Neon Samurai, I do not evade, but it seems we are set to disagree and then it is becoming too time-consuming to discuss the detailed way we do her. All I can say is that I see common sense and findings such as base my opinion on, are in coformity - it makes no sense to assume that the missing of the mother of father does not make a difference on a subtle level that rasises the chance that eventually a kid will be affected by this subtle difference, due to the long time it is exposed to it. A male acting as a mother or a female acting as a father is not the same and never can be the same like a male father and a female father, both genders have their very different pschological ways to deal and to approach things and other people, and create different social "climates". I see it as favourable if a child sees both these variables in its life, and thus I reject adoption by homosexual couples like it is also not praticed to allow adoption by single individuals. My conclusion on the possible longterm consequecnes I also see strengthened by simple reality observation when referring to juvenile psychiatric services - here the doctors and psychologists often are confronted with cases of kids and juveniles becoming symptomatic in their social behavior due to one parent maybe getting killed, and is missing.
And one principal thing though. One of the reasons I quit psychology was - becasue it is so politvcally correct, if that is not ironic. For histopricx reasons psychology has a massive inferiority complex and constantly thinks it must prove that it is as hardcore science as real hardcore sciences like physcis (but it is not, I say). This resulted in a relatively blind and uncritical copying of working procedures practioces in other sciences, namle physics: a lot of "precise measuring" is taking place although there is not a single psycho-test that is measuring anything in the defintiioon of the word, and a lot of hard scientific work was and is being done that mimics the way of approaches in other sciences - without ever asking if that is recommendable and advisable and really makes sense. Popper made differences between sciences, and taloks of hard sciences, and pseudo-sciences, and psychology belongs to the latter. As a result from this internal schizophrenia, wanting to be hardcore science, but being softcore or even pseudo indeed
, In the 50s psychology started to orient itself towards the pubölic sector, and claimed importance and relevance by starting to "fulfill" and prove the socially or politically wanted immages of what human mind and social behavior and community should be. you will hardly find a science where the basic paradigms have been chnaged so often, as in psychology, and today this problem - thats what it is indeed - is more dominant than it was at the high time of behaviorism. The individuality of the individual now gets defined and expressed by psycholgy, and by that it becomes a massproduction of individualism that makes it uniform, not individual. Nevertheless politically wnated control of social systems, and psychology today work hand in hand, posychology poicks the goals of politics and proves them and then feeds them back, by that it has found an ally in form of politics that then helps it to push itself into soiciety and "psychologise" more and more space in the social and public envrionment. Today, it is politically wanted to negeate differences between homosexuals and heterosexuals, that is poltiically correct, and it is wanted that differences between natives and emigrants get rejected as well, or that the problpems foreign children in school classes cause, do not get relaised, but talked away . So - at least that is the situation in Germany - psychology has started to produce the wanted evidence that there are no social differences between natives and emmigrants, and research shows that foreign children in classes not being familiar with the local culture donot make serious differences for the education flow. Of course, botzh is absurd and practioners in social services and education can tell you stories about it, basing on observation.
so you see, I not only have given up psychology for reasons of being deadlocked in an forever confrontation with theb officially wanted paradigms in institutions, I also tend to be distanced and sceptical about the latest findings and studies in psychology that get done - and this especially when it comes to kids and children. I have no family of myself, but I am very close friend with two families both having children, and I see it being diferent than what officially is said by eithe rpoliticians or psychologists. One of the moms is also psychologists, we worked together in our diploma project, and her husband is teacher. My grandfather also was teacher.
We cannot help it, we must disagree on things here.
Kiwi, my opening remark I did not meant to intentionally hijack your thread, but as an additonal illustration. But as it sometimes is - it nevertheless just happened. Sorry!