A new study from Canada has found that High School graduation rates among children raised by same-sex couples are considerably lower than among children raised by opposite-sex married couples.

The study is much bigger and more robust than studies claiming that children raised by same-sex couples turn out no differently than children raised by their married, opposite-sex parents.

This latest study, published in the peer-reviewed Review of the Economics of the Household, drew on a 20 percent sub-set of Canadian census data from 2006 to look at High School graduation rates among children of same sex households compared with other family types.   

The study therefore contains a very large and truly representative sample of both gay and lesbian families in Canada which allowed the author to arrive at statistically robust findings, unlike earlier studies which used small sample, statistically unrepresentative samples of children raised in gay and lesbian households.  

The main finding is that, “Children living with gay and lesbian families in 2006 were about 65pc as likely to graduate compared to children living in opposite sex marriage families. Daughters of same-sex parents do considerably worse than sons.”

It doesn’t say why this is so, it simply points out the fact.

The study controls for all the usual variables such as the education of the parents and still finds a difference.

This leads the author to conclude, “In any event, it is time to investigate the difference and reject the conventional wisdom of ‘no difference’.”

PS. A blogger who calls himself ‘Humanisticus’ has attempted to rubbish the study on the grounds that it didn’t properly control for age and if it had it would have found no difference in the graduation rates. First the study did control for age. Second, the very small age differences at graduation between children of same-sex and opposite sex couples are not statistically significant.

‘Humanisticus’ suffers from a classic case of not seeing the beam in his own eye. He finds flaws in this study where there are none and refuses to see the enormous flaws in the studies claiming that children raised by same-sex couples do just as well as children raised by their own married, biological parents.