How research is shaping the fight for equal rights

Research plays a vital role in affecting real-world change in many areas. This includes the fight for equality.

My work – along with that of many others in the research community – contributed to the 2015 ruling in favour of marriage equality in the US. This was also true for the 2019 change in UK law to allow single parents, often gay men, to become the legal parents of their children born through surrogacy.

Research can provide empirical evidence to counter false statements that people make when trying to promote a particular view – something that is especially important when it comes to thinking about new policies or new legislation on the family.

Let’s take same-sex parenting as an example.

In the 1970s and 1980s, when parents in heterosexual families in countries like the US or UK separated or divorced, custody was almost always awarded to the mother because it was thought that mothers were more suited to parenting than fathers.

It was only in rare cases where the mother was physically or emotionally unable to care for her children that the father was awarded custody – unless, that is, the mother happened to be lesbian, in which case she almost always lost custody to the father.

The absence of empirical data on what actually happened to children in lesbian mother families prompted my first study of these children in the UK. The investigation found them to be no more likely to experience emotional or behavioural problems than children raised by heterosexual mothers.

Through this research, it became clear that lesbian mothers were losing custody of their children because of the prejudices and false assumptions of the courts, and not because they were ‘unfit’ mothers, as they were often described.

Any controversial issue will give rise to a wide range of opinions, many of which are driven by people’s political, religious or moral beliefs.

When it comes to family issues, in particular, people often have strong beliefs based on their own experiences. This can lead to injustices for parents and children who have different experiences. That is why I think that scientific research on the family is so important.

Soon after my early study of lesbian mother families, families began to change in other ways:

• lesbian couples began to plan families together using donor insemination
• there was also a rise in the number of infertile heterosexual couples who started a family in this way
• the first baby was born by in vitro fertilisation (IVF)
• IVF led to the conception of children through embryo and egg donation
• children were born through surrogacy
• same-sex couples were allowed to adopt children jointly
• single people began to form families using assisted reproduction

As each new kind of family emerged, concerns were raised about the wellbeing of the children – always based on the assumption that they would experience psychological harm.

Studying these different family types has allowed us to come to more general conclusions. Taking the research as a whole, it seems that what matters most for children is not the number, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation or biological relatedness of the parents, but instead, the quality of family relationships.

The findings of empirical research have challenged deeply held prejudices and dispelled myths about the psychological consequences of new family forms for children. This contributes to changes in the law that have increased the rights of single people and same-sex couples to form families.

As we are entering a period in which these rights are increasingly under threat, high-quality research on families is becoming more important than ever.

Hear more from Professor Golombok in our podcast, When Science Finds a Way.

This article was first published in 'Behind the Research', our LinkedIn newsletter sharing insights and stories from experts in global health research.