A study utilizing data from The National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) has found that: “higher child emotional problems may be a persistent feature of same-sex parent families.” The NHIS is the principal source of public health information about the United States population. Since 1957 the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics has annually interviewed between 35,000 and 40,000 households, collecting data on 75,000 to 100,000 individuals comprising a nationally representative sample of the civilian noninstitutionalized population of the United States. The present study examines combined 1997- 2013 NHIS data, consisting of information on 1,598,006 persons, including 207,007 sample children.
The results: on the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ), children in same-sex families were over twice (2.1 times) as likely, at 9.3%, to be rated above the cutoff for emotional or behavioral difficulties than were children in opposite-sex families, at 4.4%. Likewise, same-sex parents or informants reported that their children experienced “definite” or “severe” emotional problems over twice (2.3 times) as often as did opposite-sex parents or informants. For the most restrictive test, which is both high SDQ and directly reported serious emotional problems, the proportion of children with emotional difficulties in same-sex families drops to only 6.3%, but the comparative proportion in opposite-sex families drops even more, to 2.1%, with the result that the risk ratio for same-sex families is even higher (2.9).
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