Social Science Research 41 (2012) 786787

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Social Science Research

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Response to Paul Amato, David Eggebeen, and Cynthia Osborne

Mark Regnerus

I had hoped that my words in response to those of Paul Amato, David Eggebeen, and Cynthia Osborne could be few, and
after digesting their comments, I am content to be brief. Each voices condence in what the New Family Structures Study
(NFSS) is and can do, and expresses appropriate concern that readers remain aware of what it cannot do. I conveyed similar
sentiment in the manuscript itself, and need only echo theirs here. I recognize, with Paul and Cynthia, that organizations may
utilize these ndings to press a political program. And I concur with them that that is not what data come prepared to do.
Paul offers wise words of caution against it, as did I in the body of the text. Implying causation hereto parental sexual orientation or anything else, for that matteris a bridge too far.
When I began this data collection effort, I did so with a simple pledge, and that was to investigate and report the basic
story about group differences, come what may. I imagined that the resultswhatever they would becould well create
controversy. But I never wavered from my interest in the empirical research questions underlying the study: what are
the lives of adult children of men and women who have same-sex relationships like? Are they different in notable ways from
others who report other household experiences? There was going to be a social-scientic story to tell, and I considered it my
job to report it. That is what scientists are supposed to do.
Amato and Osborne were there at the beginning of the NFSS data collection effort, andtogether with several other talented family scholarshelped make the NFSS what it is: a versatile, nationally-representative dataset with an emphasis on
family and household structure, independent of its utility in helping clarify what same-sex (and other) households look like.
As all three caution, the sample size of respondents whose parents report a same-sex relationship is substantial but not large
enough to explore some of the more ne-grained distinctions that may well be present. In subsequent studies, we will explore in as much detail as we are ableemploying the extensive household calendarswhat David calls the demographic
and dynamic contours of the lives of children who report parental same-sex relationships.
Others are invited to as well. As noted in the manuscript itself, the data are to become publicly available in Fall 2012, and
the questionnaire and codebook are already available for perusal at the NFSS study website: www.prc.utexas.edu/nfss. Additionally, more exhaustive results from this study are available online at the website, including those that conveyper Amatos and Osbornes requesta clearer sense of the magnitude of such differences. Whether the differences that emerged
ought to be considered decits is, of course, debatable (Stacey and Biblarz, 2001). But the presence of numerous differences
is obvious, and even decits may well prove to pose risk factors later or in different domains. (See, for example, the association between more numerous sexual partners and depression among young women outlined in Regnerus and Uecker
(2011).)
As each of the three explicitly or indirectly notes, family instabilitywhatever the sourcesis often a top culprit in predicting dysfunction in the lives of children, and the data analyses in my article likewise point in this direction. In fact, the
most signicant story in this study is arguably not about the differences among youngadult children whose parents who
have had same-sex relationships and those whose parents are married biological mothers and fathers, but between the latter
and nearly everyone else. Contexts of instabilitywhether in gay or straight householdsappear suboptimal for childrens
healthy long-term development. While much is made in the scholarly literature about resilient youththose who thrive
despite the odds against them and in lieu of an optimal family contextresilience is, on average and perhaps by denition,
not normal. Moreover, even resilient children would likely prefer to have engaging parents who are not simply in their lives
but in their households. Adults of good will, and most family scholars, typically agree on this. Whether some relationship
arrangements are more systematically prone to disorganization than others is an important and empirically-testable
question.

E-mail address: regnerus@prc.utexas.edu

0049-089X/$ - see front matter 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ssresearch.2012.05.003

M. Regnerus / Social Science Research 41 (2012) 786787

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The results herein, therefore, would certainly seem to critique the popular American narrative I call Romantic Individualism, a set of cultural scripts which appear to guide the manner in which most adultsyoung or old, gay or straight, white
or blacktend to construct, evaluate, and regularly deconstruct their most intimate relationships. The primacy of romantic
love and sexual fulllment trumps, for very many, the value of delity, stability, loyalty, integrity, and familial love as a key
generator and sustainer of intimate relationships. In step with Andrew Cherlins ne analysis of American relationship habits
in The Marriage-Go-Round, this studys ndings certainly suggest that Americans reconsider the pace with which they cycle
in and out of sexual relationships, and the underlying logic behind their relational decision-making. Simply put, serial
monogamy (or worse, non-monogamy) is not working for our children.
Finally, Osborne wonders why it is theoretically compelling to study the outcomes of children from same-sex relationships, apart from valid scholarly curiosity and, in this case, an emergent conundrum. While I came to the subject matter largely for the latter reasons, there is a case to be made for the former. Theoretical motivation can be prompted in part by
conclusions from studies of other diminished contexts of kin altruism, like adoption, whicheven if it occurs early in
lifetypically proves to elevate risk when compared with married, biological parenting, as I too observed in the study results.
Of course to be adopted is preferable to spending extended time in the foster care system. That is not at issue here. What is,
however, is a conceptual model about why this combinationbiological mother and father and their marital stabilitymight
remain ideal, the realities of Americans complicated lives notwithstanding. As Cherlin (2009) asserts, parental remarriage,
even if it proves to be stable, seldom simply diminishes risk in children. Osborne similarly notes that children of remarriage
may not experience the gains associated with a new marriage because they lack the biological relatedness to each parent. . .
Agreed, and upon this foundation a testable theory about genetic relatedness, relational stability, and childrens longterm ourishing could be constructed.
The biologically-intact, stable nuclear family may seem like an endangered speciesit is notbut it remains the most secure environment for child development, as the analyses herein suggest. What sociologists Sara McLanahan and Gary Sandefur spoke of in 1994 remains true today: If we were asked to design a system for making sure that childrens basic needs
were met, we would probably come up with something quite similar to the two-parent family ideal. Its advantages are documentable: access to the time and money of two adults, a system of checks and balances, and dual biological connections to
the child, all of it heightening the likelihood that the parents would identify with the child and be willing to sacrice for that
child, and it would reduce the likelihood that either parent would abuse the child. This study reafrms that wisdom.
References
Cherlin, Andrew J., 2009. The Marriage-Go-Round: The State of Marriage and the Family in America Today. Vintage Books, New York.
McLanahan, Sara, Sandefur, Gary, 1994. Growing Up with a Single Parent: What Hurts, What Helps. Harvard University Press, Cambridge.
Regnerus, Mark., Uecker, Jeremy., 2011. Premarital Sex in America: How Young Americans Meet, Mate, and Think about Marrying. Oxford University Press,
New York.
Stacey, Judith., Biblarz, Timothy.J., 2001. (How) does the sexual orientation of parents matter? American Sociological Review 66 (2), 159183.