Support the show try Curiosity Stream and Nebula for free oh my god prepping for
a baby is wild i don't know what nesting is like but i was changing light switches and
painting walls and while i was doing all of that i ended up hearing this pete but a judge has
been on leave from his job since august after adopting a child paternity leave they call it
trying to figure out how to breastfeed no word on how that went oh right the shocking thing is this
isn't that shocking we expect this from trash humans like whoever this guy is it's lgbtq phobic
it harms men and it's implying that men can't or shouldn't parent what if your community was
so hostile to your parents that it ended up on the nighttime entertainment shows simply because
they exist what if you had two moms or two dads how does same-sex parenting affect your family
dynamic in general and how does it change how kids are raised does it does it have to
hey there humans trace here welcome back this is episode 204 again on dad parents we left off
asking do same-sex parents raise kids in the same way as different sex parents the
founding principle of family studies is that two present engaged and involved parents who are often
married to each other or in a long-term stable relationship are raising children historically
they were also of different sexes and the first big studies of parenting were held
in these post-war baby boomer traditional white picket fence ideals with 2.4 kids and a dog
families and blah blah but is that actually true is that the best way to raise kids we assumed it
was because that was the ideal of the time men and women being the mom and dad partner in that
traditional 2.4 kids in a dog picket fence world that's actually not as important as we thought and
in fact the science seems to say anyone can be a mom anyone can be a dad because dad isn't a person
with a penis dad is a set of traits and behaviors being a dad doesn't mean being male or even being
masculine it means being present engaged and involved and fulfilling certain traits in their
lives let me quote the american historical review quote recent historical research on the family has
revised some widely held myths about family life in the past as well as generalizations about the
impact of the grand processes of social change on the family and society and that change is ongoing
as we warp further into the 21st century researchers are going to look at a lot more
realistic snapshots of the world remember lots of snapshots over time 124 thousands or whatever you
get end game of science so finding that man dads and woman moms are less important it's kind of a
big deal and that is what they're finding but what is important having parents having parents who are
together having parents who cohabitate having parents who are present engaged and involved
but recently studying what sex the parents are and how that affects their children through
education social skills and future successes for that let's look at this huge study review
there's nothing there i just felt like it was more dramatic to turn you know like a professor like
there's a okay anyway let's look at this study cornell published a review of 79 scholarly studies
regarding same-sex parenting and of those found 75 of them said that children of gay and lesbian
parents fare no worse than other children 75 of the 79 75 said lesbian gay bisexual parentage
created well-adjusted and completely normal children if we're cool with that phrase you
know what is normal it's the 21st century after all of the four dissenting studies out of the 79
one was rebuked by hundreds of scientists as hyper flawed awesome and the other three had very small
samples of lgb parents and children though they did say there might be lower scholastic
performance but there was no explanation just a correlation and maybe more emotional issues again
no explanation in small sample sizes you get the idea and in fact an australian study of same-sex
parentage found that kids of same-sex couples are happier and were more well-adjusted than
children of different sex couples you don't want to draw that out to say they're way happier but
they're a little happier and in the netherlands the first place to legalize same-sex marriage
20 years ago kids of same-sex couples performed better in school both primary and secondary
school and most studies indicate that there is no causal difference between same-sex
and different sex parents no difference at all the american association for marriage and family
therapy says the same thing quote children with two moms or two dads fair just as well
as children with heterosexual parents remember the last episode when we talked about controlling
for variables you know just holding them constant throughout the experiment by controlling variables
we can find in terms of emotional functioning sexual orientation stigmatization gender role
behavior behavioral adjustment gender identity learning and grade point averages that children
raised by lesbian mothers or gay fathers did not differ from children raised by het parents
i can hear the doubting thomasina's out there how can that be aren't we whatever you know
that can be because humans are versatile we adapt we grow and we thrive the kid comes home to live
with you they are not pre-programmed with only one way to live and that being the best way when we
talk about involved fathers we're really talking about the behaviors that we associate with fathers
not what sex organs they have just like the careless whisperer george michael said
i will be your father figure i know i know it's not actually about that longitudinal studies
show no difference for adoptive parents social parents as in parents who are part of your family
legal parents step parents queer parents same-sex parents are mixed sex parents no difference at
all more research is always needed but the more studies that are released the more support we have
that non-majority family units are exactly the same in fact they're finding all families suffer
from the same failures things like fighting and parental infighting and of course issues
with emotional abuse and all of that that goes across the board humans are kind of crappy but
children of same-sex parents might have some benefits because adolescents with same-sex
parents reported feeling more connected at school children in gay and lesbian households are more
likely to talk about emotionally difficult topics they're more resilient more compassionate and
more tolerant and why would that be you know it's almost like there's a whole segment of
our society that's propagandizing each other to believe that same-sex parents are different or
somehow harmful to children or you know somehow paternity leave they call it trying to figure
out how to breastfeed no word on that one what a tool why would children of alternative families be
more resilient compassionate and tolerant i have a hypothesis it's my opinion i want to put that out
there first we're going to set this 21st century topic aside for a second we're going to pick up
a 19th and 20th century topic more familiar still hot older immigrant families so my hypothesis
is to equate immigrants with same-sex couples because they cannot hide who they are in public
they all get attacks and resentments from majority in the 1850s fear of immigrants ruining our cities
destroying our families was rampant in media and propaganda unruly dutch were taking over
elegant matches in new york city in the 1990s chinese salvadorian and indian immigrants were
attacked simply for being not white in america this is not a new issue globally though a 2012
study found that immigrants were more likely to start businesses and some of the biggest in the
world were started by immigrants google spacex huffington post kohl's ebay at t pfizer bioentech
madeira craft all founded by immigrants and that's just a small list there's lots more researchers
wanted to know why is it that immigrants start more businesses and they hypothesize that it's
because they are more comfortable with risk they left their home country to make a better
life that's a huge risk starting a business not as risky by comparison and their co-hypothesis
is immigrants have cross-cultural knowledge and this is when my brain made that connection would
you say there are parallels to same-sex families you know people who are forced to be themselves
in public no matter what they look like or feel people who have a view of the world that involves
risk and cross-cultural knowledge it might be a stretch but in my opinion that rings true and
what happens to the kids of those groups they grow up in a different environment than a kid of the
majority who can blend in who can disappear and not have all of those problems same-sex couples
like immigrant families and mixed-race families they cannot go to the grocery store to blend in
they stand out no matter what and kids are very observant so then they would ask uncomfortable
questions like why do i have two mommies and they don't conversations that are not easily
avoided and that other seven and eight-year-olds might not have with their parents i don't want to
beleaguer this hypothesis since i'm really just editorializing here but i'll say this
holding transparent and open conversations about how some kids have two daddies or two mommies
that can only be a benefit to children because transparency is great knowledge
is powerful and understanding how the world really works younger galaxy brain when parents
are two present engaged and involved humans and there's transparency knowledge and understanding
personal story it wasn't until adulthood that i realized that i thought of myself as white but
my classmates in my community didn't always you know i thought we were the same but no one asked
lauren ballard or brad decker about mexico our family is puerto rican by the way
no one called them race rodriguez in school at the cafeteria their yearbook prediction probably
focused on something about their dreams the sports they played the achievements or
extensions of their hobbies i was in band a little bit of theater played a bunch of different sports
mine said that i would probably jump on stage at ricky martin concerts and shout unodo's trace
it was one of my nicknames in high school now it's this totally great youtube channel but it wasn't a
nickname that i made up for myself it was assigned to me because of something that i couldn't control
and i pass which is very helpful and some on this list they pass more easily than others would
but the point is alternative families cannot pass as easily as majority families and
perhaps because of that the kids need to be more resilient more compassionate and more tolerant
because they can't pass for normal whatever that means same-sex couples the science says are no
different than normal couples they have the same struggles same family dynamics and maybe some
bonus ones if you want to call it that and they're the same family turns out abjett naskar's great
quote fits like a glove being homosexual is no more abnormal than being left-handed so what you
might be thinking now is isn't this episode about dad parents where do we end up with that well
something they don't tell you about being a new dad is that you've got big chunks of down time
so i found that i end up watching a lot of cool stuff online usually on nebula or curiosity stream
nebula is a streaming service that a bunch of us started to have a place to experiment and
explore ideas to fund each other's projects and dreams and you know lift up all of the
creations a rising tide lifts all boats as they say creators on nebula are amazing there's so
many different things that you can learn about one that i loved recently was the history of synths
i've always loved synth sound i'm big into indietronica but i don't know anything about
synths so that was really cool from volksgeist and of course you can watch all sorts of stuff
on nebula like regular videos that people put out from psychology to engineering we got a lot
of creators like 100 different creators now it's awesome sometimes i'll have long stints though
when the baby is sleeping so i can go and put on a doc a series on curiosity stream because cs has
thousands of documentaries and series that you can learn from like the secret history of our
evolution the best part both curiosity stream and nebula are bundled together it's only 14.79
a year that's less than a buck 25 a month that's not a trial that is the full price to get it use
my offer code at curiositystream.comtrace it'll support me and you'll get this great
deal the promo codes trace super easy to remember curiositystream.com slash phrase promo code trace
you get thousands of docs on curiosity stream so many videos on nebula updated all the time
i know it's awesome it's the best deal on the internet support the show and incidentally support
yourself by encouraging your brain to learn and be entertained at the same time so thanks so dads
are more of a concept than they are a person with a sex organ that we recognize as male
and instead their traits their behaviors and what are those things we'll get into those
pretty soon but we've gone through two parts so far our dad's parents really answer most
definitely are two dads or two moms parents really oh most definitely and for part three i wanna know
what's going on in dad's brain because babies will change it it's amazing let
me know in the comments what you think of the series so far and i'll see you in the future