The following piece was written by AME Campaign Director, Rodney Croome AM, and first appeared on the ABC The Drum.
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For Kids’ Sake, a new report on family and children written by University of Sydney law professor, Patrick Parkinson, and commissioned by the Australian Christian Lobby (ACL), is already being cited by prominent Australians as a basis for public policymaking.
Jeff Kennett, in his role as the head of anti-depression initiative, Beyond Blue, says the report shows that “heterosexual marriages are the best environment for the mental health of children”.
But the evidence cited by Professor Parkinson does not show this.
Parkinson’s case is essentially that kids are happier and healthier when their parents are married.
He collects a large array of statistics which show that children are worse off if their parents have short, unstable or serial relationships.
Cohabiting partners, divorced parents, step-parents and single parents will not find this report a comfortable read.
In contrast, Parkinson paints a rosy picture of the outcomes for children of married parents.
The obvious extrapolation is that if marriage is good for the kids of opposite-sex couples, it will also be good for the children being raised by same-sex couples.
Australian studies show that up to 25 per cent of same-sex couples are currently raising children and that over 80 per cent of same-sex couples with children under five years would like to marry.
We also know these kids aren’t disadvantaged in any way by their parents’ gender or sexual orientation. In the words of the Australian Psychological Association:
Parenting practices and children’s outcomes in families parented by lesbian and gay parents are likely to be at least as favourable as those in families of heterosexual parents.
For the kids’ sake we should not just allow same-sex marriages, we should demand them.
Obviously, Parkinson and the Australian Christian Lobby foresaw this interpretation of the report.
Parkinson makes a careful qualification about “marriage” – it must be between two biological parents, something two parents of the same sex can never be.
This qualification is not only what policymakers like Jeff Kennett are picking up on.
Groups like the ACL have made the supposed link between marriage and biological parenthood the cornerstone of their campaign against same-sex marriage.
Problem is, this convenient exclusion of same-sex couples from marriage and family has no basis anywhere in the copious research Parkinson cites.
Parkinson’s sources are very careful to use terms like “two continuously married parents” to define their ideal, and terms like “step-parents”, “new dads” and “non-resident parents” for what they believe is less than ideal.
It’s true that one of Parkinson’s researchers, US Professor Susan Brown, refers to “married biological parents”, but she is careful to define this term as excluding only “married step, cohabiting, and single-parent families”.
It’s also true Parkinson cites research showing “father-absence” as a problem, but in his own words this is about “fathers (who) drop out of children’s lives when the parents are not living together”.
The point is that the research Parkinson cites looks at the effect on children of disruption or instability in family life.
That disruption can take the form of divorce, the stress on a single parent, a step-parent moving in, or a dead-beat dad.
What the researchers are not looking at is same-sex parenting because most children born to same-sex partners know both partners as their parents from birth until adulthood, and experience none of the instability and disruption identified as the cause of poor child-rearing outcomes.
Sure, some same-sex partners with children have unhappy relationships, split up, meet new partners, or are raising children from previous relationships.
But the rate of disruption and instability in two-mum and two-dad households is no greater than it is in the general population, and could possibly be lower according to the latest research in this area.
Professor Parkinson’s report has highlighted a fault line running right through the case against same-sex marriage and parenting from groups like the Australian Christian Lobby.
These groups trumpet the benefits of marriage for heterosexual couples and children while stridently excluding same-sex couples and their children from these benefits.
They decry cohabiting relationships and yet insist same-sex union should only be considered de facto unions.
They say the reason for this apparent paradox is that kids should be raised by their biological parents, yet the research they cite to make their case is about the kind of family instability that has nothing to do with parental gender.
No doubt the Australian Christian Lobby will widely tout the Parkinson report as vindication of its opposition to same-sex marriage and parenting, while more public figures like Jeff Kennett will uncritically swallow what Parkinson claims.
But when we look more closely at the Parkinson Report we can see it is actually a sustained case for respecting and strengthening the bonds between same-sex partners and their children by allowing these partners to marry.
Rodney Croome AM, is an honorary lecturer in sociology at the University of Tasmania.
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