One in five male couples and one in three lesbian
couples were raising children as of the 2000 Census. That's way up from 1990,
when one in 20 male couples and one in five lesbian couples had kids.

But Census numbers are just part of a new
comprehensive analysis of research on gay parenting since the 1970s in new book
Lesbian and Gay Parents and Their Children: Research on the Family Life
Cycle, by Abbie Goldberg, an assistant professor of psychology at Clark
University in Worcester, Mass.

Gay households have more in common than
not with their heterosexual counterparts who are also raising kids, the
research shows. "The sexual orientation of a parent has really little to do with
their parenting," Goldberg says.

That idea comes through loud and clear in pop
culture, in TV shows such as Modern Family, in which two gay men adopt a
Vietnamese infant, and among celebrities as gay stars are increasingly having or
adopting children.

Demographer Gary Gates of the Williams Institute
at the University of California-Los Angeles also has studied same-sex families.
His new analysis of the 2008 American Community Survey showed that 31% of
same-sex couples who identify themselves as spouses are raising kids compared
with 43% of heterosexual couples. That survey marked the first available Census
data about same-sex spouses and gay U.S. families. Gates says same-sex
couples who identify as married are similar to heterosexual couples in many
ways, including the fact that almost one-third are raising
children.

Among findings outlined in Goldberg's
book:

•The transition to parenthood is similar for both
homosexual couples and heterosexual couples.

•Children of gay couples don't differ from
their peers raised by heterosexual couples in terms of their mental
health, self-esteem, life satisfaction, social skills or number of
friends.

•Children in gay families are teased more about
their families and their sexuality but are not teased more overall.

Stephanie Woolley-Larrea, 36, of Miami says she
and her partner, Mary Larrea, 49, have tried to prepare their 7-year-old
triplets (two girls and a boy) to face such ridicule, but "it's been a
non-issue."

Her kids know "their family is not like everybody
else's" but "think it is much more unusual that they are triplets than that they
have gay moms."

Goldberg's analysis also included phone interviews
that began in 2005 with adoptive parents in 30 states, including 30 to 35 male
couples, 40 lesbian couples and 50 to 60 heterosexual couples. They were
interviewed before adoption and three months after, with two annual follow-ups
so far.

"Gay men are just as likely to want to parent as
straight men, but are less likely to parent because of all the barriers in their
way," Goldberg says.

Her analysis also suggests that children of gay
parents are no more likely to identify as gay themselves.

Sociologist Tim Biblarz of the University of
Southern California-Los Angeles says too little long-term, large-scale research
exists to conclude that being raised by same-sex couples doesn't affect sexual
identity.

"That's an area that the next decade of research
might really be able to pioneer."