Family Proclamation to The World

This is so fun. To start out my first blog post about a semi controversial topic.

I. Love. This.

This week, in family relations, we discussed the poor and biased research on the American Psychological Administration (APA) brief used to decide if children in same sex families had any significant differences compared to children raised in heterosexual families. The research suggests that children aren’t at any disadvantages, zero, non, zip. It is hard for me to be convinced when the research is clearly biased, nor conducted well.

Many of the research studies didn’t have a control group, had small and convenient samples, and some studies compared children being raised by single mothers to children being raised by same sex parents. If you look at the article published by Mark Regnerus, it explains further. 

To me, it doesn’t make sense. Anyone out there can see that these studies weren’t performed well, and for them to get passed through peer review is strange. It is troubling that the brief was used so widely to impact many people as it does. Not only is this problematic to me for the direct consequences of this brief, but to also think about any other research that I haven’t spent much time reflecting on myself while turning a blind eye to any obvious problems.

I can say, as a sister with three younger adopted siblings, children that are adopted are more likely to experience depression and other problems than children raised in their biological home. The difference between my two biological sisters and me, compared to my three adopted siblings is interesting. The three of them are all the same age, the twin boys being roughly four months older than my youngest sister. The three of them have widely different health challenges than the rest of the family, for example the twin boys have NF1, inherited from their father. That alone has made a striking contrast between the ‘biologicals’ and the triplets, as we call ourselves.

But there is more to it. I know that my siblings long for deep and personal connection with their biological parents. That isn’t to say that they don’t love me, their parents, their sisters, and their upbringing, but I can sense the wondering that they have about what could have been. They are young enough that they don’t fully understand the legal system of adoption. They don’t fully understand that the state of Utah took my brothers out of their father’s home on an account of neglect, drug use, and the multiple trips to the county jail, and I just hope that they do as they grow older to appreciate what our parents have done for them.

To continue, I would consider myself to be a strong member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and because of that, I believe that families are best with a mother and father with a life centered on Jesus Christ. However, I am aware that the world has a lot to learn before Christ comes again, and God works in mysterious ways. There are plenty of children that are in heterosexual abusive and neglectful households that deserve better. If children are without the gospel of Jesus Christ, I would at least hope that they have kind, loving, and supportive authoritative parents. High warmth, and high expectations would be more appropriate, and better than unsuited and neglectful parents. God will use tools and people to take care of His children in ways that I don't understand. 

To wrap up my thoughts, I cannot say that I trust the research conducted by the APA to be fully true. I would be more interested in seeing the brief revisited with studies conducted to give better comparisons to heterosexual and homosexual adopted families, and how those two variables compare. For the homosexual families who have children by means of a surrogate should then be compared to biological heterosexual families.