Optimal Gender Mix
While a child has a biological father and a biological mother, not every family is a traditional nuclear family. There are many variants, such as adoption, shared parenting, step-families, and LGBT parenting, over which there has been controversy.
The social science literature rejects the notion that there is an optimal gender mix of parents or that children and adolescents with same-sex parents suffer any developmental disadvantages compared with those with two opposite-sex parents. The professionals and the major associations now agree there is a well-established and accepted consensus in the field that there is no optimal gender combination of parents. The family studies literature indicates that it is family processes (such as the quality of parenting and relationships within the family) that contribute to determining children's well-being and "outcomes," rather than family structures, per se, such as the number, gender, sexuality and co-habitation status of parents.
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Famous quotes containing the words optimal, gender and/or mix:
“In the most desirable conditions, the child learns to manage anxiety by being exposed to just the right amounts of it, not much more and not much less. This optimal amount of anxiety varies with the child’s age and temperament. It may also vary with cultural values.... There is no mathematical formula for calculating exact amounts of optimal anxiety. This is why child rearing is an art and not a science.”
—Alicia F. Lieberman (20th century)
“... lynching was ... a woman’s issue: it had as much to do with ideas of gender as it had with race.”
—Paula Giddings (b. 1948)
“In our man-of-war world, Life comes in at one gangway and Death goes overboard at the other. Under the man-of-war scourge, curses mix with tears; and the sigh and the sob furnish the bass to the shrill octave of those who laugh to drown buried griefs of their own.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)