I was a bit startled to read last week that a government adviser from the National Academy for Parenting Practitioners said lesbians made better parents than what we can no longer call “normal couples”.
I’m not sure this is quite right because, so far as I can remember, a woman is not able to have a child after having sexual relations with another woman. Unless that woman is from an athletics squad.
In order for a lesbian couple to have had a child, either a turkey baster must have been involved — which is not how most people would like to imagine they came into the world — or they must have visited the state-sponsored British Association for Adoption & Fostering, which thinks that anyone who objects to same-sex parents is a “retarded homophobe”.
Happily, I’m a bit more sensible than this. I do not think that someone who objects to homosexual parents is a retarded homophobe. I believe they have an opinion. But, that said, I emphatically don’t agree that lesbians necessarily make better parents than me. It is impossible to say that someone will make a better parent because she fancies other girls. There will be some lesbians who’ll go out all night and take drugs and there will be some who’ll read a child a bedtime story and be excellent.
I have done some checking on this, and the only evidence I can find comes from research endorsed by the national academy itself. The study examined children raised by just 27 single mothers, 20 lesbian couples and 36, er, differently genital-ed parents and concluded that those raised by women grew up with a better psychological wellbeing.