Parenting
Gay Parents Are Nurturing Parents
By ANN PATTERSON
Mar 30, 2008

Recently-reported research done over several years documents that same-gender couples are more nurturing of their children that opposite-gender couples are.

1. Because they share household chores and time with children equally on purpose, the children with same-gender parents receive more nurturing from each of their 2 parents. Their parents purposely make time for one or the other or both of them to spend quality time with their children.

2. Same-gender couples' different way of settling their differences by keeping their voices calm with each other while resolving arguments civilly and quickly, promotes an environment that is less disturbing and frustrating and fearful than those of the majority of opposite-couple home environments. The children are both modeled a calm way to settle their own arguments and are taught the better way by their parents.

3. Self-gender parents teach the children by their actions of tenderness, affection that include holding hands, hugs and kisses and loving words far more often, thereby showing by their lives and actions that the parents love each other; at the same time, they show more affection in hugs, kisses, pats on head and shoulder, holding hands, with the children more often and continuously through the children's baby to adulthood, than do opposite-gender parents.

The negative harassment and heckling by students at school create emotional hardships for the children of same-gender parents who love their parents and are saddened by the bullying received at school. That does not change the child's love for parents. The children are not of their loving parents in spite of the various forms of bullying received at school

In her book, LESBIAN AND GAY FAMILIES SPEAK OUT, Dr. Jane Levy Drucker, studied parents and families, including written interviews by the children who ranged in age from young children to adulthood. She wrote: "It is striking to me that the ONLY TRUE SOURCE OF PAIN for children of homosexual parents STEMS FROM THE INTORLANCE OF OUTSIDERS.

Dr. Drucker describes the responses from the children in their own words prove that their nurturing was positive in their same-gender homes. Yes, some of them mentioned that "I wish I knew my father" if they did not know him; but, remember that lots and lots of children with non-gay or lesbian parents, do not know their fathers AND thousands of adults today had fathers who never attempted to know them. At the same time, they loved and appreciated the home that their single moms provided for them. There needs to be research among the two groups just mentioned, both gay and straight, to find out how father's and sometimes, mother's abandonment still affects them as adults. That affect will surely depend on the kind of secure and loving home that the children experienced without the absence parent.

The heterosexual stereotyping of same-gender parented families are wrong...they continually say that 'homosexual parents will teach their children to be homosexual"....they are so wrong. One example, which represents other children with same-gender parents quoted verbatim by Dr. Drucker, wrote:

'MY PARENTS, 2 LESBIANS, HAS SHOWN ME THAT THERE ARE DIFFERENT PATHS TO SEXUALITY, AND THEY ARE WONDERFUL! AS I BECAME OLDER, I FOUND THAT I HAD SEXUAL FEELINGS FOR GIRLS, NOT BOYS. I'M NOW A 20 YEAR OLD MAN. I AM STRAIGHT. SO, IN MY PERSONAL EXPERIENCE, I FOUND MY OWN SEXUAL PATH KNOWING ALL THE OTHER OPTIONS WERE THERE, AND THEY ARE ALL FINE AND DANDY."

If the research continues the current trend, it will be clearly known that homosexual parents create a more nurturing and positive environment that heterosexual parents create.