How successful are same sex couple as parents

The long ingrained belief that both male and female parents are needed to bring up a child is kind of altered by the recent research which equates the children brought up by gay parents to those brought up by opposite sex parents. All the leading psychologists and Sociologists opine that the quality of parenting is far more important than the gender of parents. The role of a parent has an impact with a larger magnitude. rnAbbie Goldberg, a psychologist at Clark University in Massachusetts says, “Gay parents tend to be more motivated, more committed than heterosexual parents on average because they chose to be parents.” Goldberg also opines, “Gays and Lesbians rarely become parents by accident, compared with an almost fifty percent accidental pregnancy rate among heterosexuals. That translates to greater commitment and deeper involvement.” A research also reveals that kids of gay parents are more open minded, mentally healthy, tolerant and role models in compared to those belonging to traditional parents. A leading Sociologist, Biblarz says, “Children being raised by same gender parents seem to be doing just fine in the areas like self-esteem, school performance, social adjustment and soon.” Lisa Strohchein of the University of Alberta in Canada says “apart from gender roles, parenting also depends upon other factors like kind of family, marital status of the parents, biogenetic relationship of the parents to the child.” Some people also cite examples when two women chose to be parents of a child willingly and prove them to be better than heterosexual parents. It is a known fact that gays and lesbians will adopt children to enjoy the parenthood. Evan B. Donaldson Adoption released a report in October 2011, which shows that about 10% of the children adopted by gays and lesbians were older than 6 which are considered to be a difficult period for adopting them. About 25% of the adopted children were more than 3 years of age. About two third of the gays and lesbian parents adopted across the races. They preferred minority children for parenting. The report also shows that these parents adopted a huge percentage of children with special needs. Hence, this kind of parenting has surely brought a smile to the faces that were never wanted by the world. Even the biological children to these parents are no less than any other child in all the social parameters. They perform same or even greater in some areas which are to everyone’s surprise breaking the myth of “same sex parenting.” In today’s world where every old concept seems to be replaced by newer ones even the “concept of parenting” has also changed. There was a time when “heterosexual parenting” was synonym with “normal and right kind of parenting.” In the modern era the concept has been revolutionized with the changing equations of relationships. Where commitment was only a concept between a man and a woman, now even two men or two women are committed to each other. With this commitment comes the concept of “heterosexual parenting.”