"His arguments are supported by experts

Spin cycle: the who have found, over years of research, that
children brought up by female couples are
lesbian parenting more aspirational and more confident in
championing social justice. They show no
story that wasn’t more tendencies towards homosexuality
than the offspring of heterosexual parents."
By Jennifer Roback Morse, Ph.D.
Whoa! Hold on here. Since when is being
"aspirational" and "confident in
How an event about building character in
championing social justice" the high-water
children became headline advocacy for
mark of good parenting? But I digress. The
gays.
story cites neither specific "experts" nor any
of the research supposedly produced over
A headline squawking “Lesbian parents
many years. There is no new research, just a
better at raising children” flew around the
recycling of the same old stuff. There is,
English-speaking world last week, having
quite literally, nothing there.
been released by The Times of London. No
doubt this thrilled the gay lobby, while
The expert quoted is Dr. Stephen Scott,
alarming traditionalists of all parties. But the
director of research at the National Academy
real story here is not about lesbians. The real
for Parenting Practitioners. I didn’t know
story is the media’s severe case of Gay
what a “parenting practitioner” was or why
Infatuation Syndrome: anything that makes
anyone should need an academy for it, so I
gays look good is newsworthy. This
looked it up. It turns out that the NAPP was
seriously misleading headline should caution
established by an agency of the British
readers to make a habit of looking behind
government:
the headlines. There may be, as in this case,
nothing there.
"The National Academy for Parenting
Practitioners was set up in 2007 by the
The first indication of a mismatch between
Department for Children, Schools and
the headline and the story is that it cites no
Families (DCSF) to provide the parenting
new study or research showing that lesbian
workforce with objective evidence based
parents are “better”. Here is the part of the
support in order to improve the services
report on which the headline is based:
offered to parents in England."
"Speaking at the launch at the think tank
The parenting workforce? Have we really
Demos of a report on the influence of
lost the ability to see the point of personal
character on life, Scott said: “Lesbians make
relationships and kinship? Do we have to
better parents than a man and a woman.”
redefine the care that parents naturally give
Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse • 663 S. Rancho Santa Fe Road Suite 222 San Marcos CA 92078
www.jennifer-roback-morse.com • email: drj@jennifer-roback-morse.com • 760/295-9278
©2007 No part of this document may be reproduced or disseminated in any way without the expressed written consent of the
Ruth Institute.
their children as a special sector of the labor
market, bolstering it with “objective
evidence”?
Well, yes, if you belong to the British ruling
class and you no longer have any idea what
it is that parents naturally do for their
children. Professionalism, however, can
apparently work miracles, as NAPP’s
“vision” tells us:
"Our vision is that all parents who need it
should be able to access quality support
from trained practitioners capable of helping
them to raise their children to be happy,
healthy, safe, ready to learn and to make a
positive contribution and achieve economic
wellbeing."
This is scarcely even a charity designed to
help real flesh and blood families. Instead of
mothers learning from their mothers, or
neighbors helping neighbors, the British
government has established a corporatist
institution, to professionalize child care.
And what was the occasion for Dr. Scott’s
outburst of enthusiasm for father-absent
households? As near as I can tell, it was a
meeting of a group called Demos, which
was highlighting its new publication,
Building Character. The point of this
publication was to analyze the impact of
different parenting styles on the children's
character development. It seems to be a
perfectly sensible report, well worthy of
discussion, as it emphasizes that even
parents of modest means can learn the skills
they need to better care for their children.
Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse • 663 S. Rancho Santa Fe Road Suite 222 San Marcos CA 92078
www.jennifer-roback-morse.com • email: drj@jennifer-roback-morse.com • 760/295-9278
©2007 No part of this document may be reproduced or disseminated in any way without the expressed written consent of the
Ruth Institute.
However, the report had the usual
conservative fly in the progressive ointment:
children of divorced or step-parents don't do
as well. According to the Independent,
another paper presented at the symposium
showed they must struggle much harder to
develop “skills” such as such as empathy,
self-control and application:
"In a blow to the huge numbers of parents
who are divorced or remarried, the study
also found that children with married parents
were twice as likely to develop good skills
as those living with stepfamilies or single
parents."
Could this have been the stimulus for Dr.
Scott’s family diversity boosterism? I can
hardly believe they spent all day talking
about lesbian parenting skills. The poor
dears weren’t even mentioned in the report:
there simply weren’t enough such couples in
the sample to study.
So here are the facts: no new data on lesbian
parenting, but new data further
demonstrating the superiority of married
parents. At a technocratic gab-fest about
upskilling the “parenting workforce” one
guy spouts his opinion about lesbian parents.
And the headline reading "Lesbian parents
better at raising children" goes viral
worldwide.
The conference and report that were the
ostensible subjects of the article had nothing
-- repeat, nothing -- to do with lesbians, as
parents or anything else. A reporter
apparently decided to make a story out of an
off-hand comment.

This lame headline episode illustrates why

so many ordinary people hold the
mainstream media in contempt. They view
the MSM as carnival barkers for the sexual
revolution. Look behind the headlines: there
may be less there than meets the eye.

Jennifer Roback Morse, Ph.D. is an

economist and the Founder and President of
the Ruth Institute, a nonprofit educational
organization devoted to bringing hope and
encouragement for lifelong married love.
She is also the author of Love and
Economics: It Takes a Family to Raise a
Village and Smart Sex: Finding Life-Long
Love in a Hook-Up World.

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Jennifer Roback Morse,
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Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse • 663 S. Rancho Santa Fe Road Suite 222 San Marcos CA 92078
www.jennifer-roback-morse.com • email: drj@jennifer-roback-morse.com • 760/295-9278
©2007 No part of this document may be reproduced or disseminated in any way without the expressed written consent of the
Ruth Institute.