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Girls need a Dad, Boys need a Mom
by Scott Gilbreath ~ January 5th, 2009
A new article published in a peer-reviewed academic journal corroborates earlier studies showing that children do best when raised in a stable and supportive family environment. The researchers pinpoint an important but often-overlooked factor in healthy adolescent development: the child’s relationship with the opposite-sex parent.
[A] child’s relationship with his or her parents is the single most important factor in predicting that child’s long-term happiness, adjustment, development, educational attainment, and success. […] [F]ather-daughter and mother-son relationships tend to have greater impact on a child’s future intimate relationships than their relationship with the same-sex parent.
[…]
While family communication and interaction is critical to high-quality relationships for children and adolescents, this study suggests that the opposite-sex parent is especially important in making children feel validated and encouraged. This is true of boys as well as girls, but it is especially true of daughters. Fathers have the greatest impact on their daughters’ vitality as an adolescent college student. Daughters with a strong relationship with their father are more self-confident, self-reliant, and are more successful in school and career than those who have distant or absent fathers.
The study, published in the November 2008 issue of the Journal of Communication and Religion, does not appear to be available online, unfortunately.
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January 5th, 2009 at 03:33 PM
Well that shoots holes in the premise that children can be raised in a same sex household.