同志家庭中的兒少福祉——學術研究怎麼說？

本文翻譯自康乃爾大學的《What we know》計劃中（現已轉移至社會不平等研究中心），針對同志家庭所扶養兒少福祉的學術研究回顧專文：《What does the scholarly research say about the well-being of children with gay or lesbian parents? 》

以下，正文開始。

摘要

在針對「同志家庭的兒少福祉」的主題中，我們找到了 79 個符合《What we know》計劃中挑選標準且通過同儕審查的學術研究。

其中有 75 個研究指出，同志家庭的小孩福祉並不會比其他小孩來得更差。雖然大部分研究的樣本數較小、部份研究缺乏控制組，研究者們仍認為這些研究已能提供在兒童領養的議題上目前可得且最佳的證據，並不一定要有大量且具代表性的樣本。

另外 4 個研究則指出同志家庭的小孩，比起一般小孩會面臨額外的風險。這些研究所採用的小孩樣本，皆經歷了家庭破裂（已被證實為兒童身心健康的危險因子），因此已被許多學者批判，認為其研究結果並無法真正評估同志家庭小孩的福祉議題。

綜上所述，基於過去三十年間所做且通過同儕審查的眾多研究，壓倒性的學術共識已然形成：同志雙親不會危害到小孩。

關於「同志家庭會增加小孩風險」的研究

這四個仿若「局外人」的研究，都有一個共同的缺陷：只有少數小孩樣本是真正被同志雙親養大。多數的小孩曾被異性雙親養育，但後來其異性雙親中有人出櫃，離開了家庭或是帶著小孩進入了另一段同性關係中。

因為這些小孩大部分是由異性雙親養大，經歷家庭變故之後才與一個以上的同志雙親生活一小段時間，只有極少數是真的從小就長期由同志雙親養育長大。如此一來，其結果就變成是在研究「因為關係破裂或崩解而經歷額外壓力的家庭」，但這些研究卻把其樣本標籤為「由同志雙親養大的小孩」，這是非常不精確且具有誤導性的。

面對這些質疑，這些研究的作者則如此辯駁道：儘管有這樣的問題存在，但他們終究在結構上是同志家庭，因此將這些樣本做為「同志家庭對小孩影響」的預測指標，仍是有意義的。

關於「同志家庭中的小孩與一般家庭無異」的研究

有些人會批判 LGB 親職研究使用了小型、非隨機的樣本抽樣方法——便利抽樣法（在相關領域是很常見的抽樣方式），然而在此研究領域中，便利抽樣並不會被視為是方法學缺陷，只是在可推論性上有所限制而已。

在社會學、特別是心理學的範疇裡，小型但高品質的長期研究比起隨機研究有著某些優點：研究者能夠更細緻、更徹底地觀察並分析兒童的發展過程，這是使用大型樣本的統計報告容易遺漏的部分。而重要的是，在作出「同志家庭的小孩與一般小孩無異」結論的研究中，也有研究者使用了大型且具代表性的樣本。

2010 年由史丹佛大學教授 Rosenfeld 所做的研究，使用了政府戶口調查樣本去分析 3,500 位有同志雙親的小孩其在校的學業成績，發現在控制了家庭背景之後，異性雙親與同志雙親家庭中的小孩並沒有顯著差異。

而另一個基於國家級的長期且具代表性的樣本，總數超過了 20,000，其中有 158 位與同志雙親共同生活；同樣在控制了家庭崩解的狀況之後，這些小孩在學業上的表現與同儕並無差異。

引用文獻

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