Study finds children of same-sex parents perform better in school
Children of same-sex parents in the Netherlands are more likely to graduate high school
Children who are raised from birth by same-sex parents perform better in school than peers raised by opposite-sex parents.
That’s according to a new study, “School Outcomes of Children Raised by Same-Sex Parents,” published in the American Sociological Review.
Researchers examined children raised by 3,000 same-sex parents — 2,786 female couples and 185 male couples — and those raised by more than one million opposite-sex parents.
The study was conducted in the Netherlands, which became the first country to legalize same-sex marriage in 2001.
The results show that children of same-sex parents outperform their peers at all levels of schooling, from elementary through high school. Specifically, children of same-sex parents are 4.8% more likely to earn their high school diploma.
According to the lead author of the study, Deni Mazrekaj, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oxford, the results are also in part due to trends in socioeconomic status for same sex couples.
In an interview with UNILAD, Mazrekaj said that researchers found “socioeconomic status is a major factor.”
“We found that same-sex parents are often wealthier, older and more educated than the typical different-sex couple,” he said. “Same-sex couples often have to use expensive fertility treatments and adoption procedures to have a child, meaning they tend to have a high level of wealth.”
He added: “These are wanted pregnancies and same-sex parents are also very likely to be highly motivated to become parents given the procedures they have to undergo to have children.”
However, Mazrekaj noted that the study’s findings were limited to the Netherlands. He added that similar studies into educational attainment in the United States “highly support the no-difference hypothesis, meaning that children raised by same-sex parents fare just as well as children raised by different-sex parents.”
In the U.S., the Trump administration, recently argued that foster care agencies should be allowed to discriminate against same-sex couples.
The State Department also recently ended its attempts to deny U.S. citizenship to the children of two same-sex couples.
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