February 10, 2010 • 21 mins
There's a prevalent belief that children need both a father and a mother for healthy development, but a recent study suggests otherwise. Learn more about parenting and gender in this episode of Stuff Mom Never Told You.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff Mom Never told you?
From housetop works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Kristen and Molly, So Molly. We hear a lot
(00:23):
when it comes to parenting, when it comes to even welfare,
when it comes to the UH Proposition eight and gay
marriage and gay adoption, all these kinds of big policy issues.
Hear a lot about the necessity of both a mother
(00:43):
and a father for child welfare. Yes, um, we hear
a lot from UH politicians. UM. Even you know, even
Barack Obama has um has emphasized the need for father's UM.
The government has poured tons of resources into really trying
to re educate men about fatherhood and UM bring more
(01:08):
dad's home and as an active part of their children's lives.
But there was an interesting study that recently came out.
It was kind of a re analysis of a number
of studies. Actually I called a super study and super
study if you will, that was published UM this month
January in the Journal of Marriage and Family that question
(01:30):
this idea of whether or not gender really matters when
it comes to parenting, whether or not children receive different
and yet complementary um benefits from a man and a
woman that are necessary for positive child development. Right, So
there's this thinking that there are unique gifts that you
can only get from parents of certain genders that you know,
(01:53):
let's take the father, because they're the ones that you know,
the president, like you just said, has been talking about that.
You know, boys need father to learn how to become
good men. And it gives a daughter a chance to
kind of like figure out her femininity and relation in
a safe relationship with kind of another man. Um And
you know, the mother's the nurturer, the father's the disciplinary,
(02:14):
and they're just these stereotypes go on and on, and
people think that if you bring up a child without
both of these role models that somehow they will be
inherently flawed or you know, not as good. Right, and um,
a lot of the research to people will site say that,
you know, children raised in single parent homes are more
(02:35):
at risk for delinquency and low educational attainment and you
know all of these negative factors as well too. Once again,
like hammer home this point that married quote unquote intact
families i e. Households headed by a married mother and
a father are simply the best parenting scenario out there.
And so this this study, superstidy that we're talking about,
(02:58):
came from US sociologists Timothy bibl Arts from the University
of Southern California and you to Stacy at New York University,
where they reanalyzed eighty one different parenting studies. UM that
look at everything from you know, single parent homes, single mothers,
single dads, heterosexual married couples, homosexual married couples, and how
(03:20):
the children have turned out in all of these different
scenarios to really find out, you know, if that UM,
that model, that traditional model of mother, married mother and
father is actually the best and full disclosure, I did
report on this study entitled how does the gender parents Matter?
For Discovery News. Yeah, you have to talk to you
(03:42):
the Stacy. Yes, so maybe throughout the podcast he'll tell
us the cool thing. She said, Yes, but I do
think that you know, you mentioned UM battles every same
sex marriage. I feel like, over and over again we
hear that, you know, gay people shouldn't be allowed to
adopt or you know, these these couples shouldn't get married
because then they're gonna be bringing up their children to you,
you know, who knows what, and you'll always hear someone.
(04:03):
There will always be someone on the sideline saying studies
show that kids do best when there's a male father
and a female mother who are married. And this study
did a really good job of explaining to me how
people have taken that out of context. It's basically just
a bogus, bogus statement. Well because a lot of it.
When they went back and looked at the methodology of
(04:25):
all these parenting studies, they realized that in a lot
of cases were comparing apples and oranges, because a lot
of those um gender specific parenting skills that you reference,
such as the dad being the disciplinary and the mother
being the nurture, come out of studies that only look
at heterosexual married couples. It doesn't take into account um
(04:46):
instances such as um single adoptive parents, or children of
widowed parents, or um even uh, you know, gay married couples.
So all those is basically they'll take a married couple
and compare that to like a single mother, right yes,
and not necessarily like to heterosexual people to do homosexual people.
(05:09):
That's the apples and artists are talking about right, right, Well,
they don't do a good job but actually isolating these
this gender variable because um Stacy and the Blard's point
out that there are five major variables to look at,
um when we are assessing uh, you know, all these
basic factors that go into parenting, such as the number
(05:31):
of parents, their gender, sexual identity, their marital status, and
their biogenetic relationship to the kids, i e. Whether or
not you know, we have step children, adoptive kids, um,
their biological kids, what have you. So it's apples aren't
just because they won't they won't isolate out these factors.
So basically the problem with a lot of these studies
was that they weren't able to hold constant these other
(05:55):
factors that are going into um, how these people might
be raising their children. For instance, if you really want
to isolate the impact of gender, you would do something
as specific as comparing you know, uh, the child outcomes
of single mothers who have adopted a child compared to
(06:16):
single fathers who have adopted a child, both of whom
would probably be you know, single heterosexual women or single
homosexual women versus the exact same. All of those different
variables would need to be the same for both the
women and the men to UM to actually look at
what role the gender is playing. Everything else held constant,
(06:36):
because if you just compare them to a two parent family,
then what I understand from you is that Dr Stacy
said that then the two parent family, yes, does have
more resources to give the child, and the gender kind
of doesn't shake out, whereas the single woman is a
little bit more disadvante in terms of resources. But the
gender should not affect the child, right, that the lack
of resources affected the child exactly. That they don't turn
(06:59):
out with any you know, gender hang ups. They aren't
more likely to, let's say, become pregnant, which they're saying
that girls who are raised by fathers might be more
less likely become pregnant. That would not have to do
with the fact that they have a mail around so
much as they have extra resources around. Right. Yeah, and UM,
and I think that it is important to note that, UM,
the study and a lot of child development UM studies
(07:20):
that you'll look at will conclude that on average, children
who are raised in two parent homes non. No, you know,
whether those are two men, two women, a man and
a woman, two parent homes UM do better than children
who are raised in single parent homes. But that also
doesn't necessarily imply that children who are raised by single
(07:41):
parents are you know, inherently at risk for disaster, right,
because if you're going into it and let's say making
it a choice versus UM, you know, getting dumped on
the side of the road with a child, then yes,
you still have the resources to give the child as
opposed to someone who might you know, have just gotten
kicked out of a home a boyfriend. Yeah, I mean,
(08:01):
they are a little bit of a disadvantage. Yeah, and
I think that a lot of this too UM. From
talking to Dr Stacy and to another UM source, dcor
UM Jean Hilton at the University of Nevada, Reno, both
of them continually came back to the point of resource investment,
as you know, the major predictor of UM positive child
(08:24):
development UM. For instance, UH. A lot of these studies
on UH lesbian couples who have raised children have found
that the children do just as well as kids raised
UM by heterosexual couples, and they might even do better
on some psychosocial scores such as their self esteem and
(08:46):
UM they're just general openness to other people because they're
probably raised in a more diverse setting. And one reason
why they might do so well is because they are
because of the social and legal um barriers that are
they're still around. For gay couples having and raising children,
(09:08):
they have to be more committed and more motivated to
make it work. Therefore, they are going to have deeper
resource investment in these children. So that's the thinking that
if they do more studies on same sex couples raising children,
they think that's what they'll find. Right, Well, that's already
been established in a number of studies specifically on children
(09:31):
raised um by lesbian parents, But to some degree the
jury is still out on those scenarios for um gay
mail couples because their research hasn't simply hasn't caught up
to child outcomes for those scenarios. But Dr Stacy, when
I was talking to are predicted that once there is
(09:51):
more research that's been done on child outcomes under with
gay mail couples, it's going to turn out that to you,
men raising children are going to be possibly the best
parents because there are more barriers for them having and
raising children than any other household structure you know, in society,
(10:13):
right now. Therefore, they are going to be deeply motivated
and deeply committed and probably have to invest even more
resources than any other any other type of family. Right
And you know we're engaging a little bit in generalizations here,
but I mean every family is different. That's sort of
what some of these people on the forefront do as well.
(10:33):
So basically it sounds like what this doctor is saying
is that gender itself and the fact the kind of
values you would instill in your child are not considered
resources that you know, having a mother who nurtures you
is not some sort of resource investment that you can
get that you can't get by having a lack of
a mother and a two parent family, right. And I
(10:54):
mean part of this study is also pointing out the
difficulty of analyzing and comparing different types of parenting models,
just because there are so many variables that go into parenting.
I mean, you know, when I was talking to Dr Stacy,
you know, she she mentioned how, um, you know, some
(11:16):
children just in general are easier to parent than others.
I was probably a dream to parent. I'd like to
think I'm share you were, Um, And I mean, there's
just so many different scenarios, Um that can you know,
lead up to people having children in the circumstances surrounding
that that to quote the study, UM, she says, you know,
(11:36):
we predict that even ideal research designs will find instead
that ideal parenting comes in many different genres and genders.
And so the conclusion of this super study, if you will,
is that there is no optimal parenting structure. It's all
about whether you are gay, straight, male or female. It's
(11:58):
all about this resource investment and what you are dedicating
dedicating yourself to invest in your children. But let's take
another side of the argument, which is, you know, if
you allow two gay men to adopt a child, what
will the child sort of internalize by watching these two
men try to parent him? And I thought you sent
me a really interesting UM National Post article about how
(12:20):
within any relationship, any parenting relationship, people take on sort
of stereotypical gender roles and um, like, let's take let's
take sort of an obvious one. UM, in a heterosexual couple,
the woman, let's say, his charge more with housework, shall
be with the child more. Um, the father will be
less invested in the child. I mean not personally, but
(12:41):
just he has to go out and work, so he
sees the child less. UM. It was about how you know,
even people who grow up sort of in our generation
are determined to be as equal as possible in terms
of parenting and sharing chores. Uh, sort of fall into
these old roles, whereas they're saying that these couples UM
of two women and two men are less likely to
(13:02):
fall into those roles. To understand that correctly, Yeah, these
studies have found that UM homosexual couples do a better
job of sharing UM childcare tasks equally. But even in
these studies of UM lesbian couples, there are still kind
of these UM traditional heteronormative gender roles, if you will,
(13:25):
that do emerge a lot of times, not as strongly
as they do in heterosexual couples. But you at some
point you still have one person who is UM has
a little more responsibility over childcare, and the other person
who has a little more responsibility of resource providing. But
if you're a small child trying to internalize, you know,
all this stuff, you would not necessarily feel that one
(13:47):
gender was limited to that, right exactly. That's kind of cool,
you know, You if you are growing up in like
you know, a mother and a father. You don't grow
up thinking, oh, you know, moms stay home with kids
and dads go to work. Whereas because you're in this
situation where you see two people the same gender figuring
out how to make it work and not saying, well,
just because you're this and this happen well, and I
think that. UM. It's also good to point out that,
(14:10):
you know, one of the main arguments UM against gay
marriage is that these children are going to UM by
being raised by two people of the same gender, it's
going to skew their gender identity. You know, a boy
raised by two women will be too feminine and vice
versa for a girl raised by two men. But UM,
(14:30):
there was a really good comprehensive research summary from the
American Psychological Association on Lesbian and Gay Parenting research, and
this is from Dr Charlotte Patterson at u v A,
and she points out that, you know, there are three
major categories of concerned about children of gay parents, UM,
such as the gender identity issues that I just talked about,
(14:52):
and UM, greater propensity towards mental breakdown, and just basic
you know, social maladjustment because they're in these kind of
novel family structures, and all of the research to date
has debunked all of those major concerns. And even with
UM again, I keep going back to this research on
lesbian couples, and it's just because there's UH, there's more
(15:14):
more of these child outcome studies for lesbian couples, and
it's found that in terms of UM scores of masculinity
and femininity the children UM, there are no there are
no differences between children raised in UM by lesbian parents
and children raised by heterosexual parents. You know, boys scored
you know, the same amount on masculinity as they would
(15:37):
either way, and they are no more likely to be gay.
So really there's nothing that UM two parents of different
genders can still in a kid that's can be any
different than what two people the same gender can. Yeah, exactly.
I mean, I think it's just kind of hammering home
this point that you know, the optimal structure is going
to be you know, people who are caring and committed
(15:59):
and you know, raising their children as best as they can.
And you can't boil that down to say that that
has to be a man, a married man, and a
married woman at home. Every day takes a village takes
a village. But lacking a village, it doesn't matter what
gender is in your village because it doesn't appear that
(16:21):
that gender instills any particular you know, it doesn't lower
your risk of going to jail. You know, that's sometimes
an argument they say for for boys who have male
figures around, they won't go to jail as often. It
doesn't matter. It's all about the resource development, right. Yeah,
and some people, you know, one question, um that this
research raised for me was, you know, does this mean
(16:43):
that you know, kids, you know particularly don't need fathers,
you know, or we just going way to overboard with
all of this this fatherhood stuff. And Dr Stacy was
quick to point out that, um, you know, that's that's
not the case at all. It has no thing to
do um with gender. Like a man can parent a
(17:03):
child on his own just as well as um, a
woman comparent a child. I mean, I think it just
happens a lot a lot more the women end up
being the caretakers because we have we physically have the babies. Um,
but one gender is not less able than the other
to be a good parent. Sounds good. Well, it's a
(17:25):
very interesting super study. Yeah, And jealous. You have to
talk to you the co author. Yeah, it was. It
was great talking to Dr Stacy. And again, the title
of the article is how does the gender of Parents Matter?
And it is in the Journal of Marriage and Family
if you want to check it out. I don't think
the full articles online, but you can check out the abstract.
(17:45):
And there are all sorts of UM related studies as well.
Like I said, this covered eighty one different parenting studies.
That's why it's a super study. That's why it's a
super study. And there are all still a lot of
a lot of questions. I mean, Dr Stacy said that
it was such a tedious process having to go back
and try to UM unravel all of these different variables
(18:08):
any when other researchers hadn't tried to unravel them at
all and come all on one study and there are still,
you know, questions left to answer. And UM even Dr
Hilton from University of Nevada, who UM who I talked
to as well, said that, you know, this is a
great first step, but it doesn't necessarily, you know, like
answer all of our questions about gender. But I think that, UM,
(18:28):
I think that it might be high time for us
to kind of stop with this knee jerk. Um. You
need a statement, yeah, that you need that. You absolutely
need a mom and a dad and that's the only
way that it's gonna work, that you're gonna have successful children.
All right, So, but we want to hear what you
(18:48):
guys think about this family structure. Is what particular gender
gifts a mother or a father give if they're necessary,
they're not, So email us mom stuff at stuffworks dot com,
and I think we have time for one or two
people who have already emailed to set mom stuff at
house stuffworks dot com. Got one here from Aaron about deodorant,
(19:13):
and she said, I think you missed one important part
in your podcast about deodorance, antiperspirants. Body odor was not
a problem till the nineteen forties and nineteen fifties. Women's
magazines began to market these new products as a way
to not offend guests. You may be entertaining, essentially telling
women that they had to be offending guests with their
female odor. I find it fascinating that the problem quote
(19:33):
unquote is one that was created in order to sell products.
Some modern examples of this are wrinkle creams, teeth whiteners
and female razor blades. Okay, and Jeanette, our next writer,
kind of picks up on that sort of same theme. Um,
she thinks that the US may have more of a
dependence on deodorant than other parts of the world. I'm American.
I've been living in Japan for a few years now.
The pharmacies here sell more of a selection of women's
(19:55):
deodorant than men's, but it's not that big, and of
that only one or two are also anti purseprant, and
the ones that include anti persport are usually American brands.
It seems like de odorant here is more of a
girly thing. I also say that because a few months
after I started doing my Japanese boyfriend, I noticed that
he does not use deodorant at all, as kind of
shocked as I thought men required it so they wouldn't
stink up every room they entered. But he doesn't smell
(20:15):
bad or have what spots under his arms, I would say,
not using deodorants typical of Japanese men. And maybe I
was attracted to my boyfriend because his diverse DNA scent
wasn't being masked by old spice and for men that
come to Japan have told me that they have trouble
finding deodorant the works for them. This made me think
that maybe we get hooked on tour during puberty and
our body gets accustomed to it. So when we skip
(20:36):
a day, we really noticed the smell and moisture. But
perhaps once our hormones level out, we don't need to
be sticking chemicals under our arms at all. All right, So,
if you have anything that you would like to send
our way, thoughts, feelings, impressions, email us, pictures, pictures, tasteful pictures.
Mom stuff at how stuff works dot com is the
(20:57):
email address, and dear in the week. Keep up with
what Molly and I are thinking about at our blog
how to stuff, and you can find it and a
whole host of interesting articles for you're reading pleasure at
how stuff works dot com for more on this and
(21:17):
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Want more how stuff works, check out our blogs on
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are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff Mom Never told you?
From housetop works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Kristen and Molly, So Molly. We hear a lot
(00:23):
when it comes to parenting, when it comes to even welfare,
when it comes to the UH Proposition eight and gay
marriage and gay adoption, all these kinds of big policy issues.
Hear a lot about the necessity of both a mother
(00:43):
and a father for child welfare. Yes, um, we hear
a lot from UH politicians. UM. Even you know, even
Barack Obama has um has emphasized the need for father's UM.
The government has poured tons of resources into really trying
to re educate men about fatherhood and UM bring more
(01:08):
dad's home and as an active part of their children's lives.
But there was an interesting study that recently came out.
It was kind of a re analysis of a number
of studies. Actually I called a super study and super
study if you will, that was published UM this month
January in the Journal of Marriage and Family that question
(01:30):
this idea of whether or not gender really matters when
it comes to parenting, whether or not children receive different
and yet complementary um benefits from a man and a
woman that are necessary for positive child development. Right, So
there's this thinking that there are unique gifts that you
can only get from parents of certain genders that you know,
(01:53):
let's take the father, because they're the ones that you know,
the president, like you just said, has been talking about that.
You know, boys need father to learn how to become
good men. And it gives a daughter a chance to
kind of like figure out her femininity and relation in
a safe relationship with kind of another man. Um And
you know, the mother's the nurturer, the father's the disciplinary,
(02:14):
and they're just these stereotypes go on and on, and
people think that if you bring up a child without
both of these role models that somehow they will be
inherently flawed or you know, not as good. Right, and um,
a lot of the research to people will site say that,
you know, children raised in single parent homes are more
(02:35):
at risk for delinquency and low educational attainment and you
know all of these negative factors as well too. Once again,
like hammer home this point that married quote unquote intact
families i e. Households headed by a married mother and
a father are simply the best parenting scenario out there.
And so this this study, superstidy that we're talking about,
(02:58):
came from US sociologists Timothy bibl Arts from the University
of Southern California and you to Stacy at New York University,
where they reanalyzed eighty one different parenting studies. UM that
look at everything from you know, single parent homes, single mothers,
single dads, heterosexual married couples, homosexual married couples, and how
(03:20):
the children have turned out in all of these different
scenarios to really find out, you know, if that UM,
that model, that traditional model of mother, married mother and
father is actually the best and full disclosure, I did
report on this study entitled how does the gender parents Matter?
For Discovery News. Yeah, you have to talk to you
(03:42):
the Stacy. Yes, so maybe throughout the podcast he'll tell
us the cool thing. She said, Yes, but I do
think that you know, you mentioned UM battles every same
sex marriage. I feel like, over and over again we
hear that, you know, gay people shouldn't be allowed to
adopt or you know, these these couples shouldn't get married
because then they're gonna be bringing up their children to you,
you know, who knows what, and you'll always hear someone.
(04:03):
There will always be someone on the sideline saying studies
show that kids do best when there's a male father
and a female mother who are married. And this study
did a really good job of explaining to me how
people have taken that out of context. It's basically just
a bogus, bogus statement. Well because a lot of it.
When they went back and looked at the methodology of
(04:25):
all these parenting studies, they realized that in a lot
of cases were comparing apples and oranges, because a lot
of those um gender specific parenting skills that you reference,
such as the dad being the disciplinary and the mother
being the nurture, come out of studies that only look
at heterosexual married couples. It doesn't take into account um
(04:46):
instances such as um single adoptive parents, or children of
widowed parents, or um even uh, you know, gay married couples.
So all those is basically they'll take a married couple
and compare that to like a single mother, right yes,
and not necessarily like to heterosexual people to do homosexual people.
(05:09):
That's the apples and artists are talking about right, right, Well,
they don't do a good job but actually isolating these
this gender variable because um Stacy and the Blard's point
out that there are five major variables to look at,
um when we are assessing uh, you know, all these
basic factors that go into parenting, such as the number
(05:31):
of parents, their gender, sexual identity, their marital status, and
their biogenetic relationship to the kids, i e. Whether or
not you know, we have step children, adoptive kids, um,
their biological kids, what have you. So it's apples aren't
just because they won't they won't isolate out these factors.
So basically the problem with a lot of these studies
was that they weren't able to hold constant these other
(05:55):
factors that are going into um, how these people might
be raising their children. For instance, if you really want
to isolate the impact of gender, you would do something
as specific as comparing you know, uh, the child outcomes
of single mothers who have adopted a child compared to
(06:16):
single fathers who have adopted a child, both of whom
would probably be you know, single heterosexual women or single
homosexual women versus the exact same. All of those different
variables would need to be the same for both the
women and the men to UM to actually look at
what role the gender is playing. Everything else held constant,
(06:36):
because if you just compare them to a two parent family,
then what I understand from you is that Dr Stacy
said that then the two parent family, yes, does have
more resources to give the child, and the gender kind
of doesn't shake out, whereas the single woman is a
little bit more disadvante in terms of resources. But the
gender should not affect the child, right, that the lack
of resources affected the child exactly. That they don't turn
(06:59):
out with any you know, gender hang ups. They aren't
more likely to, let's say, become pregnant, which they're saying
that girls who are raised by fathers might be more
less likely become pregnant. That would not have to do
with the fact that they have a mail around so
much as they have extra resources around. Right. Yeah, and UM,
and I think that it is important to note that, UM,
the study and a lot of child development UM studies
(07:20):
that you'll look at will conclude that on average, children
who are raised in two parent homes non. No, you know,
whether those are two men, two women, a man and
a woman, two parent homes UM do better than children
who are raised in single parent homes. But that also
doesn't necessarily imply that children who are raised by single
(07:41):
parents are you know, inherently at risk for disaster, right,
because if you're going into it and let's say making
it a choice versus UM, you know, getting dumped on
the side of the road with a child, then yes,
you still have the resources to give the child as
opposed to someone who might you know, have just gotten
kicked out of a home a boyfriend. Yeah, I mean,
(08:01):
they are a little bit of a disadvantage. Yeah, and
I think that a lot of this too UM. From
talking to Dr Stacy and to another UM source, dcor
UM Jean Hilton at the University of Nevada, Reno, both
of them continually came back to the point of resource investment,
as you know, the major predictor of UM positive child
(08:24):
development UM. For instance, UH. A lot of these studies
on UH lesbian couples who have raised children have found
that the children do just as well as kids raised
UM by heterosexual couples, and they might even do better
on some psychosocial scores such as their self esteem and
(08:46):
UM they're just general openness to other people because they're
probably raised in a more diverse setting. And one reason
why they might do so well is because they are
because of the social and legal um barriers that are
they're still around. For gay couples having and raising children,
(09:08):
they have to be more committed and more motivated to
make it work. Therefore, they are going to have deeper
resource investment in these children. So that's the thinking that
if they do more studies on same sex couples raising children,
they think that's what they'll find. Right, Well, that's already
been established in a number of studies specifically on children
(09:31):
raised um by lesbian parents, But to some degree the
jury is still out on those scenarios for um gay
mail couples because their research hasn't simply hasn't caught up
to child outcomes for those scenarios. But Dr Stacy, when
I was talking to are predicted that once there is
(09:51):
more research that's been done on child outcomes under with
gay mail couples, it's going to turn out that to you,
men raising children are going to be possibly the best
parents because there are more barriers for them having and
raising children than any other household structure you know, in society,
(10:13):
right now. Therefore, they are going to be deeply motivated
and deeply committed and probably have to invest even more
resources than any other any other type of family. Right
And you know we're engaging a little bit in generalizations here,
but I mean every family is different. That's sort of
what some of these people on the forefront do as well.
(10:33):
So basically it sounds like what this doctor is saying
is that gender itself and the fact the kind of
values you would instill in your child are not considered
resources that you know, having a mother who nurtures you
is not some sort of resource investment that you can
get that you can't get by having a lack of
a mother and a two parent family, right. And I
(10:54):
mean part of this study is also pointing out the
difficulty of analyzing and comparing different types of parenting models,
just because there are so many variables that go into parenting.
I mean, you know, when I was talking to Dr Stacy,
you know, she she mentioned how, um, you know, some
(11:16):
children just in general are easier to parent than others.
I was probably a dream to parent. I'd like to
think I'm share you were, Um, And I mean, there's
just so many different scenarios, Um that can you know,
lead up to people having children in the circumstances surrounding
that that to quote the study, UM, she says, you know,
(11:36):
we predict that even ideal research designs will find instead
that ideal parenting comes in many different genres and genders.
And so the conclusion of this super study, if you will,
is that there is no optimal parenting structure. It's all
about whether you are gay, straight, male or female. It's
(11:58):
all about this resource investment and what you are dedicating
dedicating yourself to invest in your children. But let's take
another side of the argument, which is, you know, if
you allow two gay men to adopt a child, what
will the child sort of internalize by watching these two
men try to parent him? And I thought you sent
me a really interesting UM National Post article about how
(12:20):
within any relationship, any parenting relationship, people take on sort
of stereotypical gender roles and um, like, let's take let's
take sort of an obvious one. UM, in a heterosexual couple,
the woman, let's say, his charge more with housework, shall
be with the child more. Um, the father will be
less invested in the child. I mean not personally, but
(12:41):
just he has to go out and work, so he
sees the child less. UM. It was about how you know,
even people who grow up sort of in our generation
are determined to be as equal as possible in terms
of parenting and sharing chores. Uh, sort of fall into
these old roles, whereas they're saying that these couples UM
of two women and two men are less likely to
(13:02):
fall into those roles. To understand that correctly, Yeah, these
studies have found that UM homosexual couples do a better
job of sharing UM childcare tasks equally. But even in
these studies of UM lesbian couples, there are still kind
of these UM traditional heteronormative gender roles, if you will,
(13:25):
that do emerge a lot of times, not as strongly
as they do in heterosexual couples. But you at some
point you still have one person who is UM has
a little more responsibility over childcare, and the other person
who has a little more responsibility of resource providing. But
if you're a small child trying to internalize, you know,
all this stuff, you would not necessarily feel that one
(13:47):
gender was limited to that, right exactly. That's kind of cool,
you know, You if you are growing up in like
you know, a mother and a father. You don't grow
up thinking, oh, you know, moms stay home with kids
and dads go to work. Whereas because you're in this
situation where you see two people the same gender figuring
out how to make it work and not saying, well,
just because you're this and this happen well, and I
think that. UM. It's also good to point out that,
(14:10):
you know, one of the main arguments UM against gay
marriage is that these children are going to UM by
being raised by two people of the same gender, it's
going to skew their gender identity. You know, a boy
raised by two women will be too feminine and vice
versa for a girl raised by two men. But UM,
(14:30):
there was a really good comprehensive research summary from the
American Psychological Association on Lesbian and Gay Parenting research, and
this is from Dr Charlotte Patterson at u v A,
and she points out that, you know, there are three
major categories of concerned about children of gay parents, UM,
such as the gender identity issues that I just talked about,
(14:52):
and UM, greater propensity towards mental breakdown, and just basic
you know, social maladjustment because they're in these kind of
novel family structures, and all of the research to date
has debunked all of those major concerns. And even with
UM again, I keep going back to this research on
lesbian couples, and it's just because there's UH, there's more
(15:14):
more of these child outcome studies for lesbian couples, and
it's found that in terms of UM scores of masculinity
and femininity the children UM, there are no there are
no differences between children raised in UM by lesbian parents
and children raised by heterosexual parents. You know, boys scored
you know, the same amount on masculinity as they would
(15:37):
either way, and they are no more likely to be gay.
So really there's nothing that UM two parents of different
genders can still in a kid that's can be any
different than what two people the same gender can. Yeah, exactly.
I mean, I think it's just kind of hammering home
this point that you know, the optimal structure is going
to be you know, people who are caring and committed
(15:59):
and you know, raising their children as best as they can.
And you can't boil that down to say that that
has to be a man, a married man, and a
married woman at home. Every day takes a village takes
a village. But lacking a village, it doesn't matter what
gender is in your village because it doesn't appear that
(16:21):
that gender instills any particular you know, it doesn't lower
your risk of going to jail. You know, that's sometimes
an argument they say for for boys who have male
figures around, they won't go to jail as often. It
doesn't matter. It's all about the resource development, right. Yeah,
and some people, you know, one question, um that this
research raised for me was, you know, does this mean
(16:43):
that you know, kids, you know particularly don't need fathers,
you know, or we just going way to overboard with
all of this this fatherhood stuff. And Dr Stacy was
quick to point out that, um, you know, that's that's
not the case at all. It has no thing to
do um with gender. Like a man can parent a
(17:03):
child on his own just as well as um, a
woman comparent a child. I mean, I think it just
happens a lot a lot more the women end up
being the caretakers because we have we physically have the babies. Um,
but one gender is not less able than the other
to be a good parent. Sounds good. Well, it's a
(17:25):
very interesting super study. Yeah, And jealous. You have to
talk to you the co author. Yeah, it was. It
was great talking to Dr Stacy. And again, the title
of the article is how does the gender of Parents Matter?
And it is in the Journal of Marriage and Family
if you want to check it out. I don't think
the full articles online, but you can check out the abstract.
(17:45):
And there are all sorts of UM related studies as well.
Like I said, this covered eighty one different parenting studies.
That's why it's a super study. That's why it's a
super study. And there are all still a lot of
a lot of questions. I mean, Dr Stacy said that
it was such a tedious process having to go back
and try to UM unravel all of these different variables
(18:08):
any when other researchers hadn't tried to unravel them at
all and come all on one study and there are still,
you know, questions left to answer. And UM even Dr
Hilton from University of Nevada, who UM who I talked
to as well, said that, you know, this is a
great first step, but it doesn't necessarily, you know, like
answer all of our questions about gender. But I think that, UM,
(18:28):
I think that it might be high time for us
to kind of stop with this knee jerk. Um. You
need a statement, yeah, that you need that. You absolutely
need a mom and a dad and that's the only
way that it's gonna work, that you're gonna have successful children.
All right, So, but we want to hear what you
(18:48):
guys think about this family structure. Is what particular gender
gifts a mother or a father give if they're necessary,
they're not, So email us mom stuff at stuffworks dot com,
and I think we have time for one or two
people who have already emailed to set mom stuff at
house stuffworks dot com. Got one here from Aaron about deodorant,
(19:13):
and she said, I think you missed one important part
in your podcast about deodorance, antiperspirants. Body odor was not
a problem till the nineteen forties and nineteen fifties. Women's
magazines began to market these new products as a way
to not offend guests. You may be entertaining, essentially telling
women that they had to be offending guests with their
female odor. I find it fascinating that the problem quote
(19:33):
unquote is one that was created in order to sell products.
Some modern examples of this are wrinkle creams, teeth whiteners
and female razor blades. Okay, and Jeanette, our next writer,
kind of picks up on that sort of same theme. Um,
she thinks that the US may have more of a
dependence on deodorant than other parts of the world. I'm American.
I've been living in Japan for a few years now.
The pharmacies here sell more of a selection of women's
(19:55):
deodorant than men's, but it's not that big, and of
that only one or two are also anti purseprant, and
the ones that include anti persport are usually American brands.
It seems like de odorant here is more of a
girly thing. I also say that because a few months
after I started doing my Japanese boyfriend, I noticed that
he does not use deodorant at all, as kind of
shocked as I thought men required it so they wouldn't
stink up every room they entered. But he doesn't smell
(20:15):
bad or have what spots under his arms, I would say,
not using deodorants typical of Japanese men. And maybe I
was attracted to my boyfriend because his diverse DNA scent
wasn't being masked by old spice and for men that
come to Japan have told me that they have trouble
finding deodorant the works for them. This made me think
that maybe we get hooked on tour during puberty and
our body gets accustomed to it. So when we skip
(20:36):
a day, we really noticed the smell and moisture. But
perhaps once our hormones level out, we don't need to
be sticking chemicals under our arms at all. All right, So,
if you have anything that you would like to send
our way, thoughts, feelings, impressions, email us, pictures, pictures, tasteful pictures.
Mom stuff at how stuff works dot com is the
(20:57):
email address, and dear in the week. Keep up with
what Molly and I are thinking about at our blog
how to stuff, and you can find it and a
whole host of interesting articles for you're reading pleasure at
how stuff works dot com for more on this and
(21:17):
thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com.
Want more how stuff works, check out our blogs on
the house stuff works dot com home page. Brought to
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