The American Academy of Pediatrics is no one's idea of a radical organization. When the AAP agitates for change, the agitation is pretty mild and the change far from sweeping. A typical AAP press release concerns adjustments to the immunization schedule or recommendations that all women of childbearing age take folic acid supplements—not exactly the stuff of foam-mouthed controversy. It was thus a little startling last week when the AAP issued a statement supporting the right of same-sex couples to adopt each other's children.
While it might seem that the AAP's position is far afield of the organization's usual territory, it's actually in keeping with a long history of advocacy not only for children's health, but for their quality of life as well. “Children who are born to, or adopted by, one member of a gay or lesbian couple deserve the security of two legally recognized parents,” the AAP argues in its press release. For these doctors, this is not a gay-rights issue, not a question about what lesbian and gay parents need, although it can certainly be argued that any measure that decreases parental stress and increases parental support is also good for kids. Rather, it's a question about what's best for their children.
Only seven states and Washington, D.C., allow homosexual couples to adopt each other's children. So most kids of same-sex unions have only one legal parent. They may live in a family with two de facto parents, but such children cannot rely on the nonbiological or nonadoptive parent to make medical decisions on their behalf, they have no access to medical insurance through that parent's employer, they cannot receive Social Security survivor benefits if that parent dies, they may be removed from their own home if the biological or legally adoptive parent dies, and they are routinely denied visitation with (and child support from) that parent if the couple separates. It's no great stretch to see the AAP's point here: Allowing second-parent adoptions would indeed result in more legal and emotional security for children of same-sex couples.
Still, the storm of protest following the AAP's announcement is unsurprising, given that this is a country where Jerry Falwell theorizes publicly that homosexuality is the reason for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Representatives from groups like the Family Research Council and Focus on the Family have been trotting out all week to say the predictable: that kids need mothers and fathers—only one of each, preferably married to the other—to develop properly. They suggest that this is just another slalom down the slippery moral slope that's destroying our culture and warping our kids.
As the AAP knows, such an argument is nonsense. There are many different ways for children to develop properly. In previous studies, when teachers were asked to rate their students in terms of characteristics like intellectualism, self-reliance, emotional resourcefulness and leadership ability, the children of same-sex relationships were statistically identical to children of heterosexual marriage. In fact, no academic study in more than 20 years of research has shown that children of gay parents are significantly different in any way from children of heterosexual partnerships. They play with the same toys, wear the same kinds of clothes, forge the same kinds of friendships and understand their gender identity in the same terms. Moreover, they're no more likely to become homosexual themselves than the children of conventional marriage, and as adults they form and keep relationships with identical levels of success.
As the AAP knows, the difference between emotionally healthy kids and troubled kids is not whether they have one mother or two. The difference is whether they live in a home that's peaceful, and whether the people in that home treat each other lovingly and resolve conflicts respectfully. In many different studies, not just of same-sex parents but also of interracial families and single-parent families, the evidence is overwhelming: Children are less influenced by the nature of their family structure than by the quality of their family interactions. So it's perhaps worth pointing out that the one meaningful difference between children of gay relationships and children of marriage is that same-sex couples cannot have a child by accident. Every one of these children is wanted, and it stands to reason that most of them are growing up surrounded by love despite the potential tumult of living in an unconventional family.
It's this potential tumult that the American Academy of Pediatrics is rightfully attempting to limit, and not just regarding the legal rights of adoption and parenthood. All kids crave the stability of social connectedness, and having their parents' relationship legitimized would surely bring these children greater acknowledgement and support by the larger community. Conservatives can decry the playground taunting same-sex parents have subjected their children to, but the answer to such taunting is not the continued demonization of alternative family structures. The solution is just what the American Academy of Pediatrics is proposing: Give homosexual parents the same rights as heterosexual parents, and let all children grow up understanding that family love comes in many different forms.
