New Family Structures Study

The New Family Structures Study (abbreviated NFSS) is a sociological study of LGBT parenting conducted by sociologist Mark Regnerus of the University of Texas at Austin. The study surveyed over 15,000 Americans of ages 18 to 39.[1] The first research article based on data from the study was published in July 2012 in Social Science Research,[2] and concluded that people who had had a parent who had been in a same-gender relationship were at a greater risk of several adverse outcomes, including "being on public assistance, being unemployed, and having poorer educational attainment."[3]

The study was met with considerable criticism from many academics[1][4][5] and scholarly organizations.[6][7] Of note, only two children in the study had actually lived with homosexually partnered parents for their entire childhoods, because many of the same-sex partnered parents were in previous heterosexual marriages. Thus, negative outcomes or events cannot be attributed to having same-sex parents, because many of these children also spent their childhoods with opposite-sex parents, and experienced family disruption and parental divorce. A 2015 reanalysis raised serious questions about the validity of the study, finding misclassification of families, inconsistency in answers suggesting mischief, and evidence that many respondents did not live with their non-heterosexual parents. When these cases were excluded, differences in outcome between children raised by parents in opposite-sex and same-sex relationships largely vanished.[5]

  1. ^ a b Jaslow, Ryan (12 June 2012). "Kids of gay parents fare worse, study finds, but research draws fire from experts". CBS News. Retrieved 21 October 2014.
  2. ^ Regnerus, Mark (March 12, 2012). "How different are the adult children of parents who have same-sex relationships? Findings from the New Family Structures Study". Social Science Research. 41 (4): 752–770. doi:10.1016/j.ssresearch.2012.03.009. PMID 23017845.
  3. ^ Perrin, E. C.; Siegel, B. S. (20 March 2013). "Promoting the Well-Being of Children Whose Parents Are Gay or Lesbian" (PDF). Pediatrics. 131 (4): e1374–e1383. doi:10.1542/peds.2013-0377. PMID 23519940. S2CID 23423249.
  4. ^ Cite error: The named reference letter was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  5. ^ a b Bailey, J. Michael; Vasey, Paul L.; Diamond, Lisa M.; Breedlove, S. Marc; Vilain, Eric; Epprecht, Marc (2016-04-25). "Sexual Orientation, Controversy, and Science". Psychological Science in the Public Interest. 17 (2): 84–85. doi:10.1177/1529100616637616. ISSN 1529-1006. PMID 27113562.
  6. ^ Cite error: The named reference brief was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  7. ^ Becker, John (28 February 2013). "In Supreme Court Brief, American Sociological Association Obliterates Claim That Same-Sex Couples Are Inferior Parents". Huffington Post. Retrieved 21 October 2014.