A new study shows lower graduation rates for children from gay and lesbian families

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.