Psychologist: marriage equality will harm kids

Jesus Christ the gender role/gender stereotyping is enough to make my head explode!

As a father, I take particular exception to his very negative stereotypings of the "proper" role of fathers.

"Conditional-leaning love of the father"  WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT ALL ABOUT?

He mixes just enough truth in with the bunk to make it hard to separate the two.

This is a typical rhetorical tactic of homophobes and bigots everywhere.

What a complete asshole!!!!!

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by: Zeke @ Wed Oct 17, 2007 at 12:29:10 PM CDT

Ha, she's a woman, Zeke

 

Trayce

I guess you thought it was too logical and dispassionate?

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by: John Howard @ Wed Oct 17, 2007 at 18:50:20 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

I feared that I might get it wrong.

My reason for assuming it was a man was because I have known men named Trace/Trayce but I've never known, or heard of, a woman with that name.

It certainly wasn't because I assume that all doctors are men or because I assume that all bigoted assholes are men.  I've know plenty of women doctors and plenty of bigoted female assholes.

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by: Zeke @ Wed Oct 17, 2007 at 22:43:48 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Okay...

One at a time:

...mother-love and father-love--though equally important--are qualitatively different and produce distinct parent-child attachments. Specifically, it's the combination of the unconditional-leaning love of a mother and the conditional-leaning love of a father that's essential to a child's development. Either of these forms of love without the other can be problematic. What a child needs is the complementary balance the two types of parental love and attachment provide.

"mother love" and "father love" are fabricated concepts.  They're this guy's assumptions about how mothers and fathers form attachments, yet he presents no evidence to support these assumptions.  Even if he's right about a child needing that combination of the two types of love, there's no evidence that women are incapable of conditional-leaning love or that men are incapable of unconditional-leaning love. 

...children progress through predictable developmental stages. Some stages require more from a mother, while others require more from a father. For example, during infancy, babies of both sexes tend to do better in the care of their mother. Mothers are more attuned to the subtle needs of their infants and thus are more appropriately responsive. Fathers are generally needed later when they play a restraining role in the lives of their children. They restrain sons from acting out antisocially and daughters from acting out sexually. When there's no father to perform this function, a boy is more likely to become delinquent and incarcerated and a girl is more likely to become promiscuous and pregnant.

This is, again founded on that same assumption about parental behavior, making assumptions about gender roles which do not necessarily play out in reality.

Third, boys and girls need an opposite-sexed parent to help them moderate their own gender-linked inclinations. As example, boys generally embrace reason over emotion, rules over relationships, risk-taking over caution, and standards over compassion, while girls generally embrace the reverse. An opposite-sexed parent helps a child keep his or her own natural proclivities in check by teaching--verbally and nonverbally--the worth of the opposing tendencies.

Once again, he's working with assumptions here and, more importantly, presenting no evidence that there's anything worth with girls adapting behavior he associates with boys or vice versa.  That's because children are individuals and that even if (and I'm not saying it's true) most girls tend to be interested in emotion over reason and caution over risk-taking, that doesn't mean that girls who don't exhibit those behaviors have problems.  What he's trying to do here is to pathologize human behavior and he's doing a piss-poor job of it.

Fourth, same-sex marriage will increase sexual confusion and sexual experimentation by implying all choices are equally acceptable and desirable. So, even children from traditional homes--influenced by the all-sexual-options-are-equal message--will grow up thinking it doesn't matter whom one relates to sexually or marries. Holding such a belief will lead some--if not many--impressionable young people to consider sexual and marital arrangements they never would have contemplated previously. And children from homosexual families, who are already more likely to experiment sexually, would do so to a greater extent, because not only was non-traditional sexuality role-modeled by their parents, it was also approved by their society.

This is a common tactic of the right: make assumptions about the cause of sexual orientation and then extract an argument based on it.  Of course, this is entirely absurd.  No one's demonstrated any evidence that children raised by same-sex couples are more sexually experimental than those raised by non-same sex couples.  Furthermore, if a child is gay, it's probably a lot healthier to for that child to have adult role models who can demonstrate that being gay is not the end of the world. 

This, of course, is really the point of pieces like this: having gays walk around proud is dangerous because it will suggest to other gay people that there's nothing wrong with them.  The horror!

Anyway...

Human sexuality is pliant. Consider ancient Greece or Rome--among other early civilizations--where male homosexuality and bisexuality were nearly ubiquitous. This was not so because most of those men were born with a "gay gene," rather it was because homosexuality was condoned by those societies. That which a society sanctions, it gets more of.

So... what he's saying is that it is natural for people to be gay?  That unless we have an iron fist determined to block gay at every turn, that a whole bunch of people who wouldn't otherwise be gay would suddenly start acting all gay?  I know a lot of women who would really like to be attracted to women and not men because they think it would make their life easier (I'm not even going to try to explain this) but none of them seem to be able to actually find themselves attracted to women.

And fifth, if society permits same-sex marriage, it also will have to allow other types of marriage.

Right.  Because it always goes in that direction.  If you allow men to sleep together, then you have to allow goats to sleep with cats.  If you allow same-sex couples, you have to allow Rick Santorum to have sex with a dog.  If you allow allow women to have sex with one another, you have to allow the lion and the lamb to lie down together and... hmm... never mind that last bit.  I think God's given the OK on that one.

Sorry, I can only read so much of this stuff before I get punchy.

I'm only a click away.

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by: JulieWaters @ Wed Oct 17, 2007 at 12:39:11 PM CDT

Oops

I don't know why I made assumptions about Dr. Hansen's gender.  They were incorrect, and not intended for comic effect.

I'm only a click away.

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by: JulieWaters @ Wed Oct 17, 2007 at 13:16:33 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Worth examining

stay up all night tonight thinking about it

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by: John Howard @ Wed Oct 17, 2007 at 18:51:30 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Digested, Regurgitated and Re-served

Typical Focus on the Fraud Family research delusionary talking points.

Kat

>^..^<

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by: KatRose @ Wed Oct 17, 2007 at 12:40:41 PM CDT

Talk About Saving the Best For Last

It almost sounded respectable, qua developmental pyschology, until #5, which besides being facially absurd is also completely irrelevant to developmental psychology. Go figure.

I also love the inane "good cop / bad cop" gobbledygook in #1. Mom loves me unconditionally, but Dad only loves me if I mow the lawn? And such an arrangement is not only the norm but also "essential"? Real Ph.D. stuff there.

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by: KipEsquire @ Wed Oct 17, 2007 at 12:48:04 PM CDT

More of the same

This is just more hysterically generalized gender stereotyping, brought to you by the very people who INVENTED gender stereotyping in the first place--the fundamentalist christian gender police. I'm sure Daddy Dobson is so proud.

Hey--I have an idea. How about some actual STUDIES, and some real, genuine scientific RESEARCH, and some DATA, and some actual conclusions which can be drawn logically and rationally to determine if any of these things are true?? How about trying to access the facts, instead of postulating conjectured hyperbole?

Nope......guess not. After all, when you live inside a fantasy world, using logic and reason are antithetical to your very existence. Why bother trying to learn anything through the scientific method, when you already have all the truth bound up in one tidy book, right??

They live in a world of irrational conjecture and bias. No room for objective analysis. 

It's also fun to note the slippery slope fallacy being trotted out ONCE AGAIN in item number five. Don't they ever get tired of being called on the use of logical fallacies??

Oh...silly me...there I go again, using that naughty "logic" again.........

  

A society without religion is like a maniac without a chainsaw.

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by: Jen @ Wed Oct 17, 2007 at 12:49:46 PM CDT

i dinno, but after reading the preceeding post,

i'd say sexual addiction in heteros is just one of the real threats to kids that the haterosexuals should busy themselves with.  another is the beating of shame into their own children for not being born cookie-cutter perfect by some pisshead's narrow definition.

Lurleen on Twitter

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by: Lurleen @ Wed Oct 17, 2007 at 12:55:54 PM CDT

So...

For every one of anti-SSM doctor, we can produce what maybe 10 pro-SSM doctors, but somehow, she'll be the one listened to since that's what THEY (you know, THOSE people) want to hear regardless of reason, study, or statistic.

Fuck her and her "study" in the eye. #4 really sets me off...first off, it's "human sexuality is fluid" not "pliant". Dr. John Money's studies would tell her that, but whatever. It's just so much easier to drum in the heterosocial skills than to actually develop a person in a positive, natural way, isn't it, Dr. Hansen? As long as you act like it, then you are it, right?

Curses! My million dollar ideas foiled again: "God Bless Your Brand!" http://www.christvertising.com/

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by: TJ McFisty @ Wed Oct 17, 2007 at 13:04:46 PM CDT

Further "Evidence"

I can cite studies that I just made up on the spot to prove that homes with pets ought also to be balanced.  Families that have only a cat or a dog, but  not both, run the risk of children identifying to closely with their canine or feline nature, without concern for the well-being of their reptilian or piscean natures.  The unconditional canine love differs so much from the standoffish tolerance exhibited by cats.

Families that drive Fords versus Chevrolets, or, heaven forfend, those who use public transportation, are missing out on the Saturn Difference, except that Saturn is named after a pagan god, which is damnably pernicious. 

Blah blah blah - why do people give these asstards any credibility at all?

 

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by: obscurifer @ Wed Oct 17, 2007 at 13:11:18 PM CDT

Yeah

Families with only dogs run the risk of having children who think that unconditional love is just going to come to them. When you give a child a cat, you give that child the gift of learning that affection is something you have to work for, preferably with wet food or scraps of lunch meat. Seems there should be some good Christian lesson in there.

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by: one jewish dyke @ Wed Oct 17, 2007 at 17:34:05 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

She's a waste of words, a degree, and...

...breath.

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by: Holly Capote @ Wed Oct 17, 2007 at 13:13:01 PM CDT

Oh My God

Another Doctor... Doctor Goebbels, would be so proud of this guy.

Paula The Surf Mom

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by: PaulatheSurfMom @ Wed Oct 17, 2007 at 13:16:13 PM CDT

Lesbian wannabes

"I know a lot of women who would really like to be attracted to women and not men because they think it would make their life easier (I'm not even going to try to explain this) but none of them seem to be able to actually find themselves attracted to women."

So true, so true - There were times dealing with my husband that I would basically curse the day God made me straight. I like women as friends but never was attracted to any (although if I were, then Melissa Etheridge would definitely be my type).

My lesbian friends told me that a lot of straight women kind of look at them with envy, but in reality same-sex relationships are the same as het ones - you're still imperfect people trying to make your way in the world.

As far as having two opposite-sex parents in traditional roles, this psychologist can babble all he/she wants, but the truth is that this family model barely exists in human culture so he/she is basically full of sh*t.

"Maybe life's meaning is not so much found, as it is made." Opus, by Berke Breathed

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by: LisaInBama @ Wed Oct 17, 2007 at 13:46:03 PM CDT

My boyfriend

Is a renowned clinical psychologist and he recently gave me a copy of one of his professional publications with an article that debunks all of this crap.

Now, I'm going to be digging through stacks of old magazines to find it. But, my point is that there are legitimate psychologists who do real research and have come to completely different conclusions.

Anyway, I can't wait to e-mail him this blog post, Pam. He was the leader of his college debate team, so he'll probably send me a point-by-point rebuttal by dinnertime (he's done that a couple of times before). If he does, I'll copy and paste it.

He's also the editor of a psychology journal. He gets some of the country's top researchers to write for his publication. Maybe I can get him to do an entire issue on these kinds LGBT topics (his most recent is all about the ethics of torture).

When you look for the bad in mankind, expecting to find it, you surely will.

- Abraham Lincoln.

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by: Fritz @ Wed Oct 17, 2007 at 14:14:57 PM CDT

?

"[T]here are legitimate psychologists who do real research and have come to completely different conclusions."

Wouldn't that be the definition of "legitimate psychologists"?

Curious,

Kat

>^..^<

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by: KatRose @ Wed Oct 17, 2007 at 14:16:31 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

can't wait

for the reaction. I don't know how this woman got her license.

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by: Pam Spaulding @ Wed Oct 17, 2007 at 14:37:05 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

This nicely bashes single-parent families as well.

Nothing like a one-two punch to enforce your specific, narrow worldview, huh?

Blogwhoring @ http://indigestible.nightwares.com/

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by: Warren @ Wed Oct 17, 2007 at 14:29:21 PM CDT

mommy teaches how to bake, and daddy teaches how to throw a ball

my god, this "doctor" makes all kinds of basic assumptions that are ludicrous.  ONLY a father can protect his daughter's philandering vagina?  what?  she doesn't once address individuals who don't fall into her neat categories of specific gender roles, as if no exceptions to her rules exist anywhere, including many of the straight folks she upholds. 

there's no doubt that this is an intentional ommission to smear people she finds personally distasteful, but also a declaration of her own shortcomings as an effective parent to children.  anyone who makes blanket statments about the roles that a person CAN'T play because of their sex is essentially pleading guilty to that sort of parental ineffectiveness.  sorry, not my problem, lady.     

The gays stole my lunch money

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by: matt in mpls @ Wed Oct 17, 2007 at 14:56:55 PM CDT

Right on target, Matt

Well, since I am teaching my daughter to cook and throw a football, according to Dr. Hansen, I am totally screwing this parenting thing up.  Damn, I thought I had it right all these years.  Well, i am so glad she set me straight (no pun intended).  Thank goodness there are such individuals willing to share their prejudice "enlightenment" with the rest of us.

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by: actosrep @ Wed Oct 17, 2007 at 15:23:23 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

don't make an appt.

Can't believe she's licsenced in my state, but then she is from the vast arid spread of San Bernardino County....
The book sh'es written is called, "Feminine Wisdom: Timeless Secrets
For Attracting A Husband". 

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by: Karen in Kalifornia @ Wed Oct 17, 2007 at 15:44:19 PM CDT

Maybe...

Maybe she got her 'professional' skills right there in San Barnardino County...

from Snoopy's brother Spike - amidst his wanderings among the cacti on the outskirts of Needles.

Kat

>^..^<

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by: KatRose @ Wed Oct 17, 2007 at 16:24:28 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Beneath the gender stereotypes

...in this article there is so much unsaid...

I'm watching Oprah, she has Bill Cosby on with his new book, repeating that oft-heard statistic that 70% of African-American children in the US are born to fatherless homes. It's kind of amazing that that is an ignored issue in comparison to fundie fury over LGBT families.

So in the end, who is this woman is really crapping on? More and more with all the comparisons of LGBT struggle with the broader history of civil rights, I see these people focusing the same arguments on our tiny percentage of the population. It seems like that they have simply refocused their hatred on a group they can get away with hating. Makes you wonder how Ken Hutcherson can sleep at night.

____________________

Donate to Carmen's Place

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by: jackalope @ Wed Oct 17, 2007 at 16:14:53 PM CDT

"conditional-type father love"

I always thought that "I only love you sometimes" was considered child abuse. Instead, I find out it's healthy!

<3 Sam

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by: Samie D @ Wed Oct 17, 2007 at 17:02:21 PM CDT

if and only if

the parent providing it can pee standing up in a relatively hygenic manner.

So those of us who are the partner who provides the 'push' to our kid, contrasted to the partner who provides the 'oh look what you did!' praise more often, aren't really doing that...unless we're men. In which case it's the ultimate good, mommy and daddy fulfilling G-d's intent for their lives.

I know several butch-femme couples who fit that frame exactly, so I guess their kids aren't confused.

No, wait: The two-mom families that all objective studies prove to raise healthier children than other two-parent families--as measured by academic, physical, social and emotional welfare--they must all have one stone butch and one high femme in them.

At what point does the ridiculous attempt to assign traits to genders become it's own parody?

But wait, there's more!

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by: PhoenixRising @ Wed Oct 17, 2007 at 17:54:53 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

...and its own prison.

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by: Holly Capote @ Wed Oct 17, 2007 at 18:04:43 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Both my parents love me unconditionally...

...so I guess that's why I'm gay!  Or whatever she was trying to insinuate in her article.

" Conditional-type" love?  How the hell does that seem healthy?  Don't you get enough of that on the playgrounds at school or in a cruel world where everyone wants a piece of you?  Why would you need that at home?

"To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best day and night to make you like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight and never stop fighting." -E.E. Cummings

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by: popsiclestand @ Wed Oct 17, 2007 at 22:22:46 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

I'm sure that this is great science

brought to us by the people who think that the Earth is 6000 years old and life is so complex that it needed a creator.  Is there a anti-gay Discovery Institute out there somewhere?  It sounds like there must be.

My America includes LGBT families.

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by: Mena @ Wed Oct 17, 2007 at 19:17:39 PM CDT

parse

Well, this is quite a piece of work. Such a rational, balanced point of view! As for an analysis of it, there is a technical term that is used to describe this kind of thing: A Fucking Load of Bullshit-- or, as it is in Latin, bunchaassolus fullashitimus.

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by: drsivana99 @ Thu Oct 18, 2007 at 00:06:14 AM CDT

California School of Professional Psychology

 

It may be that Ms. Hansen's doctorate does not hold alot of water. This school is not exactly the MIT of the psychology world.  Have a look at

www.cspprofile.com

for instance. 

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by: dr haber @ Thu Oct 18, 2007 at 13:51:47 PM CDT