Dr Walter Schumm is a Professor of Family Studies in the School of Family Studies and Human Services at Kansas State University. He has published over 250 scholarly articles and book chapters and is co-editor of the Sourcebook of Family Theories and Methods: A Contextual Approach (Plenum, 1993; Springer, 2009). He is a retired colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve, a former brigade and battalion commander. His views may not reflect the positions of Kansas State University or the US Department of Defense.
Contact: schumm@ksu.edu
Before the year 2000, no US state recognized same-sex marriage. By 2015, it was legal throughout the US and most of Western Europe. Before 2015 most Americans knew nothing about transgender issues. Within a year transgender issues are on the front pages of newspapers every day and schools may be forced to provide special bathrooms for trans students. The pace of change in the sexual revolution is not just rapid. It's accelerating around the world. Why?
Date posted: 2016-06-25
Some of the potential pitfalls of science applied to same-sex parenting. Allow me to present findings on same-sex parenting research. Here are some of the highlights. However, the larger theme behind this paper was how science really works behind the scenes - it's not as pretty as some might lead you to believe!
Date posted: 2016-02-05
If you read the journals, you would be sure that there is a scholarly consensus on same-sex parenting. Many papers have been published which claim that there is no difference in parenting ability between sexual minority parents and heterosexual parents.
Date posted: 2014-04-06
As a sociologist my life is all about creating, taking and interpreting surveys of attitudes and opinions. So I sometimes feel a bit depressed at how knuckle-headed the media can be when reporting about research on same-sex marriage. Let's look at a slogan which is being repeated over and over Same-sex parents are just as good at parenting as heterosexuals. This looks simple -- but its simplicity is deceptive.
Date posted: 2013-08-13
A one-page report on the success of same-sex parenting was reported around the world this week. How reliable is it?
Date posted: 2013-06-22
In the July issue of the scholarly journal Social Science Research, Professor Mark Regnerus (pictured) published an article detailing initial results from his New Family Structures Study. His results suggested that adult children who had been raised, for at least a brief time, in families with a gay, lesbian, or bisexual parent were more likely to report dysfunctional adult outcomes than those who had been raised in other family structures, especially families with continuously married heterosexual parents.
Date posted: 2012-11-13
The claim that children raised by lesbian and gay parents thrive, on average, just as well as those raised by heterosexual parents has become a commonplace of opinion journalism, especially since the American Psychological Association reported that conclusion in 2005. However, two studies published online this week in the July issue of the peer-reviewed journal, Social Science Research, put a large question mark over that view of the subject.
Date posted: 2012-07-06
It's easy enough to establish an apparent equality of outcomes for different types of couples, but if their inputs in terms of risks are unequal and their contributions to society in terms of jointly biological children are unequal, have you really established an equality or actually an inequality? That is why I have argued (Schumm, 2009) that making same-sex relationships socially and morally equivalent to heterosexual relationships creates an injustice rather than correcting one.
Date posted: 2010-08-12
Research showing the risks of lesbian and gay parenting is ignored in the race to make a political case.
Date posted: 2010-07-03