Federal research and education Minister Anja Karliczek (CDU) in an Interview with the news channel n-tv for a long-term study on the question is pronounced, the impact of same-sex Parenting on children. They also criticized the marriage for all, was rushed been introduced. It studies about the child lacked the long-term well-being. For Karliczek has been meanwhile criticised by politicians of all parties – also from the Union itself. In fact, Karliczek, had spoken out during the vote in the Bundestag in 2017 against the marriage for all. At the time, she said: “My assessment, as a mother of three children is that it is for the development of children important is to experience the emotional tension between the father and the mother.” Federal Minister of family Affairs Franziska Giffey (SPD), countered on the TV interview, your Ministerial colleague:”even today, studies show that children develop in homosexual partnerships, as well as in families with a mother and a father.”
Joachim Müller-Jung
editor in the features section, responsible for the area of “nature and science”.
F. A. Z. Twitter
What’s wrong? Who is right? A FAZ.NET-fact check:
there Are no long-term studies?
Yes and no. The research Minister has said neither in the Bundestag is still now clear what it means by long-term studies. Five years of observation, are sufficient, or the children should be observed until they are adults? Or should also incorporate your dealing with then own children in the assessment? Such a (current) recoverable long-term studies, there are internationally – in Germany, they have not been published thus far. Studies over shorter periods, there are but very well, and since the beginning of this century, more and more. Karliczek thus indicates a knowledge gap in the long-term observation of gay and lesbian families. Ms. Giffey has not objected to the requirement for a long-term study, however, also directly. It calls, rather, the existing studies on “rainbow families” – lesbian or gay couples with children – to accept it as meaningful enough. The question is therefore:
the available study results Are useful?
Giffey says Yes, Karliczek is not enough. The Ministry for family Affairs, claiming communities and in particular the four more recent sources, including two national and two international:
to the Federal Ministry of justice commissioned study by Marina Rupp from the year 2009: The situation of children in same-sex relationships. She’s scoreboard in Federal-Verlags-Gesellschaft in Köln appeared. on the 2014 from Elke Jansen published studies, such as: “From the Be and Be – to Grow up in a rainbow family”. Or, in the same year, with co-authors in the second edition appeared: “rainbow families – Ordinary and yet different. Advice guide for lesbian mothers, gay fathers, and family-related professionals.“ (Köln: family and social Association of the LSVD, p. 143-157.) Calzo, Jerel P., Vickie M. Mays, Charlotte Björkenstam, Emma Björkenstam, Kyriaki Kosidou and Susan D. Cochran (2017): “Parental Sexual Orientation and Children’s Psychological Well-Being”: 2013-2015, National Health Interview Survey. Cenegy, Laura F., and Justin T. Denney and Rachel T. Kimbro (2018): Family Diversity and Child Health: Where Do Same-Sex Couple Families Fit? In: Journal of Marriage and the Family Band 80 (2018), pages 198 – 218.
These and other international studies point to the family Ministry then, is that “to Grow up with same-sex parents for the children unproblematic, and in comparison with children with different-sex parents grow up no differences in terms of various development indicators.”