New study finds zero percent child abuse rate in lesbian households

[Homo Novus]

Read full story here.

First of all... Take THAT, anti-gays of the world. Second of all, what are everyone's thoughts on this? Why do you guys think there was a ZERO percent child abuse rate when confronting children raised by lesbians, compared to 26% in hetero homes?

[Charni]

That's awesome for us girls! I wonder if it's the same with gay male parents?

[dreamcatcher]

It isn't really 0%. This isn't an accurate statement about lesbians as parents considering that they only sampled 78 people, which is nowhere near a large enough sample size. In fact, I knew someone who had a lesbian mother that was an alcoholic and abusive so if there's even one, then it's definitely not 0%.

I think one reason why this study may have produced 0% is that the scientists in this study probably took lesbian couples who were financially well off and planned to have children. If you planned to have your children (aka you actually want them!) and are prepared for it financially/emotionally, then you are definitely less likely to abuse your kids. A lot of heterosexuals don't exactly plan having their kids which can in some cases lead to resentment. It can also lead to abuse if the child is unwanted or if the couples were having trouble in the first place (This of course is me theorizing... I'm not certain of any of this)

[Charni]

I couldn't read the details because my school laptop blocks a heap of websites. I can't wait to get my own.

[Ridiculous]

Originally Posted by dreamcatcher

I think one reason why this study may have produced 0% is that the scientists in this study probably took lesbian couples who were financially well off and planned to have children. If you planned to have your children (aka you actually want them!) and are prepared for it financially/emotionally, then you are definitely less likely to abuse your kids. A lot of heterosexuals don't exactly plan having their kids which can in some cases lead to resentment. It can also lead to abuse if the child is unwanted or if the couples were having trouble in the first place (This of course is me theorizing... I'm not certain of any of this)

I agree. If a homosexual couple has a child then pretty much the only way they could have gotten that child was through significant planning beforehand, meaning they'll be entirely prepared for it. (Of course some gay couples do have children from past, heterosexual partners but I think that is pretty rare)

Adoption processes pretty much mean that the adoptive parents will be very near perfect, or else they won't get the child. I'm not sure what legal processes you have to go through for sperm donars/surrogacy but I assume there's something similar in place to screen the parents beforehand.

Meanwhile for heterosexuals, all you need is two people of the opposite sex that are atleast 14 years old or so, so the statistics are obviously going to show them as being worse parents on average.

[Raug]

Same goes in my house. Except. Mental abuse is the weapon of choice in my family.

[midwestgirl89]

I doubt there is any group that has 0% abuse rate. It may be lower, but probably not 0%. Maybe the lower rate really does have to do with the planning aspect of having kids within lesbian relationships. I'm sure gay male parents probably also have lower abuse rates than heterosexual couples because LGBT people have to plan if they're in a same-sex relationship. But I do think there are instances of abuse in all types of relationships.

I think they should make the sample size larger and make sure it is representative for all different factors like income, education level, age, etc.

[Aareon]

I still find this extreamly hard to believe. Ive seen many families in my area and the only form of punishing is either a bamboo stick to your buttocks or a slap in the butt. It maybe because we're Asian and we've been taught that hitting is the only way to teach them it's the wrong thing. Even I have been physicaly abused but it's stopped about 8 yeas old. I can't imagine it but good on those families.

[Revan]

This I feel just isn't accurate namely due to lack of a proper sample size.

[Hexagon]

I've seen studies on this of a bigger size, but it was a number of years ago so I'm afraid I can't provide a link. This is fairly inline with what I would expect, but I think there will always be a small amount of abuse in whatever category. Just much, much less.

[seeksanctuary]

I... am not trying to be mean when I say this, but most of the abusive parents I know in my social group are the mothers. (As in, out of about five friends, at least three friends have abusive mothers.) I find it very, very difficult to believe that lesbian households have a 0% abuse rate. Women are just as likely to be violent as men, and I find often tend more towards the verbally and emotionally abusive angle than men, which is often much harder to catch as it doesn't exactly leave physical wounds. :/

Maybe the women weren't physically violent. Doesn't mean they weren't abusive. I bet if they secretly recorded home footage/audio from every family in that study, I could find SOMETHING that would be abusive. And sorry, but any abuse is still abuse.

[Ridiculous]

Originally Posted by seeksanctuary

Maybe the women weren't physically violent. Doesn't mean they weren't abusive. I bet if they secretly recorded home footage/audio from every family in that study, I could find SOMETHING that would be abusive. And sorry, but any abuse is still abuse.

Well I would assume that those conducting the study would have used the same methodology for determining abuse as they would for children in non-lesbian households. So if the results show less abuse.. then there is less abuse. I wouldn't be surprised if some things slipped through as you said, but then they would slip through in the non-lesbian studies too. So the comparison still stands.

[mnguy]

I agree that the study of 78 kids is a small sample size, but the results are valid that abuse in lesbian led families is extremely low, and that's great news. I would bet my life savings on similar results from a study of gay men in LTR who decide to have kid(s) together. I'd consider a lesbian led family as one where two women are living together, married or as close as possible, and decided to have kid(s) together. It could include kids from a previous relathionship as well, but I thought (and possibly wrongly) that the study would be of couples in a serious LTR who then decided to have kid(s). I don't think a woman who got pregnant from a guy, is raising the kid by herself and is abusive, and then at some point she comes out as a lesbian is the type of family they were studying.

Gay couples really are the best people for raising kids. I hope this gets advertised wide and LOUD. Take that pro-discrimination morons!

[RebelD]

I actually came across this specific subject in my studies. There is an extremely low child abuse rate and even spouse abuse rate in lesbian couples. The main reason is that women are by nature caring and nurturing. In a lesbian relationship you double that and negative behavior is almost discouraged. Well, that is what the text books say.

[J Snow]

I know two lesbian couples with children, and both of them have pretty neglectful (and I would even say abusive) homes. Granted they were both very low income homes, and I think it was sadly more a result of that then anything.

[Sheyceli]

I also agree that the sample size was not nearly big enough. I actually lived next door to a lesbian woman for a while, who was quite neglectful to her daughter. While it is believeable that there is less abuse in one environment than the other, it is definitely never zero percent anywhere.

[mnguy]

Ok, so we all agree that the headline should not say zero. Would we be happy if it said 0.05% or 0.1% or 1%? The point is that abuse is way lower than in hetero households yet the pro-discrimination side keeps repeating the lie that kids are best raised by hetero parents. Sure, some gay people are going to be shitty parents, but the chances are really good that gay people who want to be parents, and go through all the work and time and cost to have a kid, they're not going to abuse their kids. As for the lesbian moms who had their kids with a guy when they were too afraid to come out or didn't yet realize they were gay, I don't think they're who this study was about.

For those of you who know these lesbian moms, I'm curious how these children came about. I find it hard to believe that a low income lesbian couple has the financial means to adopt kids or undergo AI. Regardless of how the kids came about, I feel bad for any kid that's neglected and even worse if they're abused. It really breaks my heart.

[J Snow]

Originally Posted by mnguy

Ok, so we all agree that the headline should not say zero. Would we be happy if it said 0.05% or 0.1% or 1%? The point is that abuse is way lower than in hetero households yet the pro-discrimination side keeps repeating the lie that kids are best raised by hetero parents. Sure, some gay people are going to be shitty parents, but the chances are really good that gay people who want to be parents, and go through all the work and time and cost to have a kid, they're not going to abuse their kids. As for the lesbian moms who had their kids with a guy when they were too afraid to come out or didn't yet realize they were gay, I don't think they're who this study was about.

For those of you who know these lesbian moms, I'm curious how these children came about. I find it hard to believe that a low income lesbian couple has the financial means to adopt kids or undergo AI. Regardless of how the kids came about, I feel bad for any kid that's neglected and even worse if they're abused. It really breaks my heart.

The ones I know of came about from previous with sex with men. I know one of the couple's, the mother of the three (well four, one of the children unfortunately passed while under the care of a sitter. The babysitter fell asleep and rolled over on top of the infant. Very sad) actually had some of those kids while they were together, so obviously she was cheating on the other with men. She no longer has her children, which I think is a good thing.

I do agree that gay couple who adopt have less abuse rates than heterosexuals just because they are largely higher income households and lack the chance of having an "accident" child.

Would we be happy if it said 0.05% or 0.1% or 1%?

Only if there was data to suggest that was true. We can't just make up statistics. The sample size was far too small to get anything out of. I would assume a heterosexual study of that size could easily show no signs of abuse. That doesn't mean there is no abuse among heterosexual couples.

[Ridiculous]

Originally Posted by J Snow

Only if there was data to suggest that was true. We can't just make up statistics. The sample size was far too small to get anything out of. I would assume a heterosexual study of that size could easily show no signs of abuse. That doesn't mean there is no abuse among heterosexual couples.

I don't know, I think this sample size isn't too bad when you compare it to the total population size. I mean, 78 lesbian parents is reasonable when you consider that the total number of lesbian parents that exist is probably only about 100,000 or so (I don't know the actual number, but it'll work for demonstration). 78 is about 0.1% of the total population.

Obviously if you took 78 heterosexual parents then it wouldn't be a good representation simply because 78 out of 500 million is minuscule (again, don't know the actual number of heterosexual couples but I think 500m is a good guess). In this case it would only be 0.00002% of the total population. To get the same representation as this study for the heterosexual population, they would need to study 500,000 households.

Therefore I would say the results from this study are valid. Obviously you can't really say, from any study of anything, that there is a 0% occurrence of something unless you physically study every individual, but I think it is pretty obvious that the rate of abuse in lesbian households is much less than that of heterosexual households.

[electrolicious]

Originally Posted by dreamcatcher

It isn't really 0%. This isn't an accurate statement about lesbians as parents considering that they only sampled 78 people, which is nowhere near a large enough sample size. In fact, I knew someone who had a lesbian mother that was an alcoholic and abusive so if there's even one, then it's definitely not 0%.

I think one reason why this study may have produced 0% is that the scientists in this study probably took lesbian couples who were financially well off and planned to have children. If you planned to have your children (aka you actually want them!) and are prepared for it financially/emotionally, then you are definitely less likely to abuse your kids. A lot of heterosexuals don't exactly plan having their kids which can in some cases lead to resentment. It can also lead to abuse if the child is unwanted or if the couples were having trouble in the first place (This of course is me theorizing... I'm not certain of any of this)

I tend to agree with this. Besides small sample size, I'm pretty sure that expectation bias may have been a factor as well.