Ok, well since no one wants to comment I will.
Here's what' wrong with the study: First what the authors themselves admit too: (My comments in bold)
1. This study has several limitations. First, it has a nonrandom sample.
Achenbach's sample is completely random, and covers every demographic, by race, ethnicity, religion, age of parents, socioeconomic status, single, married, and divorced parents, in addition it covers every urban, and suburban population in every region of the United States.
2. At T1 and T2, some NLLFS participants expressed fears that legislation could be enacted to rescind the parenting rights of lesbian mothers.
The mothers should have been dropped from the sample because the variables of the questionnaire were decidedly important to the accuracy of the study
3. A second limitation is that the data did not include the Achenbach Youth Self- Report or Teacher’s Report Form.39 A more comprehensive assessment would have included reports from all 3 sources.
More comprehensive she says. Yeah right, not only would it have made this study more credible, it would have purposefully avoided Simpson's Paradox
4. final limitation is that although the NLLFS and the normative samples are similar in socioeconomic
status, they are neither matched nor controlled for race/ethnicity or region of residence.
Yep, it makes a huge difference, not a little tiny one that this "researcher" is trying to portray.
5. The NLLFS sample is drawn from first-wave planned lesbian families who were initially clustered
around metropolitan areas with visible lesbian communities, which were much less diverse than they
are today; recruiting was limited to the relatively small number of prospective mothers who felt safe
enough to identify publicly as lesbian, who had the economic resources to afford DI, and who, in the
pre-Internet era, were affiliated with the communities in which the study was advertised.
Yep,
further messing up the reliability of the study's conclusions. In fact, I would say that as studies go, this is
tantamount to reckless!
Now my other observations, you know things she's not acknowledging:
6. This study had 78 - T5 participants, and all but one couple had a single child, with the other having twins. The Achenbach normative comprised of 100's of thousands of families, and with mixed sibling sizes. The fact that the researchers neglected to mention that is not surprising.
7. The question is often not just how well same sex parents and their children fare, but compared
with whom? Should a single lesbian mother be compared with a single heterosexual mother? If so,
divorced or never married? Should a two-mother family be compared with a two-biological-parent
family, a mother/father family headed by one biological parent and one stepparent, or a single-parent
family? It all depends on what the researcher wants to know. Identifying appropriate comparison
groups has proved vexing, and no consistent or wholly convincing approach has emerged.
8. There were no statistical controls to weed out non heterogeneity.
9. The authors of the study -
“The gender of parents only matters in ways that don’t matter.”
They don’t matter to lesbians, obviously. But they might matter to others.
10. The Controls. The study does not use married biological parents as controls, but rather scores them against the "Achenbach’s normative sample of American youth". This should raise red flags. And if you scroll down the study it shows this sample compared to the study sample and there are significant differences. Moreover, many details are simply left out of the description, which raises another red flag. Why no head to head comparisons of lesbian co-mothers against married biological dads?
11. Sperm Donation. Sperm donors are screened to be of above-average genetic quality. Male donors are taller, more attractive, and more intelligent than the average man. Thus the children of sperm donors should be genetically higher in quality than the children of married biological couples. That translates to higher achievement, high social status, and generally better outcomes for children.
12. The Achenbach normative sample captures the dysfunction in the state of the modern American family. This study compares lesbian co-mothers to non-biological fathers by using sperm donors. Why do you think there aren't any studies that compare lesbian co-mothers to married biological fathers? What do you think that study would find?
13. The authors themselves. Nanette Gartrell, is a gay woman who has a strong political motivation to provide positive results. Problem is that this study could not possibly be duplicated if properly controlled for.
14. And finally the data itself. The authors refer several times to "previously referenced" reports, concerning the data set. I'm willing to believe that the questionnaires themselves were interpreted correctly, however, what I'd like to see are the notes on the comparison controls. You know, whether the teachers, and children themselves agreed with ole Mom.
Tim-