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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 confidence 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 findings 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 here—to parental sexual ori-

entation or anything else, for that matter—is 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 results—whatever they would be—could 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-scientific 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, and—together with several other tal-

ented family scholars—helped 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 fine-grained distinctions that may well be present. In subsequent studies, we will ex-

plore in as much detail as we are able—employing the extensive household calendars—what 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. Addi-

tionally, more exhaustive results from this study are available online at the website, including those that convey—per Ama-

to’s and Osborne’s request—a clearer sense of the magnitude of such differences. Whether the differences that emerged

ought to be considered ‘‘deficits’’ is, of course, debatable (Stacey and Biblarz, 2001). But the presence of numerous differences

is obvious, and even ‘‘deficits’’ may well prove to pose risk factors later or in different domains. (See, for example, the asso-

ciation 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 instability—whatever the sources—is often a top culprit in pre-

dicting dysfunction in the lives of children, and the data analyses in my article likewise point in this direction. In fact, the

most significant story in this study is arguably not about the differences among young–adult 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 instability—whether in gay or straight households—appear suboptimal for children’s

healthy long-term development. While much is made in the scholarly literature about ‘‘resilient’’ youth—those who thrive

despite the odds against them and in lieu of an optimal family context—resilience is, on average and perhaps by definition,

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.

0049-089X/$ - see front matter © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ssresearch.2012.05.003

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

Social Science Research 41 (2012) 786–787

Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect

Social Science Research

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ssresearch

The results herein, therefore, would certainly seem to critique the popular American narrative I call ‘‘Romantic Individ-

ualism,’’ a set of cultural scripts which appear to guide the manner in which most adults—young or old, gay or straight, white

or black—tend to construct, evaluate, and regularly deconstruct their most intimate relationships. The primacy of romantic

love and sexual fulfillment trumps, for very many, the value of fidelity, stability, loyalty, integrity, and familial love as a key

generator and sustainer of intimate relationships. In step with Andrew Cherlin’s fine analysis of American relationship habits

in The Marriage-Go-Round, this study’s findings 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 relation-

ships, apart from valid scholarly curiosity and, in this case, an emergent conundrum. While I came to the subject matter lar-

gely 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, which—even if it occurs early in

life—typically 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 combination—biological mother and father and their marital stability—might

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 children’s long-

term flourishing could be constructed.

The biologically-intact, stable nuclear family may seem like an endangered species—it is not—but it remains the most se-

cure environment for child development, as the analyses herein suggest. What sociologists Sara McLanahan and Gary Sande-

fur spoke of in 1994 remains true today: ‘‘If we were asked to design a system for making sure that children’s basic needs

were met, we would probably come up with something quite similar to the two-parent family ideal.’’ Its advantages are doc-

umentable: 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 sacrifice for that

child, and it would reduce the likelihood that either parent would abuse the child.’’ This study reaffirms 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), 159–183.

M. Regnerus / Social Science Research 41 (2012) 786–787

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