Journal of Marriage and FamilyVolume 72, Issue 1 p. 41-44 Ideal Families and Social Science Ideals Timothy J. Biblarz, Corresponding Author Timothy J. Biblarz University of Southern CaliforniaDepartment of Sociology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089-2539 ([email protected]).Search for more papers by this authorJudith Stacey, Judith Stacey New York University *Search for more papers by this author Timothy J. Biblarz, Corresponding Author Timothy J. Biblarz University of Southern CaliforniaDepartment of Sociology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089-2539 ([email protected]).Search for more papers by this authorJudith Stacey, Judith Stacey New York University *Search for more papers by this author First published: 20 January 2010 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-3737.2009.00682.xCitations: 15 Department of Sociology, New York University, 295 Lafayette St., 4th floor, New York, NY 10012. Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume72, Issue1February 2010Pages 41-44 RelatedInformation

This article reviews new scholarship on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender families. The past decade witnessed rapid expansion of data and strong research designs. The most notable advance was in studies on variation among mostly planned lesbian comother families. Cumulative evidence suggests that although many of these families have comparatively high levels of shared labor and parental investment, they may not be as "genderless" as previously depicted. Gay men's diverse paths to family formation and planned parenthood have also been explored, but almost no research studies their children's experiences. Conceptualizations of sexual orientation expanded to include bisexuals and others, and some understanding of the experiences of transgender people has begun to emerge. Future work should explore relationships among members of the families they create.

Claims that children need both a mother and father presume that women and men parent differently in ways crucial to development but generally rely on studies that conflate gender with other family structure variables. We analyze findings from studies with designs that mitigate these problems by comparing 2‐parent families with same or different sex coparents and single‐mother with single‐father families. Strengths typically associated with married mother‐father families appear to the same extent in families with 2 mothers and potentially in those with 2 fathers. Average differences favor women over men, but parenting skills are not dichotomous or exclusive. The gender of parents correlates in novel ways with parent‐child relationships but has minor significance for children's psychological adjustment and social success.

¿Importa la orientación sexual de los progenitores? (y si es así, ¿cómo?)

Opponents of lesbian and gay parental rights claim that children with lesbigay parents are at higher risk for a variety of negative outcomes. Yet most research in psychology concludes that there are no differences in developmental outcomes between children raised by lesbigay parents and those raised by heterosexual parents. The analysis here challenges this defensive conceptual framework and analyzes how heterosexism has hampered intellectual progress in the field. The authors discuss limitations in the definitions, samples, and analyses of the studies to date. Next they explore findings from 21 studies and demonstrate that researchers frequently downplay findings indicating difference regarding children’s gender and sexual preferences and behavior that could stimulate important theoretical questions. A less defensive, more sociologically informed analytic framework is proposed for investigating these issues. The framework focuses on (1) whether selection effects produced by homophobia account for associations between parental sexual orientations and child outcomes; (2) the role of parental gender vis-a-vis sexual orientation in influencing children’s gender development; and (3) the relationship between parental sexual orientations and children’s sexual preferences and behaviors.

Book Review Editor's note: Copies of the book, The Postdivorce Family, were inadvertently sent to two individuals for review. Both reviews appear below. The Postdivorce Family: Children, Parenting, and Society. Ross A. Thompson & Paul R. Amato (Eds.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. 1999. 272 pp. ISBN 0-7619-1489-7. $55.00 cloth, $26.95 paper. Marriage, Divorce, and Children's Adjustment (2nd ed.). Robert E. Emery. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. 1999. 160 pp. ISBN 0-7619-0251-1. $49.95 cloth, $21.95 paper. The Postdivorce Family, edited by Ross Thompson and Paul Amato, and Marriage, Divorce, and Children's Adjustment, Second Edition, by Robert Emery, share two fine qualities: (a) they present work that cuts across disciplines (primarily psychology, sociology, and law); and (b) they share an interest in the intersection of social science research and family policy. Hence, these books will be useful both to social science researchers who want to learn more about how decisions involving children and divorce are made among policy makers and in courtrooms, and to practitioners and legal representatives who want to learn more about major findings in social science research. The texts also will be useful to introduce undergraduate and graduate students to the field. The Postdivorce Family contains eight articles from a multidisciplinary symposium held at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. It begins with two chapters on the consequences of divorce for children. Robert Emery's opening review paints a fairly daunting picture of the stressors that accompany divorce: Behind children's resilience are subtle psychological costs. By contrast, Emery's approach is characterized by an appreciated balance: Yes, divorce creates problems for children that need to be carefully studied and addressed, but the majority of children who experience their parents' divorce turn out much as do those who grow up in two-parent families in the long run. The heightened risk of lowered child well-being that is associated with divorce is partly explained by changes in children's relations with the resident parent, conflict between the parents, changes in the family's economic standing, and children's relations with the nonresident parent. Emery extends these themes in his hook, Marriage, Divorce, and Children's Adjustment. Chapters 4 and 5 inventory the dimensions of children's lives (social behavior, academic performance, intimate relationships in later life, etc.) that are and are not strongly associated with parental divorce and then analyze the most important family processes (parental conflict, childrearing behaviors, economic factors, etc.) that may lie behind many of these divorce effects. Across both books reviewed here, the greatest theoretical development comes in Chapter 6 of Emery's ( 1999) book in which the author presents his model of the process whereby divorce heightens risks for children (also Emery, 1994). The model proposes, in part, that divorce disrupts the understood boundaries of intimacy and authority around the relationship between parents and around each parents relationship with the child. These boundaries must be renegotiated and redefined following divorce, hopefully in ways that allow effective coparenting. The second chapter in The Postdivorce Family, by Alan Booth is written in a more personal style, reflected in the chapter's subtitle, "Reflections on Recent Research." After discussing causes of the long-term increase in the divorce rate, Booth identifies three research directions that are of particular importance. First, divorce effects may reflect a preexisting lack of competency at family life among parents, or what Booth calls "poor marriage material." Second, under conditions of high marital conflict, children do better if their parents divorce; in a context of relatively low marital conflict (the majority of divorce cases), children do worse (see also Amato and Booth, 1997; this finding deserves further replication and testing). …

Compared with children raised in single-mother families created by the death of the father, children raised in divorced single-mother families have significantly lower levels of education, occupational status, and happiness in adulthood Yet divorced single mothers are not significantly different than their widowed counterparts in child rearing, gender role, and family values and in religiosity, health-related behaviors, and other dimensions of lifestyle. However, relative to widowed single mothers, divorced single mothers hold lower occupational positions, are more financially stressed, and have a higher rate of participation in the paid labor force. We speculate that the contrasting positions in the social structure of different types of single-mother families may account for observed differences in child outcomes.

The effect of alternative family structures on children's educational and occupational success has been constant over the past 30 years. Higher rates of unemployment and lower‐status occupational positions could account for the negative effect of single‐mother families on children's attainment throughout the period. Children from single‐father families and stepfamilies have consistently had lower attainments than children from both two‐biological‐parent and single‐mother families. The influence of many other dimensions of children's family background declined from the 1960s to the 1980s but has declined no further since. Among six candidate theoretical frameworks, the findings are most consistent with an evolutionary view of parental investment.