Does it matter if our parents are gay or straight?

On ABC TV’s Q&A this week Senator Penny Wong was asked to justify her same-sex family. Dr Simon Crouch looks into that issue with a world-first study into the overall health and wellbeing of children of same-sex attracted parents.

Doctors for the Family have grabbed headlines this week. Promoting their submission to the Senate Inquiry into Marriage Equality they emphasise their opinion that “the evidence is clear that children who grow up in a family with a mother and a father do better in all parameters than children without.”

This is a view that lacks substance and in and of itself perpetuates a discriminatory attitude that is all too common and potentially damaging. Beyondblue, the national depression initiative, understands this and only last week launched a campaign to combat some of this discrimination, which sees around 30 per cent of Australians holding negative attitudes towards same-sex attracted people.

In fact, contrary to the commonly promulgated view that same-sex attracted parents are harming their children the limited international research suggests that in general children with same-sex attracted parents are doing pretty well. Unfortunately this work has to date been mostly limited to families with lesbian parents, has only considered aspects of mental and social wellbeing, and has had relatively few participants. It is time to capture the complete health and wellbeing of all children with same-sex attracted parents in the Australian context and to truly understand what impact that stigma and discrimination has on these families.

The Australian Study of Child Health in Same-Sex Families will for the first time determine the complete physical, mental and social wellbeing of children with same-sex attracted parents and give a voice to these children so that they have the opportunity describe their experiences in their own words.