Sami Emmer-Fink loved her childhood because every day was a girls’ day.
“I had a different upbringing, with no male figure, but I can’t say that I missed out,” said Emmer-Fink, a first-year theater student. “I think it would be weird to have a dad – to wake up at 3 a.m. and have the toilet seat be left up.”
For Emmer-Fink, growing up with two moms felt completely normal.
A recent study conducted by the Williams Institute at UCLA showed Emmer-Fink is not alone – children raised by same-sex parents experience the same parent-child relationships and partner relationships, said Nanette Gartrell, a Williams Institute visiting distinguished scholar. She added having same-sex parents did not lead to differences in child outcome, such as health and overall well-being.
Like her peers, Emmer-Fink spent weekends visiting the zoo, going to the aquarium and spending time with her parents. She added she rarely felt her situation was different, except on holidays like Mother’s Day and Father’s Day.
“During elementary school, my teachers still made me make Father’s Day gifts, so we made a joke out of it,” Emmer-Fink said. “They’re both my moms and the whole role of a mother and father just doesn’t exist – they’re both my mothers.”
Gartrell said the study also found female same-sex parents reported more parenting stress, possibly because they anticipate their child may face discrimination growing up.
Emmer-Fink said she remembered only one boy in kindergarten who would be mean to her because of her family dynamic.
“When you’re that young, you don’t have a concept of hating someone because of their parents are the same sex,” Emmer-Fink said. “I love them dearly and wouldn’t do a thing to change it, but it wasn’t my choice to have two moms. So why would someone make me suffer because of them?”
She added she thinks coverage in the media portraying more lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender families helped normalize her situation.
Cory Peter-Lane, a first-year theater student, said his moms consciously tried to lessen the discrimination their children faced in school.
“My parents didn’t tell me this until I was older, but they made the concerted effort to stay in one house, one school district and one neighborhood so everyone knew our situation,” Peter-Lane said. “That way, it wasn’t like we had to come out all the time.”
Peter-Lane said he attributed the increase in stress for lesbian mothers to their difficulty to define stereotypical or explicit parental roles. He said he often felt more comfortable discussing certain things with one of his moms than the other.
“I always felt more comfortable going to one mom about sex questions, which … I related to as what my peers would go to their father for,” Peter-Lane said. “For same-sex parents, your kids are just going to do what makes them most comfortable, and it’s not an insult to the parents.”
Gartrell said the researchers partly conducted the study to address a long history of discrimination against same-sex families and examine child well-being, development and overall health.
“In over 74 studies, it has been shown that it is the quality of the parenting, not the sexual orientation of the parents, that matters in terms of child outcome,” Gartrell said.
Peter-Lane said he thought the study was a step in the right direction, but had never thought the normality of his situation was something that needed proving.
“If it takes a scientific study for bigoted people to go, ‘Fine, they’re normal,’ then that’s what it takes,” Peter-Lane said. “For the other people out there, who maybe don’t know a same-sex couple, it might influence them.”
Gartrell said she thinks many more studies need to be conducted to further understand the unique ways that LGBT-parent families can serve as models for other types of families. She added she thinks further research should be done to understand hardships beyond discrimination LGBT families often face, like poverty.
“In our lesbian-family study, these mothers educated their children about discrimination not just regarding (sexual orientation),” Gartrell said. “We found that these mothers were educating their children about all types of discrimination: racism, sexism, all the ‘-isms.’”
She added these parents are making a point of educating their families to appreciate differences, which could be a hopeful statement about how their future generations contribute to the world.
Emmer-Fink said her moms wholly accepted her and raised her to be aware and accepting of others.
“My moms are so different because they’re accepting of literally everything, and they really get it when it comes to being different,” Emmer-Fink said. “So they wanted to make sure I was also accepting to everyone.”