OxfordPress.com

HAMILTON — The Family Research Council and Miami University experts agree that children tend to do better when raised by two people, but they disagree on whether those have to be a married man and woman.

This has been a topic of debate since former Butler County Children Services director Michael Fox adopted a policy giving preference in foster and adoption placement to traditional married couples over same-sex or single parents. The policy is suspended pending legal review.

Cohabitating singles, same-sex couples and single parents with strong family support work just fine, according to Jean Lynch, chair of Miami's sociology department, and assistant professor Katherine Kuvalanka, who researches gay and lesbian parents.

More important factors in a child's well-being include socioeconomics and the warmth of the parent-child relationship, they said.

"I believe that using social science research as a justification for this policy is an overly simplistic interpretation of the research," Kuvalanka said. "I believe this policy is potentially harmful in that it will likely add to the stigma that single-parent families and lesbian- and gay-parent families already face."

But Peter Sprigg, vice president of policy at the Family Research Council — a Washington, D.C.-based social conservative think tank — said the research field is crowded with gay activists and the dozens of studies on the issue have been inconclusive.

"There's an abundance of research showing that children of (married parents) do better than children of virtually any other family structure," he said.

He said his organization's stated pro-marriage agenda — including "combating the homosexual agenda," according to its Web site — taints his research no more than others.

"A lot of these researchers on the other side clearly have an agenda as well," he said.

Kuvalanka and Lynch both said they have been activists in their private lives, but are researchers first, and the research they point to has withstood peer review.

"The question is, 'Was the research done well and was it done according to rigorous scientific measures?' " Lynch said. "I don't think the research is biased."

Contact this reporter at (513) 820-2175 or jsweigart@coxohio.com.