New Family Structures Study
The New Family Structures Study is a sociological study of family structures conducted by sociologist Mark Regnerus of the University of Texas at Austin. The study surveyed over 15,000 Americans of ages 18 to 39. The first research article based on data from the study was published in July 2012 in Social Science Research.
The article concluded that people who had had a parent who had been in a same-gender relationship were at a greater risk of several adverse outcomes, including "being on public assistance, being unemployed, and having poorer educational attainment". The study was met with considerable criticism from many academics, scholarly organizations, and medical journals. Of note, only two children in the study had actually lived with homosexually partnered parents for their entire childhoods. Thus, negative outcomes or events cannot be attributed to having same-sex parents, because many of these children also spent their childhoods with opposite-sex parents, and experienced family disruption and parental divorce.
A 2015 reanalysis raised serious questions about the validity of the study, finding misclassification of families, inconsistency in answers suggesting mischief, and evidence that many respondents did not live with their non-heterosexual parents. When these cases were excluded, differences in outcome between children raised by parents in opposite-sex and same-sex relationships largely vanished.
Funding
The Witherspoon Institute, a conservative think-tank, contributed $695,000 in funding and the Bradley Foundation contributed $90,000. The Witherspoon Institute's president expected results that would be unfavorable to those supporting gay marriage. In the initial report, Regnerus stated that the Witherspoon Institute and the Bradley Foundation played no role in the design of the study, and dismissed accusations that these organizations had improperly influenced him. In 2013, however, in response to requests by the American Independent News Network, emails sent between Regnerus and Witherspoon Institute employee Brad Wilcox were released which cast doubt on these statements. In one email, Wilcox approved several items relating to the study on behalf of the Witherspoon Institute. Critics have also noted that Wilcox was on the editorial board of Social Science Research, the journal in which the study was later published.Methodology
The NFSS survey of over 15,000 Americans between the ages of 18 and 39 was conducted by Knowledge Networks on behalf of the University of Texas at Austin. Its stated purpose was to determine differences in outcomes among young adults raised in different family structures. The survey collected data from young adults and sorted them into the following categories, where "R" is the young adult questioned:- IBF: Lived in intact biological family from 0 to 18, and parents are still married at present
- LM: R reported R’s mother had a same-sex romantic relationship with a woman, regardless of any other household transitions or disruptions
- GF: R reported R’s father had a same-sex romantic relationship with a man, regardless of any other household transitions or disruptions
- Adopted: R was adopted by one or two strangers at birth or before age 2
- Divorced later or had joint custody: R reported living with biological mother and father from birth to age 18, but parents are not married at present
- Stepfamily: Biological parents were either never married or else divorced, and R’s primary custodial parent was mar- ried to someone else before R turned 18
- Single parent: Biological parents were either never married or else divorced, and R’s primary custodial parent did not marry before R turned 18
- All others: Includes all other family structure/event combinations, such as respondents with a deceased parent
Findings
Regnerus states although the findings reported may be explicable in part by a variety of forces uniquely problematic for child development in lesbian and gay families—including a lack of social support for parents, stress exposure resulting from persistent stigma, and modest or absent legal security for their parental and romantic relationship statuses—the empirical claim that no notable differences exist must go.
The term LM is used for subjects who stated that their mother had had a same-sex romantic relationship but did not make a similar statement about their father. The term GF is used for subjects that stated that their father had had a same-sex romantic relationship. The term IBF is used for subjects whose biological families were intact from birth through the time of the survey.
Table 2
The results are read in the percentage of children from each family structure who responded positively to each question. For example, for the variable "currently married" 43% of respondents from intact bio-family answered yes, whereas 36% of those in the LM category answered yes, and 35% of those in the GF category answered yes.
| Variables | IBF | LM | GF | Adopted by strangers | Divorced late | Stepfamily | Singleparent | All other |
| Currently married | 43% | 36% | 35% | 41% | 36% | 41% | 37% | 39% |
| Currently cohabiting | 9% | 24% | 21% | 7% | 31% | 19% | 19% | 13% |
| Family received welfare growing up | 17% | 69% | 57% | 12% | 47% | 53% | 48% | 35% |
| Currently on public assistance | 10% | 38% | 23% | 27% | 31% | 30% | 30% | 23% |
| Currently employed full-time | 49% | 26% | 34% | 41% | 42% | 47% | 43% | 39% |
| Currently unemployed | 8% | 28% | 20% | 22% | 15% | 14% | 13% | 15% |
| Voted in last presidential election | 57% | 41% | 73% | 58% | 63% | 57% | 51% | 48% |
| Thought recently about suicide | 5% | 12% | 24% | 7% | 8% | 10% | 5% | 9% |
| Recently or currently in therapy | 8% | 19% | 19% | 22% | 12% | 17% | 13% | 9% |
| Identifies as entirely heterosexual | 90% | 61% | 71% | 82% | 83% | 81% | 83% | 82% |
| Is in a same-sex romantic relationship | 4% | 7% | 12% | 23% | 5% | 13% | 3% | 2% |
| Had affair while married/cohabiting | 13% | 40% | 25% | 20% | 12% | 32% | 19% | 16% |
| Has ever had an STI | 8% | 20% | 25% | 16% | 12% | 16% | 14% | 8% |
| Ever touched sexually by parent/adult | 2% | 23% | 6% | 3% | 10% | 12% | 10% | 8% |
| Ever forced to have sex against will | 8% | 31% | 25% | 23% | 24% | 16% | 16% | 11% |
Controversy and reanalysis
Cynthia Osborne, who is on the UT-Austin faculty along with Regnerus, argued the study was unable to show "whether same-sex parenting causes the observed differences". She also said that "Children of lesbian mothers might have lived in many different family structures, and it is impossible to isolate the effects of living with a lesbian mother from experiencing divorce, remarriage or living with a single parent." Similarly, Gary Gates of the Williams Institute argued that the study's comparison of children of lesbian mothers was a less fair comparison than, for instance, comparing "children of heterosexual or same-sex couples who were raised in similar homes".Regnerus's former mentor Christian Smith has described the public and academic reaction to the New Family Structures Study as a "witch hunt" and said that the "push-back" to Regnerus's article "is coming simply because some people don't like where the data led". This backlash, Smith argues in his book The Sacred Project of American Sociology, is a result of the content of sociology's "sacred project" ; Smith holds that the critical reaction, e.g. on methodological issues, displays a set of double standards insofar as work by other scholars could be subjected to similar criticism.
Regnerus's study was defended by 18 social scientists in a letter written on the website of the Institute for Studies of Religion at Baylor University.
Allegations of scientific misconduct
Soon after the paper was published, gay blogger Scott Rose accused Regnerus of scientific misconduct for two reasons: deviating from ethical standards and possible falsification of his research. An inquiry later conducted by the University of Texas-Austin found that no investigation into these charges was warranted.In 2014, the Dean of the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas-Austin, Randy Diehl asked University of Texas sociologist and associate dean Marc Musick to review the controversy around the NFSS article as part of Regnerus's seventh-year post-tenure evaluation. Musick summarized many of the prior criticisms, then stated that the survey itself was designed to ensure the conflation of family structure and the parents' same-sex orientation, practically guaranteeing negative results. Musick stated that non-disclosure of this design flaw in the original article possibly violated University research ethics standards.