Do No Harm

My husband's Discover magazine early this year listed the top 100 stories from 2010, and the results of a 25 year study showing that same sex parents do no harm to their children was story number 88.  This finding is not surprising to me; I've always thought that the children of a gay couple would consider it normal to have two dads and no mom.  The idea of "normal" depends on your point-of-view.

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"Ever since U.S. sperm banks began to
accept lesbian clients in the mid-1980s, critics have argued that same-sex parenting could damage children’s psychological well-being. In June a 25-year, ongoing study published in the journal Pediatrics came to a very different conclusion, finding that children of lesbian mothers experience healthy social, emotional, and psychological development. The study, led by University of California, San Francisco psychiatrist Nanette Gartrell, included 78 kids conceived through donor insemination and raised by lesbian mothers. Beginning in 1986 Gartrell interviewed women in San Francisco, Boston, and Washington, D.C., during pregnancy and again when their children turned 2, 5, 10, 
and 17; she also used clinical question­naires to define behavior. At 17 those children scored higher, on average, than their peers in social and academic competence and lower in aggressive behavior and social problems."