because of prejudice from neighbors. People in our community didn't really know what was going on in the house. To most outside observers, I was a well-raised, high-achieving child, finishing high school with straight A's.

The author of a California bill that would forbid minors from seeking therapy to overcome unwanted feelings of same-sex attraction has admitted his intention was to undermine parental rights.

State Senator Ted Lieu wants to undercut parental rights.

“The attack on parental rights is exactly the whole point of the bill, because we don’t want to let parents harm their children,” said State Senator Ted Lieu, D-Torrance.

Senate Bill 1172 would ban anyone under 18 from receiving reparative or sexual orientation conversion therapy, even if requested by the teens or their parents. The bill would label the treatment “unprofessional conduct” and “therapeutic deception.”

The bill passed the state Senate in June. It is now being considered in the state Assembly.

After likening the therapy to allowing children to smoke cigarettes or drink alcohol, the 43-year-old Taiwanese-born legislator said, ““We have these laws to stop parents from hurting their kids. Preventive therapy hurts children, so this bill allows us to stop parents from hurting their children.”

"...So-called social justice, the impetus behind government policies like racial preferences, drives the Democratic platform. But no matter how level the proverbial playing field, individuals will always possess different levels of drive, initiative, intelligence, motivation, skill, and talent. Individuals will never have equal amounts of stuff. Equality of outcome cannot exist. We are equal where it counts in a free, pursuit-of-happiness kind of country: under the law.

One factor driving the inequality liberals claim they’re concerned about is family instability. As research and common sense have borne out, marriage benefits the whole of society, the adults who made the vows, and the products of the union — the children. An article in the New York Times making the rounds, “Two Classes, Divided by ‘I Do,’” compares and contrasts two women with several similarities and one important difference, especially where children are concerned: one has a husband and the other doesn’t.

...The largest predictor of child poverty is a single-parent household. Family instability, and not racism or bias, has created different classes of children. And since liberals are big on class warfare and social justice, they should wage war on single parenthood and make marriage — the legal union between one man and one woman — a social justice issue. In the name of human rights, strongly recommend people marry before having children. Marriage would decrease children’s risk of poverty and the social pathologies associated with growing up in a home with no father.

... The solution to reducing inequality isn’t more government, but more marriage. Although the government has no power to make people marry before having children, branding marriage a social justice issue might inspire liberals to focus less on social programs and more on that stifling, patriarchal institution called the traditional family.

"....there are some things only a child of a single-mother could tell you about single motherhood.

... Not having a father around meant I took on more student debt than I would have otherwise. It meant I would be recalled from college to do things around the house on the weekend, or I would come home just to make sure she was alright and make sure she spent time with someone. Instead of her helping me start life financially, I was helping her manage her mortgage payment, or paying for a new water-heater. I was happy to do so when I could. Though I often wondered where her actual inabilities were real, or when they were manufactured (even unconsciously) to bond me with her, even in hardships. In other single-mother households I knew, things functioned much less smoothly.

Helping her meant diminished resources for starting my own family when it came time. It also meant that there was no one else to manage things when she became sick and died last year.

My young childhood and adolescence (maybe my whole life) was wrapped up in searching for substitute father figures: uncles, neighbors, teachers, professors, priests, even God. I know I’m not alone in this. This state of life makes one especially vulnerable to peers and to predators. I survived just fine, others in similar situations don’t.

Dawn gave this interview to the Catholic World Report last month:

CWR: One thing you stress is that you didn’t observe a monogamous relationship in your home when growing up.

D.S.: "...When I was growing up, I wasn’t surrounded by average heterosexual couples. In my home there would be my father’s partners and male friends, and they would often take me along to meeting places in the GLBT community. I was just a child, but I was exposed to overt sexual activity. When I was about nine, for example, my father took me to a downtown sex shop. He said he wanted to expose me to sexuality so that I wouldn’t be prudish. There was no sense of privacy around sexuality. Sex was very public; that was part of the gay culture."

In heterosexual relationships, the birth rate rises when couples are married. One would expect similar dynamics to apply to same-sex couples. For lesbian couples, this is not a huge problem; all they need is a sperm donor. But male couples need surrogate mothers.

Where will these women come from?

Unless the law of supply and demand is repealed, the answer is: where wombs are cheapest. At the moment, this is India, where surrogate motherhood has become a $2.3 billion industry, with the enthusiastic encouragement of some state governments. A recent investigation by the London Sunday Telegraph found there were only 100 surrogacies in Britain last year, but 1000 in India for British clients. The proportion in Australia is likely to be the same.

There are no official statistics, but it appears gay couples account for a substantial chunk of the overseas market. So will the legalisation of same-sex marriage lead to even more surrogate mothers in India? BioEdge, the bioethics newsletter I edit, emailed IVF clinics in India and the US asking whether they were preparing for a rising demand for surrogate mothers.

The answer was a resounding yes.

Since his son’s birth 18 months ago, Sir Elton John has been the epitome of the proud father.

But the flamboyant star, now enjoying life as the parent of a toddler, has admitted it will be ‘heartbreaking’ for Zachary to grow up without a mother.

The singer, 65, and his civil partner David Furnish, were delighted when Zachary arrived on Christmas Day 2010.

Zachary Jackson Levon Furnish-John – to give him his full name – was born via surrogate in California and was conceived using a donor egg.

Sir Elton and Mr Furnish, 49, have made it no secret that they want to have another child, and may start trying to father a sibling for Zachary this summer.

However, in an interview, Sir Elton confessed: ‘It’s going to be heartbreaking for him to grow up and realise he hasn’t got a mummy.

The legalization of “gay marriage” in America, even on a civil level, is unjust to children and poses a threat to religious liberty, warned Bishop Salvatore J. Cordileone of Oakland, Calif.

“Marriage is the only institution we have that connects children to their mothers and fathers,” he said. “So really, the question is, do you support that institution?”

In a June interview with CNA, Bishop Cordileone, who leads the U.S. bishops’ Subcommittee for the Promotion and Defense of Marriage, explained that Church teaching against the redefinition of marriage on a civil level as well as a sacramental level is a matter of justice.

“Marriage is about fundamental justice for children,” he said. “Children do best with a mother and a father.”

... Based on sound social science, this [New Family Structures] study complements common sense and “demonstrates what we’ve always known,” Bishop Cordileone said. “Children do best with a mother and a father.”

The bishop explained that this issue is of crucial importance because “we cannot have two different definitions of marriage simultaneously in the country.”

“Only one definition of marriage can stand,” he said. “This is not expanding the right of marriage. It’s changing the definition, or taking away something is essential to marriage – that it’s the union of a man and a woman for the purpose of the binding of the two and the procreation and education of the next generation of offspring.”

State Sen. Mark Leno is pushing legislation to allow a child to have multiple parents.

"The bill brings California into the 21st century, recognizing that there are more than Ozzie and Harriet families today," the San Francisco Democrat said.

Surrogate births, same-sex parenthood and assisted reproduction are changing society by creating new possibilities for nontraditional households and relationships.

... Under Leno's bill, if three or more people who acted as parents could not agree on custody, visitation and child support, a judge could split those things up among them.

... Examples of three-parent relationships that could be affected by SB 1476 include:

• A family in which a man began dating a woman while she was pregnant, then raised that child with her for seven years. The youth also had a parental relationship with the biological father.

• A same-sex couple who asked a close male friend to help them conceive, then decided that all three would raise the child.

• A divorce in which a woman and her second husband were the legal parents of a child, but the biological father maintained close ties as well. -- The Sacramento Bee

Two studies recently published in scientific journals say that when it comes to parenting, dads really do matter to kids — and in some ways, they may have even more influence than mothers.

According to a meta-analysis of several decades’ worth of parenting studies published in Personality and Social PsychologyReview in May, kids who feel rejected by their fathers show higher rates of behavioral problems, delinquency, depression and substance abuse than those who feel rejected by their mothers. The analysis was conducted by Ronald P. Rohner, Ph.D., a professor emeritus at the University of Connecticut and director of the Ronald and Nancy Rohner Center for the Study of Interpersonal Acceptance and Rejection.

Meanwhile, a study conducted by researchers at Brigham Young University (BYU) published last week in the Journal of Early Adolescence suggests that children whose fathers use an authoritative parenting style show more persistence than others — regardless of the type of parenting style their mothers use. Persistence, in turn was linked to lower rates of delinquency and greater involvement in school.

“Behavioral problems of kids — substance abuse, depression and overall psychological adjustment of children — tends to be more linked to children’s perception of dad’s rejection than to mother’s,” Rohner said.

Same-sex marriage is one of the most contentious and vexing issues now facing our nation. It is perhaps in part for that reason that the new study on same-sex parenting by University of Texas sociology professor Mark Regnerus, which finds that young-adult children of parents who have had same-sex relationships are more likely to suffer from a range of emotional and social problems,[1] has been subject to such sustained and sensational criticism from dozens of media outlets, from the Huffington Post to the New Yorker to the New Republic. These outlets have alleged, respectively, that his research is “anti-gay,” “breathtakingly sloppy,” and “gets everything wrong.”

Although Regnerus’s article in Social Science Research is not without its limitations, as social scientists, we think much of the public criticism Regnerus has received is unwarranted for three reasons.

... We do not think that these new studies settle the nation’s ongoing debate about gay parenting, same-sex marriage, and the welfare of children. In fact, research on same-sex parenting based on nationally representative samples is still in its infancy. But we think that the Regnerus study, which is one of the first to rely on a large, random, and representative sample of children from parents who have experienced same-sex relationships, has helped to inform the ongoing scholarly and public conversation about same-sex families in America. Indeed, it is possible to interpret Regnerus’s findings as evidence for the need for legalized gay marriage, in order to support the social stability of such relationships. As social scientists, our hope is that more such studies will be forthcoming shortly, and that future journalistic coverage of such studies, and this contentious topic, will be more civil, thorough, and thoughtful than has been the coverage of the new study by Professor Mark Regnerus."

In this latest edition they are reporting that children raised by two lesbian moms do not do better if they report having a "male role model":

"...About half of the young people in the study, both boys and girls, report having a significant male role model in their life, even though they have two mothers. But there was no difference in psychological well-being between those who have such a role model and those who do not. There was also no evidence that the presence of a male role model affects traits commonly associated with gender roles or that boys require a male role model to be well-adjusted.

Previous research based on this study has found no difference in well-being between children raised in lesbian families and and those in heterosexual two-parent families. The study is confined to planned lesbian families, meaning that both partners identified as lesbian before having children. Researchers recruited participants between 1986 and 1992 and have checked in with them at various points in their lives. Most of the participants are middle-class." -- The Advocate

For children of anonymous sperm donors yearning for a connection to their biological father, the world can be an unwelcome place.

Instead of meeting compassion, many say that society treats their pain with a dismissive or even hostile attitude - a rift caused by lack of awareness as much as by the brute force of a $3.3 billion industry.

Alana, the child of a sperm donor and the activist behind AnonymousUs.org, says she realized the hard way what she was up against when she began her awareness campaign.

“I thought it would be so easy to arrive, state the obvious that children need their fathers, and everyone would be like, oh my God, thank you for reminding us!” she said in the documentary “Anonymous Father’s Day.” “But there is a huge monster of money and people desperate for children, who don’t want me to make it harder for them to buy and sell children.”

... Another hurdle, according to Alana - a women’s studies major who says she was inappropriately ridiculed as a Christian extremist because of her advocacy - is the gay and lesbian community, who see sperm donation as “the cleanest method for them to have children.” Another major demographic, she said, was “older couples with money.”

“The fact that they’re willing to spend $100,000 for a kid is—money talks, and I can’t compete with that,” she said.

Lahl said she was hopeful that the LGBT community would be won over to oppose sperm donation once they heard the stories of children conceived in this way. “If we can educate gay men on the harms of fertility drugs, on the harms of these procedures to the women that they need, and the reality of the children’s needs and children’s right to know, then I’m hopeful that we’ll win them over,” she said. --LifeSiteNews

Fewer middle-class women follow what one study calls the "success sequence" of education, work, marriage and childbearing. They may get married, but only later, and not have children. Increasingly, they are having children, but postponing the wedding.

The recession's financial stresses did nothing to slow the trend. If anything, the retreat from marriage is spreading from the least affluent Americans "into the solid middle of the middle class," according to the 2010 study, "When Marriage Disappears," by the National Marriage Project, at the University of Virginia.

Becca Bijoch, 25, feels no societal pressure to marry. "I think it's definitely different than it's ever been before, probably even in the past 10 years," said Bijoch, who works for a public relations firm in Minneapolis.

"Not feeling that pressure gives me the opportunity to focus on my career and have more great life experiences I might not be able to have if I was in a serious relationship."

...In Minnesota, almost one in three new mothers is unmarried, says the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), up from about one in four 10 years ago. Fewer than one in five are teenagers, continuing the decline in teen births. More than 42 percent are at least 25 years old.

What's going on with marriage here reflects national trends, which show an even stronger shift, with four in 10 births to unmarried women, more than double the rate in 1970, according to the NCHS. Of these births, 60 percent are to women in their 20s.

A father's love is as important to a child’s emotional development as a mother’s, a large-scale study has confirmed.

Examining the cases of more than 10,000 sons and daughters revealed how a cold or distant father can damage a child’s life, sometimes for decades to come.

The review of 36 studies from around the world concluded that his love is at least as important to youngsters as that of their mothers.

Researcher Professor Ronald Rohner said that fatherly love is key to development and hopes his findings will motivate more men to become involved in caring for their offspring.

‘In the US, Great Britain and Europe, we have assumed for the past 300 years that all children need for normal healthy development is a loving relationship with their mother,’ he said.

‘And that dads are there as support for the mother and to support the family financially but are not required for the healthy development of the children.

‘But that belief is fundamentally wrong. We have to start getting away from that idea and realise the dad’s influence is as great, and sometimes greater, than the mother’s.’

Dads are disposable. This is the story now being told in certain precincts of our culture, from the Hollywood Hills — “Women are realizing it more and more, knowing that they don't have to settle with a man just to have that child,” in the words of Jennifer Anniston — to the Ivy League — Cornell psychologist Peggy Drexler recently wrote a book, Raising Boys Without Men, that celebrated women raising children without fathers.

There is only one problem with this story: it is a myth that does not fit the facts.

Do not get me wrong. I was raised by a single mom, and I think I turned out OK, as do many children raised in fatherless homes. But as a social scientist, I can also tell you that one consistent conclusion from hundreds of studies on child well-being is this: on average, children are much more likely to thrive when they have the good fortune to be raised in a home with their own married father. -- Deseret News

A school board in Erie, Ill., is sending ripple effects nationwide after daring to listen to local parents rather than yielding to pressure from national gay activist groups.

Responding to parental concerns, the board of Erie Community Unit School District 1 voted 5-2 not to use materials from the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) in its elementary school, which goes from pre-kindergarten through fourth grade.

Now GLSEN and liberal media outlets are trying to pressure the school board to reverse course.

“[We asked the School Board to reconsider,” GLSEN said on its website. “Unfortunately, the school board won’t budge. So now we need your help.”

But local parents have a different perspective. -- CitizenLink

And kudos to the school board for resisting the ridiculous notion that there is a "gay-friendly" way to teach math:

The controversy began when a news flyer unveiled plans to introduce GLSEN’s new elementary-level “toolkit” called “Ready, Set, Respect!” The kit encourages teachers to “invite students” as young as kindergarten to “draw pictures of favorite TV or storybook characters and dress them in clothes that are different … from what they would typically wear,” such as “Cinderella in a knight’s armor” or “Spiderman wearing a magic tiara.”

It also suggests teachers incorporate examples of homosexual relationships into classroom activities, such as writing math problems including “a variety of family structures and gender-expressions. For example, ‘Rosa and her dads were at the store and wanted to buy three boxes of pasta…’ ”

The kit encourages educators to use storybooks that familiarize young children with same-sex marriage and transgender or cross-dressing behaviors. Suggested books include Uncle Bobby’s Wedding, which features two male guinea pigs who get married.

When parents objected, the school board voted to remove the materials.

Having children makes you happier.

That’s the conclusion of a team of university researchers from the U.S. and Canada, who looked at data from thousands of couples and concluded that parents are happier than non-parents.

The study flies “directly in the face of conventional opinion,” said Catholic parenting expert Ray Guarendi.

But he worried that, with its purely naturalistic approach, the study would necessarily miss the point that religious people accept and embrace childrearing as “a gift from God.”

The researchers called their report, which was the result of three separate studies, “In Defense of Parenthood: Children Are Associated With More Joy Than Misery.”

They begin by expressing popular opinion on the subject, which is that “recent scholarly and media accounts paint a portrait of unhappy parents who find remarkably little joy in taking care of their children.”

But, when the team actually surveyed the research, they found studies on both sides of the issue, says lead researcher Katherine Nelson of the University of California, Riverside.

As for their own study, which was conducted by scholars at the University of California, Stanford University and the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Nelson said, “We all got the same findings: It was a challenge to the popular view that parents were miserable. We found parents were at least as happy and often more happy.”

The oft-cited assertion that there are "no differences" in outcomes between children of same-sex parent households and those of intact biological families may not be accurate, according to a new study published today in the journal Social Science Research.

Adult children of parents who have been in same-sex relationships are different than children raised in intact biological families on a number of social, emotional and relationship measures, according to research from the University of Texas at Austin.

Among other things, they reported lower income levels, poorer mental and physical health and more troubled current romantic relationships. The study found 25 differences across 40 measures.

The research does not address why the differences exist. It doesn't predict if changing attitudes that are more accepting of same-sex relationships will mean that children growing up today with same-sex parents will one day fare better in similar analysis. It doesn't address stigma or whether the difference is not the sexual preference of the parents but rather how stable the home life was, lead investigator Mark Regnerus, associate professor of sociology at University of Texas Austin's Population Research Center, told the Deseret News.

"Nor does the study tell us that same-sex parents are necessarily bad parents," he said in a written statement. "Rather, family forms that are associated with instability or non-biological parents tend to pose risks for children as they age into adulthood."

His study does challenge long-held assertions that there are no outcome differences between children raised in intact biological families and those with same-sex parents.

The editorial board of Deseret has separately published a statement -- "In our opinion: Family structure counts".

The first is by Prof. Mark Regnerus:

Two studies released Sunday may act like brakes on popular social-science assertions that gay parents are the same as — or maybe better than — married, mother-father parents.

“The empirical claim that no notable differences exist must go,” Mark Regnerus, a sociology professor at the University of Texas at Austin, said in his study in Social Science Research.

Using a new, “gold standard” data set of nearly 3,000 randomly selected American young adults, Mr. Regnerus looked at their lives on 40 measures of social, emotional and relationship outcomes.

He found that, when compared with adults raised in married, mother-father families, adults raised by lesbian mothers had negative outcomes in 24 of 40 categories, while adults raised by gay fathers had negative outcomes in 19 categories.

Findings such as these do not support claims that there are “no differences” between gay parenting and heterosexual, married parents, said Mr. Regnerus, who helped develop the New Family Structures Study at the university.

And a second study by Prof. Loren Marks:

The second study, also in Social Science Research, takes a critical look at the basis of an oft-cited American Psychological Association (APA) report on gay parenting.

The APA brief says, “Not a single study has found children of lesbian or gay parents to be disadvantaged in any significant respect relative to children of heterosexual parents,” said Loren Marks, associate professor at the School of Human Ecology at Louisiana State University.

However, after looking at the 59 studies that undergird this assertion, “the jury is still out,” Mr. Marks said. “The lack of high-quality data leaves the most significant questions [about gay parenting] unaddressed and unanswered.”

Problems with the APA-cited studies were their tiny size; dependence on wealthy, white, well-educated lesbian mothers; and a failure to examine common outcomes for children, such as their education, employment and risks for poverty, criminality, early childbearing, substance abuse and suicide. Instead, the APA studies often looked at children’s gender-role behaviors, emotional functioning and sexual identity.

Judge Vaughn Walker ruled in his decision overturning Proposition 8 that social science had disproven the idea that children benefit from being raised by their mom and dad in a marriage. The American Psychological Association has issued a proclamation to that effect, allegedly based on a neutral study of scientific evidence.

Today in the Social Science Journal, as Charles C. W. Cooke reports over on the home page, two new studies were published that challenge these assumptions and launch us into a new phase of the scientific debate.

Professor Mark Regnerus, the author of the New Family Structures Survey project, has published a study that is not only the largest and most comprehensive, it is only the second study based on a probability sample. Scientifically this is huge.

... On 25 of 40 outcome measures, adult children who reported their mother had a same-sex romantic relationship fared poorly compared to children raised by intact biological married parents. This should surprise no one. It doesn’t mean that gay parents are bad parents. Plenty of kids raised outside of intact married families do fine. Nonetheless, this new research tends to affirm that the ideal for a child is a married mom and dad.

Major family scholars such as Paul Amato, while cautioning that this should not be conclusive for policy questions such as same-sex marriage, affirm that this is an excellent study, indeed probably the best study we have to date on gay parenting.

... I’ll write more on this later. For access to the studies and to the “comments” by significant outside scholar, go here.

“Dad” has been removed from a taxpayer-funded baby guide after a single complaint that same-sex couples were being excluded.

The Scottish NHS guide, called Ready Steady Baby, now features the word “partner” instead of “Dad”.

Critics said the health service should not be wasting money on such a change.

The pregnancy and parenthood guide, which is 220 pages long, has been given to parents for the last 14 years.

But following one complaint that the book was “not inclusive of people in same-sex relationships”, the NHS in Scotland replaced all references to “Dad”.

Norman Wells, Director of the Family Education Trust, said: “The NHS should not be squandering tax payers’ money to advance the cause of a minority interest group.”

He continued: “No matter how much effort is made to present positive images of families headed by same-sex couples, the fact remains it takes a man and a woman to create a child.”

"...The single-mother revolution has been an economic catastrophe for women. Poverty remains relatively rare among married couples with children; the U.S. census puts only 8.8% of them in that category, up from 6.7% since the start of the Great Recession. But more than 40% of single-mother families are poor, up from 37% before the downturn. In the bottom quintile of earnings, most households are single people, many of them elderly. But of the two-fifths of bottom-quintile households that are families, 83% are headed by single mothers. The Brookings Institution's Isabel Sawhill calculates that virtually all the increase in child poverty in the United States since the 1970s would vanish if parents still married at 1970 rates.

...Experts have come to believe that these are not just selection effects — that is, they don't just reflect the fact that productive men are likelier to marry. Marriage itself, it seems, encourages male productivity. One study by Donna Ginther and Madeline Zavodny examined men who'd had shotgun marriages and thus probably hadn't been planning to tie the knot. The shotgun husbands nevertheless earned more than their single peers did.

... On the other hand, those who opt for single motherhood are hurting not just themselves but their offspring. The children of single mothers are twice as likely as children growing up with both parents to drop out of high school. Those who do graduate are less likely to go to college, even if you control for household income and the mother's education. Decades of research show that kids growing up with single mothers (again, even after you allow for the obvious variables) have lower scholastic achievement from kindergarten through high school, as well as higher rates of drug and alcohol abuse, depression, behavior problems and teen pregnancy. All these factors are likely to reduce their eventual incomes at a time when what children need is more education, more training and more planning. The rise in single motherhood was ill-adapted for the economic shifts of the late 20th century.

New Mexico's highest court has ruled in a precedent-setting case that a same-sex partner of an adoptive mother has legal rights as a parent and can seek child custody.

The state Supreme Court issued its unanimous ruling Friday in the case of a woman who wanted joint custody of a child adopted by her partner during their 15-year relationship.

Shannon Minter of the National Center for Lesbian Rights said the court's ruling was very significant because the justices concluded that New Mexico's "parentage statutes must be applied in a gender neutral way to men and women equally, and regardless of a parent's sexual orientation or marital status."

The custody dispute involves Bani Chatterjee and Taya King, who adopted a 13-month-old girl from Russia in 2000. The couple separated in 2008. -- The Associated Press

"...Twenty years later, Quayle’s words seem less controversial than prophetic. The number of single parents in America has increased dramatically: The proportion of children born outside marriage has risen from roughly 30 percent in 1992 to 41 percent in 2009. For women under age 30, more than half of babies are born out of wedlock. A lifestyle once associated with poverty has become mainstream. The only group of parents for whom marriage continues to be the norm is the college-educated.

Some argue that these changes are benign. Many children who in the past would have had two married parents could have two cohabiting parents instead. Why should the lack of a legal or religious tie affect anyone’s well-being?

There are three reasons to be concerned about this dramatic shift in family life.

... in the end, Dan Quayle was right. Unless the media, parents and other influential leaders celebrate marriage as the best environment for raising children, the new trend — bringing up baby alone — may be irreversible."

Legalising same-sex marriage would "legitimise and encourage" the existence of fatherless or motherless children, according to a report.

A Free Church of Scotland study panel examined the issues surrounding marriage, divorce and remarriage.

The study comes as responses to the Scottish Government's consultation on gay marriage are evaluated.

Referring to same-sex couples, the Free Church report said: "By getting the right to marry, they get more respectability for bringing up children (they already have the right to foster and adopt).

"This is a huge social experiment in which the guinea pigs are children. That is not fair or just to children and does not safeguard their rights. It is really being pushed in a doctrinaire way by the gay lobby without any consideration of the harm that it will do."

The church said that civil partnerships already give same-sex couples the same legal rights as marriage, and therefore there is no need to introduce same-sex marriage.

"...My personal experience deeply affects my opinion on the proposed amendment. I grew up on a farm in southeastern Minnesota. If I was not in school or playing basketball, you would have found me doing livestock chores, hauling grain, baling hay or plowing the field.

I shared in this labor with my family, but most closely with my father, who was my role model. In fact, I was fortunate to spend a good amount of time with both parents on a daily basis. I was also raised Roman Catholic and willingly attended Mass every Sunday with my entire family. But none of these facts was as crucial to my development as this one: the marriage of my father and mother.

... One does not need to be Catholic, or follow any religion whatsoever, to understand why true marriage is, and always has been, between one man and one woman for the good of children and thus the whole of society. What is marriage, objectively speaking? My response will particularly keep in mind children. Children are most at risk if not protected by marriage and are the very hope of a stable and thriving society in the future.

... If marriage is redefined, fatherhood becomes no longer essential or even important. When marriage is no longer exceptional, the costs are high, and the children pay the price.

The implications of not accepting the marriage amendment would affect everyone legally and possibly result in a further loss of basic constitutional freedoms. The true definition of marriage, as it has always been implied, would be changed. Since the state has now given us the choice to define marriage as it is already understood, it is our duty and privilege as citizens to vote yes for the amendment. -- Minnesota Public Radio

HRC also gave 10 reasons for why they think Moms should unite against NOM, but I'd like to give you just the personal reason I support NOM: Because I am so grateful to have been raised by mom and know from that experience how she loves me the way only a mom can.

Gay marriage -- and HRC -- deny that a mother's love is unique and special. Why on earth would moms, who know how much their kids need them, want to support an organization like HRC which is dedicated to the idea that moms are replaceable and dispensable. Talk about a paradox.

Anyway, a very happy belated mother's day to all the moms across America -- especially the 500,000 or so moms (by my rough guess) who voted to protect marriage between a man and a woman last week in North Carolina! You rock!

A gay couple in London is reportedly “devastated” after an alleged in vitro fertilization mix-up left them with two children from different racial backgrounds, NewsCore reported.

The couple said the allegedly botched treatment only came to light recently after their second child was born; they had wanted to use the same sperm donor again so their children would be genetically related.

“The damage to the [younger] child in the future, to both the siblings and the family unit could be quite catastrophic,” said Caron Heyes, the couple’s lawyer.

An organization in British Columbia that champions the natural family, parental rights, and the sanctity of life has filed a human rights complaint against the Vancouver School Board (VSB) for using in its meetings, policies, and schools what the group calls “hateful, defamatory, and demeaning terminology.”

Culture Guard filed the complaint with the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal last Wednesday claiming that the school board’s use of the terms “homophobe, homophobic, and homophobia” is “offensive” and discriminates against beliefs and values held by certain groups.

“Such terms are designed to promote hatred and contempt,” stated Culture Guard president Kari Simpson in a press release. “They are used to isolate, marginalize, and belittle individuals and groups that hold opinions at variance to those of the sex activists within the education establishment.”

Simpson told LifeSiteNews that the complaint was filed not only on her own behalf but on behalf of Chinese Christians residing in Vancouver who, according to Simpson, were verbally assaulted when they raised concerns over the ‘anti-homophobia’ policies that were being enacted in their school district.

A single woman’s decision to conceive a child with the help of an ex-boyfriend has led to a chaotic court battle over who possesses parental rights over the child, after the mother died from cancer.

The unmarried Montreal woman, 36, whose identity is subject to a publication ban by court order, desired to raise offspring a few years ago, reported the National Post. The woman reportedly explored the option of using the services of a fertility clinic that would artificially inseminate her with sperm from an anonymous donor. But when the expensive procedure proved beyond the woman’s budget, she turned to her ex-boyfriend and employed his services to help make a baby.

The woman reportedly paid the ex-boyfriend $1400 for what she considered to be a sperm donation, a service that he rendered to her through sexual intercourse. The woman considered herself a single mom, but allowed the father of the child to visit his daughter occasionally.

Three years after the child’s birth, the mother succumbed to cancer and left her young daughter in the legal care of grandparents. -- LifeSiteNews

She's revered as a trail-blazing feminist and author Alice Walker touched the lives of a generation of women. A champion of women's rights, she has always argued that motherhood is a form of servitude. But one woman didn't buy in to Alice's beliefs - her daughter, Rebecca, 38.

Here the writer describes what it was like to grow up as the daughter of a cultural icon, and why she feels so blessed to be the sort of woman 64-year-old Alice despises - a mother.

The other day I was vacuuming when my son came bounding into the room. 'Mummy, Mummy, let me help,' he cried. His little hands were grabbing me around the knees and his huge brown eyes were looking up at me. I was overwhelmed by a huge surge of happiness.

I love the way his head nestles in the crook of my neck. I love the way his face falls into a mask of eager concentration when I help him learn the alphabet. But most of all, I simply love hearing his little voice calling: 'Mummy, Mummy.'

It reminds me of just how blessed I am. The truth is that I very nearly missed out on becoming a mother - thanks to being brought up by a rabid feminist who thought motherhood was about the worst thing that could happen to a woman.

You see, my mum taught me that children enslave women. I grew up believing that children are millstones around your neck, and the idea that motherhood can make you blissfully happy is a complete fairytale.

In fact, having a child has been the most rewarding experience of my life. Far from 'enslaving' me, three-and-a-half-year-old Tenzin has opened my world. My only regret is that I discovered the joys of motherhood so late - I have been trying for a second child for two years, but so far with no luck.

I was raised to believe that women need men like a fish needs a bicycle. But I strongly feel children need two parents and the thought of raising Tenzin without my partner, Glen, 52, would be terrifying.

"We tend to shy away from books that center around a mom character. No, we are not trying to shield Simone from the fact that she has two dads rather than a mom and a dad. But when reading to her at such an early age, we'd rather focus on stories that reinforce the bond between a father and child. She sees plenty of mom figures on TV and in her real life already. Reading time is daddy time."

Hmm, how will these parents' ambivalent/avoidant attitudes towards mothers shape their daughters sense of her own impending motherhood? Check back in 20 years. We really can't say. But it would probably help if these guys, who've chosen a life in which their child will not have a mom, had a little sensitivity to filling in for what might be lacking.

Some day we will get some good data on what happens to girls and boys raised without mothers. Until then we suppose these guys are trying to do their best. But really, did it ever occur to them: your daughter is not going to grow up to be a Dad? And that reading time is not just daddy time.

"...Girls who grow up in father-absent homes are more likely, as teenagers, to become pregnant. In that case, they're likely to be single mothers who raise their children in father-absent homes, perpetuating and compounding the original problem. And the wheel keeps on turnin'.

Name the problem and it's almost a certainty that kids from father-absent homes are significantly more at risk for it. Even though the above litany was meant to be mind-boggling, consider that I had to be selective. Newspapers don't give me enough space to do more than scratch the surface.

But here's something that's not often talked about: Children of unmarried, cohabiting parents are at higher risk for most of these same problems as well. That means the real problem isn't so much the absence of a father in the life of a child; it's the absence of a husband. More specifically, it's the absence of a marriage..."

"Equality does not mean sameness. Kyle Pruett, M.D. says 'Fathers do not mother' and 'fatherhood [is] a complex and unique phenomenon with huge consequences for the emotional and intellectual growth for children.'"

Boys will be boys — but can they be raised to be men by single mothers?

That was the topic on everyone’s minds last Saturday afternoon at the Black Spectrum Theatre, where a debate, hosted by Councilman James Sanders Jr. (D-Laurelton) as part of a salute to Women’s History Month, at times worked the audience of more than 100 vested individuals into a near frenzy of emotions.

The time restrictions were not always observed, the panelists didn’t necessarily speak in turn, and the audience was talking back long before the public participation segment began, but the debate did what Sanders said it set out to accomplish: it educated, motivated and sent the spectators home with plenty of food for thought.

... According to Sanders, the debate was designed to “make us think about our children, our families and the structure of our society. What has happened to the positive male influence, and what happens to our sons if they don’t have one?”

... “There’s a lot going on in our community. Women are left with the burden of raising children,” he said.

The six panelists, representing a wide range of backgrounds, were divided into two even groups, based on their response to the debate’s premise, “Single mothers can’t raise boys to be men.” One side agreed, the other did not.

... Dr. Amandia Speakes-Lewis, a behavioral health consultant, indicated that many women “may not be single by choice.” Married and with two sons, she spoke of the existence of a “circle of love” that encompasses the extended families that often play important roles in a young man’s life.

A BRITISH scientist may have fathered 600 children after making donations to a fertility programme he ran with his wife.

And one of his biological children has suggested the number may even be as high as ONE THOUSAND.

Bertold Wiesner - who was born in Austria - ran the Barton Clinic in London which helped more than 1,500 women conceive.

Barry Stevens, a film-maker from Canada, was concieved using Wiesner's donated sperm and said the number could be much higher.

He said last night: "He was the one that found the donors so it's possible he didn't tell his wife and she believed the donations were coming from a lot of different men."

Wiesner ran the controversial clinic with his wife Mary - until he died in 1972. Research shows he regularly made donations from the early 1940s until the mid-1960s.

... Last year it emerged that one anonymous American sperm donor had fathered more than 150 children.

LifeSiteNews

The protest against the inclusion of the Alberta Human Rights Act in Section 16 of the province’s proposed new Education Act (Bill 2) is escalating, with over 2000 attending a peaceful protest at the Alberta Legislature on Monday, March 19.

Paul Faris, president of the Home School Legal Defense Association, attended the protest and told LifeSiteNews that the rally was “a huge success.”

“With at least 2100 people attending, this rally was amongst the largest in Alberta history,” Faris said.

... Faris observed that “it wasn’t just homeschoolers there, but lots of private, Catholic and public schoolers, so it’s becoming a very broad-based movement of parents who are concerned that the government is taking away their freedom in education.”

The focal point of the protest is the possibility that home and private schools that teach the precepts of their faith could be prosecuted by human rights tribunals for “hate crimes” under the Alberta Human Rights Act (AHRA). The AHRA has been used in the past to prosecute conservatives and Christians, most notably pastor Steve Boissoin, who was found “guilty” by a tribunal of “hate speech” against homosexuals after he published a letter to the editor in a local newspaper. That conviction was subsequently overturned by the court system.