Parenting Styles: Same-Sex Couples Spend More Time Parenting Kids, Says Study

A new study conducted by the University of Texas at Austin Population Research Center suggest that couples of the same sex are more invested in giving quality time to their children.

At least 40 percent of same sex couples give more time to their kids compared to families with heterosexual parents, the researchers learned. They also found that families with two mothers or a lesbian couple are more inclined to be more focused on the children, as reported by Yahoo Parenting.

"Our study suggests that children with two parents of the same sex received more focused time from their parents-3.5 hours a day, compared with 2.5 hours by children with different-sex parents," said Dr. Kate Prickett, one of the study authors, according to Metro.

Prickett also pointed out that such an attitude towards parenting and putting efforts to child-focused activities may be due to the ordeal same-sex parents go through just to have their children. "The ways that same-sex families come about, such as partnering with someone who already has a child, going through insemination or surrogacy, or adoption, suggest a strong desire to be a parent," said the researcher in the Metro report.

These child-focus activities are those where the parents actually take an active part in the daily tasks with their children, such as homework, bathing, reading, playing or going to the doctor. It also includes the effort same-sex parents make to attend meetings with their children's teachers at school, while encouraging their kids to enjoy extracurricular activities. It does not pertain to occasions where the parents are in the same room with kids and doing other stuff like housework or watching television.

"Time spent in child-focused activities, as well as the frequency of certain family events or activities, such as eating meals together or reading books, is associated with better child outcomes, as opposed to time when the parents are around but their energy is focused on other things," wrote Prickett in the Child and Family Blog.

 Researchers took data for their study with the help of American Time Use Surveys from the US Census Bureau. The experts sampled over 40,000 parents between data culled from 2003 to 2013. There were only 55 same-sex parents in the sampling, Yahoo Parenting reported.

"This finding challenges biases against same-sex parents and demonstrates high levels of investment in children by same-sex couples," Prickett further wrote in the Child and Family Blog.

The study was first published in the Demography journal in June and subsequently at the National Institutes of Health.