Wow... this old thread being bumped...!!
Having experience of parenting now that I didn't have in 2010 when I last posted in this discussion, I have a greater understanding of just what hard work being a parent is.
Yeah.. it's damned hard. You do your best, but so many more factors are involved than just being "good".
Amanda and I are very fortunate in many ways. We have two graduate incomes coming in. We live comfortably in a small town with a strong sense of community, very little crime and no racial, religious or ethnic tensions. I think it would have been much more difficult for us to bring our little girl up as we have done if any or all of those factors were involved. As it is, she's healthy, happy, well adjusted and smart. She enjoys school, has a lot of friends, has joined clubs and groups and has reaped the benefit of those character developing activities. She is well provided for and lives in a comfortable, loving, nurturing home environment.
None of the things listed above have anything to do with her parents sexuality. Any child growing up in such an environment should be well behaved.
Perhaps the only thing I can now possibly identify as giving the children of gay parents any sort of "advantage" is the manner of their conception.
Most (but I acknowledge that not all) families are planned these days. Easily available contraception and legal abortion not restrained by cost (both are free on the NHS) has enabled adult women of all classes and social status to decide when they want children and in my opinion that is a good thing.
However "accidents" do happen and some children can be conceived when not intended, or may even be unwelcomed. They may come when the parents are not financially stable, or even during a relationship breakdown.
These things affect the level of stability that a child can be born into, with all the concomitant knock-on difficulties that arise from that as they grow.
In the gay family that doesn't happen. Male same-sex couples either adopt or employ a surrogate mother. Female same-sex couples conceive via Assisted Fertilisation Technology. This means that all families are planned. It doesn't mean that we love our children any more than straight couples (I'd never claim that), but it does mean that we have chosen the time and conditions in which we start our families.
And I can assure you all for women, IVF is not an easy process. The difficulties and obstacles in the way of a successful conception are many and varied. To go through with it, a lesbian couple have to REALLY want that child.
We only have children that we really want and that takes an awful lot of potential negatives out of the equation from the very start.
Being a mum has been wonderful for me. It's impossible to convey the emotion I felt when the midwife gave me my newborn daughter in the delivery room. It has to be experienced to be known. But had I been a straight woman and for whatever reason not wanted my baby so much, what might I have felt in that moment instead...??
But my feelings of maternal fulfilment were very real and intense and I'm sure that for the vast, overwhelming majority of straight women, they feel the same. It's a mother thing, not a sexuality thing.
Had Amanda and I been poor, or living in a bad place, or in an unstable relationship. What then..?
There are too many factors involved in the discussion over whether gay parents are better than straight ones. Statistics alone don't tell the full story.