# Why do babies need a mother and a father? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [December 25, 2008, 7:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-babies-need-a-mother-and-a-father/478631 "2008-12-25T07:20:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [December 25, 2008, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-babies-need-a-mother-and-a-father/478631/21 "2008-12-25T18:19:26Z")
> [@Maastricht](#): > > This question has been researched exhaustively. [Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_parenting) sums it up nicely: Given that the Wikipedia editors put the caveats they do on that article - “currently in dispute concerning points of view expressed in this section”, “contains weasel words, vague phrasing that often accompanies biased or unverifiable information” - I’d be reluctant to call the research exhaustive. It is certainly clear that there is no evidence of major risk to a child from having gay parents and that there is no conclusive evidence that having committed and present role models of both sexes regularly involved is of benefit either. That is a long way from saying that there is solid evidence of no benefit. In fact there is [some research](http://www.cfii.ca/fiion/programs.htm)that does suggest strongly that having an involved father is more protective than being raised exclusively matriarchially. > [@](#): > > ``` > “The variable that is most consistently associated with positive life outcomes is the quality of the father-child relationship (Amato, 1998; Furstenberg & Harris, 1993; Lamb, 1997).” > > “Children are better off when their relationship with their father is secure, supportive, reciprocal, sensitive, close, nurturing, and warm (Biller, 1993; Easterbrooks & Goldberg, 1984; Lamb, 1986, 1997; Radlin, 1981).” > > (The Effects of Father Involvement: A Summary of the Research Evidence by Sarah Allen, MSc and Kerry Daly, PhD, University of Guelph) > > “Several studies on fathers provide evidence that positive father involvement contributes to the cognitive, social, and identity development of the child (e.g. Lamb, 1997; Lewis, 1997).” > > “Additionally, positive relationships have been established between father involvement and their wives. marital satisfaction (de Luccie, 1995; McBride & Mills, 1993) and between father involvement and fathers. feelings of parental competence (Beitel & Parke, 1998; McBride, 1989).” > > “In today.s context of important social changes, father involvement is an integral part of the well being of the child and of the family.” > > (STATUS OF RESEARCH ON FATHERS IN CANADA by Diane Dubeau, Psycho-education and Psychology Department, University of Québec in Outaouais (UQO) Associated researcher for the Group for Research and Action on the Victimization of Children (GRAVE) > > ``` Not much has been done on children raised without strong and present female exposure. It would be hard to say anything much about that from an evidenced based POV other than that there is no evidence that it causes any harm. There are several problems with any research in this area. One problem is the difficulty of adequately controlling for other variables - socioeconomic status, degree of commitment to the task of rearing children, extended family, exposure to other sources of other sex role models, etc. Another is that most people doing and interpreting the research do have particular POVs - on both sides of the question. The fact that the Righties want to outlaw gay adoption make those on the other side eager to interpret the data in an equally extreme manner. Understandable but perhaps misguided and not in the best interest of [all gays.](http://www.fira.ca/page.php?id=116) Gay men are sometimes biological fathers as well. Dismissing the importance of fathers (as part of dismissing the importance of having a mother and a father) enables those who would like to keep those men out of their own children’s lives. ---
**Author:** ![shallora](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f9ae1b/32.png) [@shallora](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/shallora)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2008, 12:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-babies-need-a-mother-and-a-father/478631/22 "2008-12-26T00:46:03Z")
I will agree with most all of the above, assuming that we’re all talking about raising a child with \*\*same-sex parents with moderate- to generous-incomes in a first-world Western culture \*\*only. Same-sex parents in third-world countries: None of the above applies. Same-sex parents in first-world countries but whom live in poverty or with other social cancers (divorce, abusive households, etc): It doesn’t matter what the sexes of the parents are (hetero, homo, whatever). The child has a much higher chance of being scr\*wed up. ---
**Author:** ![outlierrn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/outlierrn/32/3005_2.png) [@outlierrn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/outlierrn)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2008, 2:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-babies-need-a-mother-and-a-father/478631/23 "2008-12-26T02:55:13Z")
one to nurture one to goad ---
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2008, 4:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-babies-need-a-mother-and-a-father/478631/24 "2008-12-26T04:08:52Z")
Kids need frequent exposure to adults of both genders because it teaches us what people are like. The nuclear family is a convenient way to give a huge number of kids this exposure, but I don’t think it’s _vital_ that their role models be their parents; it just requires more effort to secure the role model of the absent sex if the parent is single or both parents are the same gender. ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2008, 1:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-babies-need-a-mother-and-a-father/478631/25 "2008-12-26T13:53:00Z")
Fathers and often mothers did not “raise” children in the past. The upper classes had nannies and mammies who do that. Having fathers involved in child care is a very recent revolution. Most of them saw their children maybe at breakfast and supper. Mothers did all the day-to-day work of child raising. Anyone over fifty years old knows what I am talking about. ---
**Author:** ![Fuzzy\_Dunlop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/848f3c/32.png) [@Fuzzy\_Dunlop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fuzzy_Dunlop)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2008, 2:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-babies-need-a-mother-and-a-father/478631/26 "2008-12-26T14:12:20Z")
> [@Punintentional](#): > > Is this argument at all like “Gay marriage will ruin the institution of marriage”, where it seems like it’s more about the anti-gay than it is about the actual issue? I think a relatively small proportion of people are, while wrong, at least internally consistent about their views. These would be people who view single moms as harlots or at best, widows in an unfortunate situation. They’re biological mommies though, so I’ve never heard anyone say they should lose their kids. Single moms should just remarry so there’s a dad in the picture. So from this point of view, gay adoption is legitimately different. On the other hand, the overwhelming majority of people I know that are opposed to gays and lesbians being able to adopt are just anti-gay. They don’t have a problem with single parents, just two gay parents. In my experience if you really press this type of person you find that they can’t believe two gay people could raise a child and have it not turn out gay. I think the scientific evidence is clear on the issue and it’s mostly just boring old anti-gay beliefs at work. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2008, 4:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-babies-need-a-mother-and-a-father/478631/27 "2008-12-26T16:06:16Z")
> [@Annie-Xmas](#): > > Fathers and often mothers did not “raise” children in the past. The upper classes had nannies and mammies who do that. > > Having fathers involved in child care is a very recent revolution. Most of them saw their children maybe at breakfast and supper. Mothers did all the day-to-day work of child raising. > > Anyone over fifty years old knows what I am talking about. Certainly the circumstances of the Victorian upper classes and the Plantation owners of the antebellum South don’t count as the historic norm? Nor really does what we saw on Ozzie and Harriet or what a generation aspired to after WW2. That “traditional” family structure - a mother who stayed home and raised the children while the father went off to work and was most uninvolved in childcare - was never the major model across the world and hardly even a real norm even in 50’s America. As **John Mace** mentioned, on an evolutionary scale it really did “take a village” to raise a child. And across much of the world it is still true that children are very often raised in extended kinship circumstances with regular exposure both to Dad and uncles and Mom and aunts and grandparents and cousins often in one household. But let’s focus just on the [history of family structure in America.](http://www.oah.org/pubs/magazine/family/mintz.html) > [@](#): > > Few subjects are more shrouded in myths, misconceptions, and misleading generalizations than the history of the family… > > ``` > * It was only in the 1920s that, for the first time, a majority of American families consisted of a breadwinner husband, a homemaker wife, and children attending school. > * The most rapid increase in unwed pregnancies took place between 1940 and 1958, not in the libertine 1960s, and that teenage childbearing was higher in the 1950s than today. > * The defining characteristics of the 1950s family—a rising birth rate, a stable divorce rate, and declining age of marriage—were historical aberrations, out of line with long-term historical trends. > * Throughout American history, most families have needed more than one breadwinner to support themselves. ... > > ``` > > … Americans are prone to romanticizing the past and confusing historical fantasy and reality. This is especially true when Americans ponder our society’s “bedrock” institution, the family. … > > … a majority of colonial Americans probably spent some time in a step-family. Family size and composition also varied according to the household’s economic needs. Many children left their parents’ homes before puberty to work as servants or apprentices in other households. > > Perhaps the biggest difference between free families in colonial America and families today is that colonial society placed relatively little emphasis on familial privacy. Community authorities and neighbors supervised and intervened in family life. In New England, selectmen oversaw ten or twelve families, removed children from “unfit” parents, and ensured that fathers exercised proper family government. … > > … Two new patterns of family life—those of the urban working class and of the middle class—emerged during the early nineteenth century. Far more numerous than urban middle-class families were working-class families. The quickening pace of commerce during the early nineteenth century not only increased the demand for middle-class clerks and shopkeepers, but for unskilled and skilled manual workers, such as carters, coal heavers, day laborers, delivery people, dockworkers, packers, and porters. Manual workers earned extremely low incomes and in many of these families, wives and children were forced to work to maintain even a low standard of living. … urban working-class families emphasized a cooperative family economy. Typically, a male laborer earned just two-thirds of his family’s income. The other third was earned by his wife and children. … It was not until the 1920s that the cooperative family economy gave way to the family-wage economy, which allowed a male breadwinner to support his family on his wages alone. … Among the urban middle class, a new pattern of marriage developed, based primarily on companionship and affection; a new division of domestic roles appeared, which assigned the wife to care full-time for her children and to maintain the home; and a new conception of childhood arose that looked at children not as little adults, but as special creatures who needed attention, love, and time to mature. … The new urban middle class defined itself by a strict segregation of sexual spheres, intense mother-child bonds, and the idea that children needed to be protected from the corruptions of the outside world. Even at its inception, however, this new family form, which some extol as an ideal, was beset by certain latent tensions. One source of tension involved the role of the father, who was becoming more psychologically separate from his family. Although fathers thought of themselves as breadwinners and household heads, and their wives and children as their dependents, in fact men’s connection to their family was becoming essentially economic. … the divorce rate also began to rise … > > … During the Great Depression… The divorce rate fell, since fewer people could afford one, but desertions soared. By 1940, 1.5 million married couples were living apart. … > > … If any decade has come to symbolize the traditional family, it is the 1950s. The average age of marriage for women dropped to twenty; divorce rates stabilized; and the birthrate doubled. Yet the images of family life that appeared on television were misleading; only 60 percent of children spent their childhoods in male breadwinner, female homemaker households To summarize: on an evolutionary scale and in practicality still across much of the world, fathers are involved more than that 50’s image norm. In the history of America the model of the nuclear family with a male breadwinner with a mother staying home working exclusively on child rearing and homemaking is an invention mainly of several decades in the 20th century and were associated with rising divorce and separation rates. The model was never as common as it has been made out to be. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2008, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-babies-need-a-mother-and-a-father/478631/28 "2008-12-26T16:29:59Z")
> [@outlierrn](#): > > one to nurture > one to goad Good cop, bad cop? Stranger ---
**Author:** ![Dangerosa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Dangerosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dangerosa)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2008, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-babies-need-a-mother-and-a-father/478631/29 "2008-12-26T17:31:44Z")
One possible thought is that - as a population - it may turn out that gay households are BETTER at raising kids. People who have to go through extra effort to choose to parent (adoption, infertility, surrogacy) are going to be different parents than people who just “have” their kids through accident or because its expected. Although traditionally adopted kids have additional issues - most people do not believe that has to do with the parents, but because as a population adopted kids have often been through a lot before the adoption, are more likely (particularly in the case of domestic adoption) to have ADD/ADHD, are perhaps more likely to have been exposed to alcohol or drugs in utero. Also there is the theory that people who had to work with a social worker in order to get their child are more likely to turn to mental health professionals if issues arise - and are more prepped for issues as its part of the learning that goes on when adopting. ---
**Author:** ![Anne\_Neville](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Anne\_Neville](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anne_Neville)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2008, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-babies-need-a-mother-and-a-father/478631/30 "2008-12-26T17:49:23Z")
> [@Dangerosa](#): > > People who have to go through extra effort to choose to parent (adoption, infertility, surrogacy) are going to be different parents than people who just “have” their kids through accident or because its expected. One difference is that those things all cost money. Poor people aren’t going to be able to do any of those things. There’s a very strong correlation between socioeconomic status and how well your kids turn out. If you can afford to adopt or go through infertility treatments, chances are good that you’ll be able to afford good nutrition, medical care, good schooling, treatment for problems like ADD/ADHD, and all that stuff later in your kid’s life. ---
**Author:** ![Beware\_of\_Doug](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/278dde/32.png) [@Beware\_of\_Doug](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beware_of_Doug)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2008, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-babies-need-a-mother-and-a-father/478631/31 "2008-12-26T18:32:25Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > Certainly the circumstances of the Victorian upper classes and the Plantation owners of the antebellum South don’t count as the historic norm? Nor really does what we saw on Ozzie and Harriet or what a generation aspired to after WW2. That “traditional” family structure - a mother who stayed home and raised the children while the father went off to work and was most uninvolved in childcare - was never the major model across the world and hardly even a real norm even in 50’s America. > […] > To summarize: on an evolutionary scale and in practicality still across much of the world, fathers are involved more than that 50’s image norm. In the history of America the model of the nuclear family with a male breadwinner with a mother staying home working exclusively on child rearing and homemaking is an invention mainly of several decades in the 20th century and were associated with rising divorce and separation rates. The model was never as common as it has been made out to be. Never underestimate people’s willingness to rewrite history. Especially cultural history more than a generation or two old, and _very_ especially anything to do with the N-w D–l era, which conservative historians would much prefer we didn’t discuss at all. As far as a lot of people in this country are concerned, nothing important happened between the Civil War and World War II. Certainly nothing we might benefit by today. ---
**Author:** ![jackdavinci](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackdavinci/32/3259_2.png) [@jackdavinci](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jackdavinci)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2008, 7:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-babies-need-a-mother-and-a-father/478631/32 "2008-12-27T07:35:50Z")
I’m of the ‘it takes a village’ opinion. The more caretakers, the better. Yes the child should be exposed to people of both genders, but they should also be exposed to people of different races, ages, etc. ---
**Author:** ![gonzomax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@gonzomax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzomax)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2008, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-babies-need-a-mother-and-a-father/478631/33 "2008-12-27T16:49:34Z")
This is about the vision of an Ozzie and Harriet life. They think having a mom and dad is like a happy and calm TV show. But, we all know how dis-functional most families are. Wouldn’t life be nice if 2 parents were intelligent level headed people who raised their kids perfectly. That would be the ideal. It is not the reality. So ,if a kid gets 2 females or 2 males and it gets him out of social services or away from crazed parents, I am all for it. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-babies-need-a-mother-and-a-father/478631.md?page=1)