Gay parenting on the rise globally

MUMBAI: A family, traditionally, has meant man, woman and child. Not any more, as children raised by gay and lesbian couples are on the rise internationally.

As per one rough estimate, between one and six million children in the United States are raised by same-sex couples.

Laws differ from country to country and even state to state. In the US, Florida is the only state that bans anyone who is a "homosexual" from adopting a child. Utah does that indirectly by restraining unmarried couples from adopting. Washington DC and 11 states, including California, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Nevada, New York, New Jersey and Vermont explicitly state that sexual orientation cannot prevent gays and lesbians from adopting.

According to activists, some of the first same-sex adoptions in the 1980s were by lesbian couples when assisted artificial reproduction techniques helped women conceive.

By the 1990s, even gay couples started adopting a child or taking on the responsibility of a foster parent. The 2000 US Census reported that 34% of female same-sex households and 22% of male same-sex families include a child below the age of 18.

While the gay rights group Lambda Legal Defense Fund estimates 6 million to 10 million gay parents are caring for 6 million to 14 million children, a more conservative report in March 2007 by the Urban Institute and the Williams Institute at University of California at Los Angeles School of Law says that 65,000 adopted children are being raised by same-sex parents in the United States.
 Across Europe, in the United Kingdom, Netherlands and Sweden same-sex couples have been given the right to adopt a child. Australia, Canada, South Africa and Israel are some of the other countries to allow it.

While fundamentalists' groups have been opposed to allowing same-sex couples from adopting and caring for children, research since 1984 has supported such adoptions.

The medical fraternity in the US has also been forthcoming with its support for lesbian and gay couples. The American Psychological Association in its Resolution on Sexual Orientation, Parents, and Children in July 2004, said, "There is no scientific evidence that parenting effectiveness is related to parental sexual orientation... lesbian and gay parents are as likely as heterosexual parents to provide supportive and healthy environments for their children."

A study of 100 heterosexual couples and 100 lesbian couples published by the University of Amsterdam in mid-2007 revealed that children raised by lesbian couples do not differ in well-being or child adjustment compared with their counterparts in heterosexual-parent families.

This found resonance in about 15 studies on more than 500 children adopted by same-sex couples in the US found no differences in intelligence, type or prevalence of psychiatric disorders, self-esteem, well-being, peer relationships See Gay parenting on the rise globally
Times of India, India