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Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse • 663 S. Rancho Santa Fe Road Suite 222 San Marcos CA 92078www.jennifer-roback-morse.com • email: drj@jennifer-roback-morse.com • 760/295-9278
©2007 No part of this document may be reproduced or disseminated in any way without the expressed written consent of theRuth Institute.
Spin cycle: thelesbian parentingstory that wasn’t
By Jennifer Roback Morse, Ph.D.
How an event about building character inchildren became headline advocacy forgays.
A headline squawking “Lesbian parents better at raising children” flew around theEnglish-speaking world last week, having been released byThe Times of London.No doubt this thrilled the gay lobby, whilealarming traditionalists of all parties. But thereal story here is not about lesbians. The realstory is the media’s severe case of GayInfatuation Syndrome: anything that makesgays look good is newsworthy. Thisseriously misleading headline should cautionreaders to make a habit of lookingbehindthe headlines. There may be, as in this case,nothing there.The first indication of a mismatch betweenthe headline and the story is that it cites nonew study or research showing that lesbian parents are “better”. Here is the part of thereport on which the headline is based:"Speaking at the launch at the think tank Demos of a report on the influence of character on life, Scott said: “Lesbians make better parents than a man and a woman.”"His arguments are supported by expertswho have found, over years of research, thatchildren brought up by female couples aremore aspirational and more confident inchampioning social justice. They show nomore tendencies towards homosexualitythan the offspring of heterosexual parents."Whoa! Hold on here. Since when is being"aspirational" and "confident inchampioning social justice" the high-water mark of good parenting? But I digress. Thestory cites neither specific "experts" nor anyof the research supposedly produced over many years. There is no new research, just arecycling of the same old stuff. There is,quite literally, nothing there.The expert quoted is Dr. Stephen Scott,director of research at the National Academy
 
for Parenting Practitioners.Ididn’t know
 
what a “parenting practitioner” was or whyanyone should need an academy for it, so Ilooked it up. It turns out that the NAPP wasestablished by an agency of the Britishgovernment:"The National Academy for ParentingPractitioners was set up in 2007 by theDepartment for Children, Schools andFamilies (DCSF) to provide the parentingworkforce with objective evidence basedsupport in order to improve the servicesoffered to parents in England."The parenting workforce? Have we reallylost the ability to see the point of personalrelationships and kinship? Do we have toredefine the care that parents naturally give
 
Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse • 663 S. Rancho Santa Fe Road Suite 222 San Marcos CA 92078www.jennifer-roback-morse.com • email: drj@jennifer-roback-morse.com • 760/295-9278
©2007 No part of this document may be reproduced or disseminated in any way without the expressed written consent of theRuth Institute.
their children as a special sector of the labor market, bolstering it with “objectiveevidence”?Well, yes, if you belong to the British rulingclass and you no longer have any idea whatit is that parents naturally do for their children. Professionalism, however, canapparently work miracles, as  NAPP’s“vision”tells us:"Our vision is that all parents who need itshould be able to access quality supportfrom trained practitioners capable of helpingthem to raise their children to be happy,healthy, safe, ready to learn and to make a positive contribution and achieve economicwellbeing."This is scarcely even a charity designed tohelp real flesh and blood families. Instead of mothers learningfrom their mothers, or neighbors helping neighbors, the Britishgovernment has established a corporatistinstitution, to professionalize child care.And what was the occasion for Dr. Scott’soutburst of enthusiasm for father-absenthouseholds? As near as I can tell, it was ameeting of a group called Demos, whichwas highlighting its new publication,
 Building Character 
. The point of this publication was to analyze the impact of different parenting styles on the children'scharacter development. It seems to be a perfectly sensible report, well worthy of discussion, as it emphasizes that even parents of modest means can learn the skillsthey need to better care for their children.However, the report had the usualconservative fly in the progressive ointment:children of divorced or step-parents don't doas well.According to the Independent, 
 
another paper presented at the symposiumshowed they must struggle much harder todevelop “skills” such as such as empathy,self-control and application:"In ablow to the huge numbers of parentswho are divorced or remarried, the studyalso found that children with married parentswere twice as likely to develop good skillsas those living with stepfamilies or single parents."Could this have been the stimulusfor Dr.Scott’s family diversity boosterism? I canhardly believe they spent all day talkingabout lesbian parenting skills. The poor dears weren’t even mentioned in the report:there simply weren’t enough such couples inthe sample to study.So here arethe facts: no new data on lesbian parenting, but new data further demonstrating the superiority of married parents. At a technocratic gab-fest aboutupskilling the “parenting workforce” oneguy spouts his opinion about lesbian parents.And the headline reading "Lesbian parents better at raising children" goes viralworldwide.The conference and report that were theostensible subjects of the article had nothing--repeat, nothing --to do with lesbians, as parents or anything else. A reporter 
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