A few U.S. states ban gay and lesbian couples from adopting children. Using research to support your answer, describe the development of children raised by gay or lesbian parents

What will be an ideal response?


Although most research on homosexual families is limited to volunteer samples, findings indicate that gay and lesbian parents are as committed to and effective at child rearing as heterosexual parents and sometimes more so. Also, whether born to or adopted by their parents or conceived through donor insemination, the children of homosexuals did not differ from the children of heterosexuals in mental health, peer relations, or gender-role behavior.
Furthermore, children of gay and lesbian parents are similar to other children in sexual orientation: The large majority are heterosexual. But some evidence suggests that more adolescents from homosexual families experiment for a time with partners of both sexes, perhaps as a result of being reared in families and communities especially tolerant of nonconformity and difference.
A major concern of gay and lesbian parents is that their children will be stigmatized by their parents' sexual orientation. Most studies indicate that incidents of teasing and bullying are rare because parents and children carefully manage the information they reveal to others. Overall, children of gay and lesbian parents can be distinguished from other children mainly by issues related to living in a nonsupportive society.

Psychology

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Although you can smell other scents, you have lost the ability to smell floral odors. This condition is called

a. anhedonia. b. dysosmia. c. tinnitus. d. sensory adaptation.

Psychology

A change in one's beliefs or behaviors as a result of real or imagined pressure from a group or individual is called:

a. compliance b. social facilitation c. conformity d. social loafing

Psychology

An evolutionary perspective takes "the long view." This perspective asserts that how people act today is based on behavior patterns that evolved from our species' past

Explain how the evolutionary concept of reproductive fitness is related to attraction and love in men and women. What will be an ideal response?

Psychology

As a camp counselor, you are surprised when you hear that one of your young campers takes a hormone replacement drug intranasally to treat a psychological disorder. The disorder is most likely

a. enuresis. b. autism. c. somnambulism. d. encopresis.

Psychology