Lesbian Mothers Make Better Parents

A longitudinal study shows that lesbian parents produce better-adjusted children:

Between 1986 and 1992, 154 prospective lesbian mothers volunteered for a study that was designed to follow planned lesbian families from the index children's conception until they reached adulthood. Data for the current report were gathered through interviews and questionnaires that were completed by 78 index offspring when they were 10 and 17 years old and through interviews and Child Behavior Checklists that were completed by their mothers at corresponding times. The study is ongoing, with a 93% retention rate to date. 

According to their mothers' reports, the 17-year-old daughters and sons of lesbian mothers were rated significantly higher in social, school/academic, and total competence and significantly lower in social problems, rule-breaking, aggressive, and externalizing problem behavior than their age-matched counterparts in Achenbach's normative sample of American youth. Within the lesbian family sample, no Child Behavior Checklist differences were found among adolescent offspring who were conceived by known, as-yet-unknown, and permanently unknown donors or between offspring whose mothers were still together and offspring whose mothers had separated. 

I can't give you a similar study for gay parents.  It would be interesting to see what the case is there.

Old Friends

I've been thinking. I shouldn't, I know. It's a dangerous pastime. And probably against the law, too.

I was thinking about old friends who have died or vanished into the ether. Some were friends I knew in the flesh, as it were, and some were the e-equivalent of pen-pals. I miss them. One friend was the closest I've ever come to finding a soul-mate. He died a while ago, and I still miss him and think of him every day. I miss my father-in-law, who died just over a year ago. He was my friend for over 30 years. I miss my best friend and his wife. Since she died, he's been a shadow of himself, his agony leaving no room for anything else. I don't blame him. I can't even imagine what it feels like to lose your partner like that, especially when you have lived for each other, when the other person completed your life.

There isn't much which provides consolation or comfort. You have just to endure; survive; keep going, one step in front of the other. Only the love of those who care about you can provide any balm to the wounds. So I am grateful for my lady. Our love has survived much, and here we are, 35 years after we first started 'going out', still loving each other, still fulfilled by each other, after so many near shipwrecks on the journey.

Here's to you, my darling, dearest of people. Without you I couldn't keep going.