From CNN:
A nearly 25-year study concluded that children raised in lesbian households were psychologically well-adjusted and had fewer behavioral problems than their peers.The study, published Monday in the journal Pediatrics, followed 78 lesbian couples who conceived through sperm donations and assessed their children's well-being through a series of questionnaires and interviews.
Funding for the research came from several lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender advocacy groups, such as the Gill Foundation and the Lesbian Health Fund from the Gay Lesbian Medical Association.
Gartrell started the study in 1986. She recruited subjects through announcements in bookstores, lesbian events and newspapers throughout metro Boston, Massachusetts; San Francisco, California, and Washington. ...
This data was compared with data from children of nonlesbian families.
I presume that a control group wasn't recruited from heterosexuals under the same conditions, but data was just copied from, say, somebody else's nationally representative data.
Okay, so the lesbian mothers were recruited in three of the best educated, most upscale cities in the country at, among other places, bookstores. (I spend a lot of time in bookstores, and the children who come in with their moms look exceedingly well adjusted.) The biological fathers were eugenically chosen in cold blood by the mothers to produce ideal children (i.e., the fathers were less likely to be sexy bad boys than in heterosexual unions).
I'm shocked, shocked that a study like this would come up with these findings.
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45 comments:
So many lesbians don't decide they are until middle age. It would be cool to compare the eugenic children to the poor-taste-in-men children. One could probably do it for children of the same women.
I wouldn't take the punctuation in this bogus study at face value. This is typical feminist "research" in which all the rigorous standards are thrown out the window and the analysis is written conclusion first. For Christ's sake, we've been dealing with modern pseudoscience since at least Freud and we still haven't a clue how to respond to it. This one doesn't pass the laugh test.
Well, being raised by a Lesbian couple is probably less damaging in the long term than being raised by, say, obese parents.
Over to Onestdv:
http://onestdv.blogspot.com/2010/06/fat-people-and-class.html
If (for whatever reason) these elite lesbians are having kids who are functional and reasonably intelligent, then it is a good thing for everyone that they are having the kids.
But, as you point out, the study is flawed. It is a nice example of a voluntary, non-random sample producing (probably) biased results. I wouldn't want to use this as an example in my statistics class, though, because it would be politically incorrect to criticize the study. Most students are not capable of understanding that criticising the design of the study is just that, criticizing the design, and saying the results are not necessarily true, is NOT:
-criticizing lesbians
-asserting that children of lesbians are more dysfunctional than children of straight people
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
Unfortunately, the dysgenic effects of political correctness will far outweigh the eugenic effects.
On a related note, dysgenics is not recognized by the spellchecker but eugenics is.
One of the great things about being gay is the opportunity to practice eugenics with your offspring. Mine will all be tall, beautiful, intelligent and 100 percent Italian!
Bias/garbage in, desired conclusion/garbage out. I too am "shocked, shocked that a study like this would come up with these findings." But, as someone noted, it seems that even a semblance of scientific integrity is missing from much of academia these days. What's the Orwell quote, something about "In a time of universal deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act." Therefore, this study is the opposite of revolutionary (i.e, it is conventional), but marketed as new information. What a truly Orwellian world we now live in.
I'm shocked, shocked that _________ is a reference to Casablanca, the possibly homosexual lately-moral french police chief plaid by CLuade rains.
Shocked! shocked!
While lesbianism apparently was not involved, this sad but fascinating piece from New York magazine about eugenics gone wrong hits most of the Sailerian nerves, including delayed fertility, hypergamy, and the overclocked Jewish brain.
"Mine will all be tall, beautiful, intelligent and 100 percent Italian!"
And straight.
The pdf of the academic publication is here:
http://www.nllfs.org/publications/pdf/peds.2009-3153v1.pdf
The children of lesbian parents were indeed compared to "an age-matched normative sample of American teenagers" (p. 2).
Table 1 indicates that the socioeconomic status of the parents in the comparison group was higher.
"How can their kids turn out normal being forced to listen to all that dyke-y folk music growing up?"
Hey! Leave me the heck out of this! I was playing pretty good music before people knew I was a lesbian.
"We were playing some pretty good music before people knew we were lesbians"
Emily, who's this "we", Kemosabe? I knew you were a lesbian before you did yourself. I made you a lesbian! You should have learned to play the 12-string like I told you, and quit with all the minor chords. We shouldn't have let that Michael Stipe sing his whiny back-up either.
You want real dykified music, people, I'll show you some diked-up music that treats you right! ("feed us some hungry reggae, you'll love it twice... the girls don't seem to care, tonight, as long as the music's right....
"Frequency Modulation, no static at all."
I'm prepared to believe these kids are in fact well-adjusted by SWPL standards- i.e. they are well-behaved, test great on the SAT, and are fully capable of assuming their intended role as producer-consumers in our great post-modern national economy.
What HDB nerds, with their fetishistic attention to IQ, fail to notice, though, is that despite such indicators of external well-being there is no way these children could be fully developed human beings, particularly the boys. A boy needs a father to become a man, and there is no way two women or some specimen from their freak show of a circle of friends could step in to fill that role.
Not so long ago boys wanted to be John Wayne. Now they are all turning out like Michael Cera, which is fine if all you need is IT technicians and graphic artists and human resource staffers, but not so hot if you need soldiers and explorers and bold leaders.
A boy grows up listening to two yentas yammering on and on about how hateful and superfluous men are and he's gonna turn out right, huh?
Hilarious!
I swear to God that agnostic's comment had just prompted me to listen to 'Galileo.'
Seriously, the Indigo Girls are pretty good. I'd love to know how they found their way to Steve Sailer's blog.
Funding for the research came from several lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender advocacy groups, such as the Gill Foundation and the Lesbian Health Fund from the Gay Lesbian Medical Association.
A lesbian gets money from lesbian groups to do a study of lesbian parenting. Then the study concludes that lesbians are better parents. Surprise.
"Not so long ago boys wanted to be John Wayne. Now they are all turning out like Michael Cera, which is fine if all you need is IT technicians and graphic artists and human resource staffers, but not so hot if you need soldiers and explorers and bold leaders."
I don't see anything that prevents a guy like Michael Cera from being a "bold leader"...Maybe not in the military or Wall Street but there are plenty of other arenas which require "bold leaders." And most "explorers" these days are scientists, and scientists are much more likely to have a Michael Cera like demeanor than a John Wayne like demeanor.
Hmm... Let's see:
1) lesbians have a higher rate of domestic violence than heteros.
2) lesbians have a higher divorce rate than heteros.
I am curious about the selection effect Steve-o mentioned. Apparently, none of the flyers were placed at bail bonds outfits or divorce courts.
Well, being raised by a Lesbian couple is probably less damaging in the long term than being raised by, say, obese parents.
Whoa, hold on there, sport...
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37557883/ns/health-behavior/
"I swear to God that agnostic's comment had just prompted me to listen to 'Galileo.'
Seriously, the Indigo Girls are pretty good. I'd love to know how they found their way to Steve Sailer's blog."
I don't think that was really them, Nathan (in fact, I am sure, hehe...)
They did write some damn good songs, though, and the harmony was great. I'd have probably gone to 2 shows in town back in the day (early '90s), if they hadn't made so big a deal out of their lesbianity (lesbianship?, I dunno, spell check is failing on me here.) I didn't want people to think I was a lesbian trapped inside a man's body... wait?, huh?
Anyway, talk about coincidence, man, that stuff a few days ago about Cheap Trick ... haha, I had just played my "Live at Budukan" CD 5 times in 2 days on my boom box to drown out the Mexican station played by guys building a house next door. I had it on 10 out of 10 on volume. No kidding! I love "Surrender" and "Ain't that a Shame", and I love the screaming Jap girls in between the songs.
However, I always thought the drummer's name was Bonny Carlos, but I now have learned otherwise from Steve's post. You learn one new thing each day, it seems, but not a whole lot more.
John Henry Armstrong is forced to earn a living by impregnating lesbians. Of course, wouldn't you know it: He's a black biotech executive victimized by his white supremacist management, which is why he's broke -- and a bunch of lesbians then take advantage of his vulnerable situation to enslave him as a mere "donor".
Title VII obviously wasn't nearly enough!
" @Whiskey said... Hilarious!"
Hey! A reply by Whiskey that was short and to the point. I'm impressed.
I presume that a control group wasn't recruited from heterosexuals under the same conditions, but data was just copied from, say, somebody else's nationally representative data.
The conclusions of this "study" were based on questionnaire responses from a statistically insignificant group of people, all with a heavy dose of selection bias thrown in. The lack of a control group is the least of the problems.
This isn't science at all. It's just an advocacy press release.
The basic issue here is that children nowadays are different NOT because of their parents, but because of their peers and cultural influences being different.
Judith Rich Harris has well demonstrated this in her books.
For this reason when the children of Lesbians have the same peers and exposure to the same culture, on average, as other children, we wouldn't expect there to be any real difference.
They may be wusses, but so will the children of the Heterosexuals, as the children of the Heterosexuals will have the same peers and culture.
Probably the advantage shown by the children raised by Lesbians, to the extent that it’s real, is purely due to the Eugenic Effect of Sperm Donation.
Jodie Foster's children will rule the World.
Sex is stupid
Sperm Donation is great
Give Up!
"A nearly 25-year study concluded that children raised in lesbian households were psychologically well-adjusted and had fewer behavioral problems than their peers."
Well-adjusted how? According to a lot of contemporary sociologists and psychologists, being rambunctious, agressive, and rebellious - i.e. being a boy - is some kind of behavioral problem. What do they consider "well-adjusted" - an inclination toward softball and the works of Gertrude Stein?
"Funding for the research came from several lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender advocacy groups, such as the Gill Foundation and the Lesbian Health Fund from the Gay Lesbian Medical Association."
And I'm sure that if this study had produced any other result, they would have gone ahead and published it anyway. Yeah, right. I'm certain of it.
Hey! Graphic artists can be pretty testosterony — Al Capp, Dali, Hitler....
A study in contrasts.
The last Spartan.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxBDsr6T-AE
McDonalds corners homosexual market.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBuKuA9nHsw
"A lesbian gets money from lesbian groups to do a study of lesbian parenting. Then the study concludes that lesbians are better parents. Surprise."
Kind of like how scientific racists get stacks of cash from the Pioneer Fund? It's not like cross-burnin' Charles Murray was sorrowfully moved to believe that black people are stupid only after reviewing reams of objective data. And if Sailer thinks the lesbian study's methodology was shoddy, well, there's this guy Richard Lynn, has a great party trick where he determines Mexico's national IQ using three Spanish retards...
"Well-adjusted how? According to a lot of contemporary sociologists and psychologists, being rambunctious, agressive, and rebellious - i.e. being a boy - is some kind of behavioral problem. What do they consider "well-adjusted" - an inclination toward softball and the works of Gertrude Stein?"
Not saying lesbians make the best parents or anything, but on an unrelated note, Mr.Anon, it is common misconception that boys in the past were given some kind of free pass for misbehavior. Simply isn't the case..."aggressive, rambunctious, and rebellious" behavior, especially towards authority figures, would have been met (and still should be) with a swift whack in the knuckles. Boys have always been expected to be just as respectful as girls, at least according to what I've heard from older relatives. There is nothing positive about being some little hellion no matter what gender the child is, I know I wouldn't tolerate it.
"Kind of like how scientific racists get stacks of cash from the Pioneer Fund? It's not like cross-burnin' Charles Murray was sorrowfully moved to believe that black people are stupid only after reviewing reams of objective data. And if Sailer thinks the lesbian study's methodology was shoddy, well, there's this guy Richard Lynn, has a great party trick where he determines Mexico's national IQ using three Spanish retards..."
http://webprod.isbe.net/ereportcard/publicsite/getReport.aspx?year=2009&code=1501629900031_e.pdf
Go to page 13 and explain away those results!
Kind of like how scientific racists get stacks of cash from the Pioneer Fund? It's not like cross-burnin' Charles Murray was sorrowfully moved to believe that black people are stupid only after reviewing reams of objective data. And if Sailer thinks the lesbian study's methodology was shoddy, well, there's this guy Richard Lynn, has a great party trick where he determines Mexico's national IQ using three Spanish retards...
Lol!
OK, who left the flyscreen open?
Btw Steve didnt actually say the study was shoddy.
"It's not like cross-burnin' Charles Murray was sorrowfully moved to believe that black people are stupid only after reviewing reams of objective data. "
Are you being facetious? It's hard to tell with hard left people. Their most reasoned arguments and heart-felt sentiments always sound like a Saturday Night Live skit. I should know, being left-handed.
Murray did draw conclusions from reams of data, and being of partly Jewish (something he NEVER used or publicized), he'd hardly be into cross-burning. In fact, I don't know any students of genetics who perform such counter-productive activities. Too busy with the intellectual stuff. As for the 3 Spanish retards, do you have them mixed up with the 3 Tenors? I'll have to re-read Lynn.
"BamaGirl said...
Not saying lesbians make the best parents or anything, but on an unrelated note, Mr.Anon, it is common misconception that boys in the past were given some kind of free pass for misbehavior."
I am well aware of that (being perhaps older than you). However, in previous more enlightened times, the restless energy of boys was viewed as something to be guided and channeled into other more constructive pursuits. Not as something to be smashed by humiliating and/or drugging it out of them.
From the report:
A final limitation is that although
the NLLFS and the normative
samples are similar in socioeconomic
status, they are neither matched nor
controlled for race/ethnicity or region
of residence. The NLLFS sample is
drawn from first-wave planned lesbian
families who were initially clustered
around metropolitan areas with visible
lesbian communities, which were
much less diverse than they are today;
recruiting was limited to the relatively
small number of prospective mothers
who felt safe enough to identify publicly
as lesbian, who had the economic
resources to afford DI, and who, in the
pre-Internet era, were affiliated with
the communities in which the study
was advertised.21
The chart won't format, but the lesbian sample was 93% white and the comparison sample was 67% white. They were also from different parts of the country.
It seems to me that if we are to learn anything from this study it is that genetics matter more than environment - a notion that I'm comfortable with.
Of course this is hardly a model research design but let's say for purposes of argument that its principal finding is true - the children of lesbian couples are just fine. Such a finding reinforces the idea that children's success or failure in life is dependent mostly on their internal genetic blueprint and less so on their parent's style of child rearing. It's like a Dickens plot. The child's inner nobility triumphs over bad circumstances.
Radical environmentalist parents following crypto-Freudian ideas used to constantly fret over whether they had inadvertently said or done something that would give their kid a "trauma". The most hilarious version of this was L. Ron Hubbard's Dianetics which posited that the unborn in the womb heard their parents voices during sex and interpreted their words literally. The child throughout his life would be warped and twisted by that pre-birth event. That is until the child now grown up can buy some Scientology therapy which will make him "clear". Steven Boyd (the famous chariot race loser) was proud of being clear. I think Tom Cruise is likewise clear.
The more modern view is that kids are robust. They become who they were designed (by their genes) to become largely irrespective of whether their parents read Dr. Spock or not.
Albertosaurus
Your intuition is right. The control group in the study was fairly well geographically distributed, although 40% were from the south. The lesbian group was 47% Northeast and 43% West (meaning Boston and SF probably)
And here's the shocker: the lesbian grouip was 93% white while the control group was 67% white.
"It's not like cross-burnin' Charles Murray was sorrowfully moved to believe that black people are stupid only after reviewing reams of objective data"
Well, no, that's exactly what it was like. The Bell Curve was exhaustively researched and footnoted. Besides, it is an indisputable fact that blacks have lower IQs as compared to other races. So what are you talking about?
n=84, and the evaluations were made by the mothers.
Based on that, it shouldn't matter where they got their volunteers.
Actually I wouldn't be surprised if this study was pointing to a valid trend. Children of Lesbian couples will out of reality feel "different" then the typical kid. Now, feeling different will cause a split of two different and potentialy useful "thoughts" in a child. One is the feeling of being somewhat unique or perhaps "special" which can be an effective tool for learning. Several studies have shown that "average" kids that were put into an "advanced" class relative to their peers actually did very well. The class thought they were better so they lived up to the thought by actually being better.
And of course if is kid is made to feel "different" there is also going to be a big part of the childs desire to just fit in. So the kid is going to try harder to be "normal" and "adjusted" from the start.
There is no mystery here. Lesbianism can be a valid "trick" to create a portion of the population that is exceptional. Of course this trick will break down tif you have too many lesbian couples to the point where it becomes "normal."
The real question is.... What is the ideal percentage of lesbian couples in a society to create an overall benefit to society?
So..... If you have
The main, glaring deficiency of the study is that over 90% of the lesbian families were Caucasian where as on 67% of the heterosexual families were.
This is NOT a case control study. Rather, the controls were from private data from another study.
Worth less than a warm pile of manure.
The message is clear; lesbians turn out well adjusted kids as long as they take them to bookstores.
Uh, so what if the lesbians chose their sperm donors eugenically? Even if you are correct and that explains 100% of the difference, that still means society should want more same-sex parents instead of less. Their children, FOR WHATEVER REASON, are more successful. Who cares what the reason is? Their results are better.
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