(Press-News.org) BINGHAMTON, NY – Is there a double standard for gay parents? A new study published this month by a Binghamton University research team suggests that gay parents are being judged more harshly than straight parents.
Members of Binghamton University's Interdisciplinary Research Group for the Study of Sexuality and Gender conducted a study of people's reactions to the parenting behaviors of gay and straight parents. Their results showed a clear pattern of negative reactions from study participants towards a gay couple engaging in exactly the same negative parenting behaviors as a straight couple.
Research Associate Professor Sean Massey and Instructor Ann Merriwether of Binghamton, and Justin Garcia from The Kinsey Institute at Indiana University, published the results of their study earlier this month in the Journal of GLBT Family Studies.
"We noted that when parents displayed favorable parenting behaviors like comforting an upset child, gay and straight parents were judged in a similar, positive manner," said Massey. "However, if parents got frustrated - raised their voice or slapped their child on the hand, the gay parents were judged more negatively than the straight parents."
Massey says this marked difference in the study groups' reactions is significant. While no parent is perfect, the researchers believe that holding gay parents to a different standard adds additional stress to the already stressful job of parenthood. It can also negatively affect their chances of adopting or becoming foster parents.
"We feel that it is very important for social workers and adoption counselors to be made aware of the effects of modern anti-gay prejudices and they need to educate themselves and develop policies that help protect against these potential biases," said Massey.
There is a serious shortage of people stepping up to foster or adopt the hundreds of thousands of children who are in the system waiting to find a new foster family or adopted family. The gay community is a resource for many of these children but this study indicates that if judged more harshly than their straight counterparts, gay parents are at a disadvantage.
"Raising awareness of these attitudes is a critical step in being able to utilize a potentially valuable pool of prospective adoptive and foster parents," said Massey, "but it is also vital to improving the day to day lives of our families and our children."
On Thursday, the American Academy of Pediatrics issued a policy statement supporting same-sex marriage and reiterating its support for the adoption of children by gay families. The researchers say that with strong support for gay marriage coming from the medical and psychological professional organizations, and with increasing support among the general public (58% of whom now support same-sex marriage), the next frontier for gay rights may be same-sex parenting. Massey says although overt and hostile prejudice may indeed be diminishing, modern, subtle prejudice continues to affect the lives of lesbians, gay men, and their families.
"Prejudicial judgments, however subtle, that serve to limit access of these families to potential support and resources, ultimately harm today's youths," says Massey.
The researchers strongly encourage the continued exploration of the effect this subtle prejudice has on the wellbeing of same-sex families and how best to work toward its elimination.
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The study was published in this month's issue of the Journal of GLBT Family Studies and can be viewed through the journal's website: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1550428X.2013.765257. END
Irvine, Calif., March 25, 2013 — UC Irvine neurobiologists have found a novel molecular mechanism that helps trigger the formation of long-term memory. The researchers believe the discovery of this mechanism adds another piece to the puzzle in the ongoing effort to uncover the mysteries of memory and, potentially, certain intellectual disabilities.
In a study led by Marcelo Wood of UC Irvine's Center for the Neurobiology of Learning & Memory, the team investigated the role of this mechanism – a gene designated Baf53b – in long-term memory formation. Baf53b is one of several ...
On the morning of December 6, 1917, in the port of Halifax, Nova Scotia, near the U.S. border in Maine, a French ship, the Mont Blanc, filled with military explosives collided with another vessel. Twenty minutes later, a fire set off the Mont Blanc's volatile cargo and caused a catastrophic explosion—killing thousands and destroying an entire section of the city. Rescue efforts were dispatched immediately from the Canadian mainland as well as the United States, but confusion and lack of immediate information delayed some of the rescue efforts for hours.
A recent joint ...
Two children with an aggressive form of childhood leukemia had a complete remission of their disease—showing no evidence of cancer cells in their bodies—after treatment with a novel cell therapy that reprogrammed their immune cells to rapidly multiply and destroy leukemia cells. A research team from The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and the University of Pennsylvania published the case report of two pediatric patients Online First today in The New England Journal of Medicine. It will appear in the April 18 print issue.
One of the patients, 7-year-old Emily Whitehead, ...
Being exposed to arguments between parents is associated with the way babies' brains process emotional tone of voice, according to a new study to be published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
The study, conducted by graduate student Alice Graham with her advisors Phil Fisher and Jennifer Pfeifer of the University of Oregon, found that infants respond to angry tone of voice, even when they're asleep.
Babies' brains are highly plastic, allowing them to develop in response to the environments and encounters they experience. ...
(BOSTON) -- A flame retardant removed from children's pajamas 30 years ago but now used in polyurethane foam is prevalent in office environments, especially in older buildings, where urine testing of workers turned up widespread evidence of its biomarker, a new study led by Boston University School of Public Health researchers has found.
The study, published in the journal Environment International, found that the chemical known as TDCPP -- chlorinated tris(1,3-dichloro-2-propyl) phosphate, or 'chlorinated tris' -- was present in 99 percent of dust samples taken from participants' ...
Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have released study results that show national treatment trends in the surgical management of patients with kidney disease. The study found that partial and complete kidney removal (total nephrectomy) and energy-based techniques to destroy tumors are all on the rise. Surprisingly, the patients most in need of kidney-sparing surgery are still more likely to undergo total nephrectomy. The findings recently published online in BJU International.
"While the overall proportion of patients receiving kidney ...
NEW YORK (March 25, 2013) -- Two studies led by investigators at Weill Cornell Medical College shed light on the molecular biology of three blood disorders, leading to novel strategies to treat these diseases.
The two new studies -- one published online March 17 by Nature Medicine and the other March 25 in the online edition of the Journal of Clinical Investigation -- propose two new treatments for beta-thalassemia, a blood disorder which affects thousands of people globally every year. In addition, they suggest a new strategy to treat thousands of Caucasians of Northern ...
New England is expected to experience a "moderate" red tide this spring and summer, report NOAA-funded scientists studying the toxic algae that cause blooms in the Gulf of Maine. The "red tide" is caused by an alga Alexandrium fundyense, which produces a toxin that can cause paralytic shellfish poisoning (PSP). Red tide typically occurs annually along some portions of the Gulf of Maine coast. This year's outlook is similar to the 2012 red tide which was also classified as "moderate."
As with the past five forecasts for this region, the 2013 outlook is based on the quantities ...
As the nation continues to grapple with the long-simmering issue of gun control, solutions are stymied by heated debates.
To effectively influence a divided America, elected officials must take a broad perspective rather than focusing on specific incidents, according to a new psychology study from The University of Texas at Austin.
The study, led by University of Texas at Austin psychology researchers Erin Burgoon and Marlone Henderson, is published in the March online issue of Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.
According to the findings, public officials ...
Scientists from the Nano-Science Center at the Niels Bohr Institut, Denmark and the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland, have shown that a single nanowire can concentrate the sunlight up to 15 times of the normal sun light intensity. The results are surprising and the potential for developing a new type of highly efficient solar cells is great.
Due to some unique physical light absorption properties of nanowires, the limit of how much energy we can utilize from the sun's rays is higher than previous believed. These results demonstrate the great potential ...
