A recent study from Italy suggests that children of same-parent couples, also known as rainbow families, demonstrate greater resilience and well-adjusted behavior than their peers. The study, published in the first issue of Multiversi, a digital series dedicated to the challenges of the contemporary world, was edited by Valeria Condino, Alex Fortunato, and Leonardo Spanò, and features the work of Laura Porzio Giusto and Nicola Carone.
The authors note that daughters and sons of same-parent couples display good adaptability and lower rates of behavioral problems than the norm. Factors that contribute to these resilient qualities include a loving and protective family environment, good communication between parents and daughters, and parents who are open and supportive of their sexual orientation.
The study is consistent with over forty years of empirical research that shows that children raised in same-parent families have socio-emotional and cognitive psychological development paths comparable to their peers raised in traditional families. These findings have prompted major national and international associations of doctors and psychologists to endorse same-parent families as a viable and nurturing environment for children.
The American Psychoanalytic Association, for example, recognizes that “it is in the child’s best interest to develop an attachment to involved, competent, and caring parents. Assessment of these parenting qualities should be determined without bias as to sexual orientation.”
Similarly, a recent meta-analysis conducted by researchers from Guangxi Medical University (China) and Duke University (Durham, North Carolina) reviewed 34 papers published between January 1989 and April 2022 and found that growing up in homoparental families does not represent a disadvantage compared to growing up in heterogeneous families.
The Psychoanalytic Center of Rome, among the avant-gardes of the Italian Psychoanalytic Society, advocates for psychoanalytic research that accounts for the complex forms of the contemporary subject. According to a statement from the center, “these forms can no longer separate the biological from the cultural dimension, the embodied body and the symbolic body, the political and the psychic.”
The Italian study provides important support for the growing recognition of same-parent families as a legitimate and nurturing environment for children. It also underscores the need for continued research that examines the complex interplay between social, cultural, and psychological factors that shape the development of children in rainbow families.