The Gap between Psychosocial Assumptions and Empirical Research in Lesbian-Mother Child Custody Cases

Abstract

(from the chapter) a rapidly growing and highly consistent body of empirical work has failed to identify significant differences between lesbian mothers and their heterosexual counterparts or the children raised by these groups / researchers have been unable to establish empirically that detriment results to children from being raised by lesbian mothers / thus, it appears that there is a considerable gap between many of the assumptions on which legal decision makers have traditionally based their [child custody] decisions and the corresponding empirical and theoretical literature on lesbian mothers and their children / the major implication for legal decision makers is that they should focus less or not at all on the sexual orientation of a potential custodian and more on other factors commonly associated with the best-interests-of-the-child standard, such as the quality of the parent-child relationship (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2005 APA, all rights reserved)