Weeks one and two, truths behind the family unit

This is the beginning of my journey into family studies and I think this class will inspire some deep thought. I will do my best to cover 2 weeks worth of very important information for the family. This course is a sample course where we research studies that have been performed in family science that help shape the family and as a result shape the world.

Our first assignment was to review and study an article regarding APA brief used in the Supreme Court to shape the way the world views families. The Brief says and affirms that ‘‘Not a single study has found children of lesbian or gay parents to be disadvantaged in any significant respect relative to children of heterosexual parents’’. This claim is NOT backed by reliable studies. The biggest thing from this that I have learned is that we as individuals need to look deeper into everything these days. If you have a political, social, religious or any strong, firm belief we need to avoid opinion and seek for deeper truth. I learned about sampling procedures like having large sample sizes, representative samples, and avoiding convenience samples. There are many more things to learn but just breaking down these three examples we see real problems with what is supposed to be a very credible source(The American Psychological Association).

My favorite poorly done sample was conducted in 1999 by Crawford et al.
This was all about the effects of lesbian and gay parenting on children and the audience sampled was
"388  Psychologists attitudes". There was no comparison group, and it seems very convenient to just ask colleagues instead of the actual subject of interest.

A study done by Patterson in 1994 had 66 lesbian and gay parents describe the social and sexual identity of their children. There was no one sampled in comparison so we can't say anything to confirm or deny the APA brief claim, ‘‘Not a single study has found children of lesbian or gay parents to be disadvantaged in any significant respect relative to children of heterosexual parents’’.

The list of poorly conducted research goes on and on with only a few truly effective samples. This article actually shows us the 7th largest study done by Sarantakos (1996), but with critiques from the APA because it's findings are very different from their original claim. The study was done of 58 children of heterosexual married parents, 58 children of heterosexual cohabiting couples, and 58 children living with homosexual couples, it is one of the few that have unbiased research, large sample size, and "socially significant criteria".

I was shocked to see the findings. They asked teachers about performance of each of these children in school, achievement in math class had heterosexual children rated at 7.9 and homosexual children at 5.5, english was 7.7 and 5.5 and it goes on. All of these eye opening lessons I've shared are found in the article "Same-sex parenting and children’s outcomes: A closer examination of the American psychological association’s brief on lesbian and gay parenting" by Loren Marks from Louisiana State University, 341 School of Human Ecology, Baton Rouge, LA 70803, United States.


This week we watched a documentary called "Demographic Winter". It was all about how a book, "the Population Bomb" effected society and helped contribute to lower birth rates, fertility rates, and marriage rates in the world. The book "The Population Bomb" was about there being too many people on the planet to sustain and how "babies are killing us". Written in 1968 it predicts worldwide famine in the 70's and 80's. Instead of this happening as predicted something much more interesting is being discovered. Social scientists and other scientists are now noticing that populations in almost every country of the world is either declining or about to. Although immigration helps a country sustain it's population for a time it doesn't change the observations we see of the world population decreasing. The elderly are living longer with advances in medicine but fewer and fewer children are being born to take care of those older generations meaning they will have to work harder and smarter than ever before seen.

Now more than ever before the definition of family and the blessings that come from a Nuclear Family are being lost or changed drastically. My intent is to learn and show my generation how important the family is for the world, and to help maintain the true definition of family.