Politics of children in same-sex marriages are like in heterosexual families; on the rare occasion a difference exists, people with same-sex female parents are more progressive, those with same-sex male parents are more conservative

Flores AR, Morrison M (2021) Potential differences between the political attitudes of people with same-sex parents and people with different-sex parents: An exploratory assessment of first-year college students. PLoS ONE 16(2): e0246929; Feb 25 2021. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0246929

Rolf Degen disagrees: I would already question the unspoken premise of the above study, which is that parents imprint their political orientation on their children

Abstract: Children were often near the center of public debates about legal marriage recognition for same-sex couples. Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), the case that resulted in legal same-sex marriage recognition, stressed the importance of these children as one of many factors compelling the opinion. Estimates indicated same-sex couples were raising 200,000 children in the United States. Children raised by same-sex couples may be politically socialized in distinct ways compared to children of different-sex couples because lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals tend to hold distinct and progressive political viewpoints on a wide variety of issues. What are the political attitudes of people with same-sex parents? In this exploratory study, we analyze a large, representative survey of first-year college students across the United States; we find few differences between people with same-sex and different-sex parents, and some of those differences may be attributable to households and respondent characteristics. When on the rare occasion a difference exists, we find that people with same-sex female parents are more progressive, but people with same-sex male parents are more conservative. Gender differences also emerged, with some distinctive patterns between males with same-sex parents and females with same-sex parents.

Discussion

What are the political attitudes of people with SS parents, and do they differ from people with DS parents? Prior to matching, people with SS parents are more progressive, except for respondents with SS male parents, who are more conservative on gender equality in the workplace. Differences diminish after matching, suggesting background characteristics that distinguish people with SS parents from people with DS parents likely lead to those differences. We do not find that people with SS female or male parents are much different from people DS parents. Indeed, on some measures people with SS male parents are more conservative than similarly situated people with DS parents. This is contrary to what is expected, and it fails to support our hypothesis. Given the exploratory nature of our study, future work should see if our findings replicate in other samples.

There are potentially a few reasons why we do not find support for our expectations. First, there may be differences in the political attitudes of LGB persons who choose to become parents as compared to LGB people in general. For example, in the cumulative General Social Survey, LGB parents are more likely to be political independents than LGB people who are not parents (see S5 Appendix). Thus, LGB parents may not hold as distinctly progressive political attitudes as LGB people in general. This may be particularly important to explain the somewhat more conservative attitudes of people with SS male parents. Second, our sample is of entering college first-years, and this age cohort may be distinctively more progressive on politics [e.g., 52] such that the distinctiveness we would expect to find by having SS parents is muted by an overall more progressive sample. Third, the sample size of people with SS parents is small relative to people with DS parents. While there is a large sample in the HERI survey data, these null patterns may be due to a lack of analytical power. If this is the case, then pooling multiple years of the HERI data may reveal patterns that are significant and distinct.

Our findings further suggest that there are meaningful differences between SS female and SS male households. People with SS female parents have lower household incomes and are more racially and ethnically diverse than people with SS male parents. SS male couples face, on average, greater costs to become parents, and SS female couples are more likely to be raising biological children [2]. Thus, socialization may be different in SS female households and SS male households, and this may intersect with both race and class. This is further supported by the demographic differences we observed in the data, as people with SS female parents are more likely to self-identify as black and have lower household incomes. The overall effects of SS parentage are being primarily driven by both the type of SS couple and the gender of the respondent. Men with same-sex male parents are more conservative, but men with same-sex female parents are more progressive. As prior work indicates that there are differences in the political socialization of boys and girls [34], we find divergences between males and females with SS parents. That most of these differences are among males complements prior work that suggests boys have a more malleable orientation toward politics than girls [33]. Thus, both the gendered nature of politics and gendered differences in political socialization can explain the distinctive patterns we observe for men with SS parents.

There are limitations in our current exploration. The secondary analysis of survey data means that we lack the ability to control the questionnaire design. This means that we have only one indicator of SS parentage. Thus, we lack an opportunity to more fully understand the households and characteristics of the respondents. Our analysis would be more thorough if we had measures of length of time in a SS parent household, aspects of family formation (e.g., if children were biological from a previous heterosexual relationship, if children were born through surrogacy; or if children were adopted), and other aspects of family stability. Prior research suggests the family formation SS households are distinct from DS households [3], so these measures may identify distinct subgroups of individuals with SS parents where their political attitudes are distinct (e.g., people who have had a long tenure of having SS parents with no family disruptions versus people who only recently had SS parents). Future primary data collection efforts can move beyond the current study’s limitations by incorporating such measures to evaluate political attitudes with a fuller understanding of the family formation process. Even with its limitations, our study at least can incorporate some characteristics of parents, which enables us to make more direct comparisons with similarly situated people with DS parents. Large-N studies of political attitudes rarely incorporate such details [14], even though prior work suggests that such details are important to understanding identity and attitude formation [14,32].

Despite these limitations, we present novel data to explore the potential for the distinct political attitudes of people with SS parents. Parental socialization is occasionally a factor in the political orientations of people with SS parents, though in unanticipated ways.