Why is that the 'clear ideal'? Surely a loving, supportive parents in a relatively stable economic position is ideal.

I don't know what clarity there is on this issue. Though i agree that there are higher standards for parents who adopt - while the complete lack of standards for natural born parents does bring down the quality of care.

orathaic,

No one really seems to know the answer to that one. Studies do confirm that young people are better off that grow up with a close male role model (e.g. usually a father), and that there is significant benefit to having male teachers in young people's lives, instead of just female teachers.

@Octavius - I like your explanation. Never really looked at it that way.

@ Al: Which studies? Links or citations, please.

Here is a summary paper with a lot of citations, Jamiet. It's just one of several that I found with a very simple Google search. Google is your friend.

www.ecdip.org/docs/.../IF%20Father%20Res%20Summary%20(KD).pdf‎

Also see

http://www.maec.org/equity/gender-issue2.html

Sorry, the first link didn't work. Here:

http://www.ecdip.org/docs/pdf/IF%20Father%20Res%20Summary%20(KD).pdf

Selection bias. Next trivially easy thing to see through, please.

I found one of the studies

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Orth- its pretty fucking simple: the world is half women and half men, mostly heterosexual.. Therefore being raised by two people that are representative of the overwhelming majority of the humans you will encounter in life is better. Its common fucking sense.

I would let a hockey player teach a kid to play football.

Nobody needs a study to grasp this simple truth.

I would **NOT** let a hockey player teach a kid to play football.

Nobody needs a study to grasp this simple truth.

And Huffington post isn't really a shining example of journalism.

Well, the lines are in the sand, and I for one have no real interest in trying to substantiate a set of facts for people who are more interested in political arguing.

For the rest of us, then:
Why do some people have so much trouble accepting that gender is so hard wired into the human brain? They seem to think that dressing little boys in pink and enrolling little girls in sports will somehow erase six or seven million years of evolution.

That should prove interesting.

It implies that the capabilities and aptitudes of different sexes are not *gasp* identical. Many people equate this with them not being 'equal' and that's a bad thing.

Black and white - men and women are equal. Any attempt to demonstrate differences in capability doesn't fit that. As you point out millions of years of evolution is a bit more nuanced than that.

Really, this kind of stuff is funny. Science has known for *decades* that homosexuals make acceptable parents, at least on paper. Science has known for *decades* that male role-models benefit children of both genders. Scientists have known for *decades* that there is a measurable intelligence difference between men and women.

These needn't be political issues. They needn't be some "pie in the sky" intellectual arguments for geeks to obsess over in college philosophy clubs. These are actual, answerable questions that yes, science has actually answered.

It's funny to me that people speculate on this sort of stuff, openly, without bothering to run this sort of stuff through a search engine. And then want to debate me on it when science already has an answer. And then get made at me when I don't feel like debating it. What gives?

Thanks Howard. And yes, I agree with you.

But wouldn't you (plural) want to know the truth? If black people are (measurably) better at basketball than white people, I would want to know. If women are better drivers than men, I would want to know. If homosexuals make effective parents, I would want to know.

If nothing else, I'm just curious. The answers are out there. Don't you all want to know the truth as well?

Al

Can you point me to the research that's demonstrated a measurable difference in intelligence? I'm interested that this exists.

Hereward, I can point you to dozens of sources which say that women should stay in the kitchen and serve their man and that they just embarrass themselves when they try to go out into the work place and that dogs are more intelligent and make better companions.


Oh wait, those are just previous posts here by Al.

@Hereward,

As tempting as it would be to do that, amigo, I'm going to do you one better - I'm going to show you how to locate that yourself.

First use the browser of your computer to go to the following universal resource locator (URL) : https://duckduckgo.com/html

Then in the search box, type the terms (using your keyboard, the thing beneath your monitor) "men women smarter."

Dozens of articles came up with this, some reputable.

Sorry if that sounds sarcastic, but you walked *right* into that one.

Don't you guys read the news? Reputable newspapers cover issues of science and health.

Sorry, you probably don't deserve to be talked to like that, it just becomes comical after a while.

Sorry again - I really don't mean to sound like an ass.

"Scientists have known for *decades* that there is a measurable intelligence difference between men and women." - i know that in the 80s there were tests of mathematical ability, basically the top 1% of people based on math scores were male at a ratio of ~ 13:1 (13 males for every 1 female)

This study was repeated about 20 years later, and it was found that this had changed to something like 3:1... it turns out what they were testing was not people's raw ability, but societies preference.

You can see this be repeating the test in other societies and getting different results. The US appears to have become less sexist when it comes to maths, and the jobs which you can get from them over the past 20 years; though not as far advanced in equality as scandanavia and iceland - where the got scores with females doing better than males.

There is a definite social impact on learning. We know this, and if you tell kids growing up that they can only be a certain type of person, they will not invest the intellectual effort required to excel in other areas, (except perhaps that 1 in 13, who do it despite what they are told...).

Beyond that, it has been known for decades that IQ tests are limited tools. They tell you more about the person designing the test, and what they value as important skills than they do about intelligence. They are a measure, just like running speed; what importance we place on running speed is about society, not the value of a person.

The same is true of IQ.

Black people disproportionately end up in prison in America, does that evidence tell you that they are naturally inclined towards breaking the law?

Studies seem to show that white and black americans use cannabis at about the same rate, yet more black people are convicted - that just tells you about the way the law is enforced.

'If it were as easy for gay couples to have children as straight couples, however, I feel they would be significantly worse (a loving and dedicated couple with male and female experience is the clear ideal), but as it won't happen it's a moot point.'

- as it happens it will soon (probably within our lifetimes) be possible for gay couples to have children. And at that point what arguement will you have against them raising those children, made from their own genetic material, they would have exactly the same claim to them - the free market dictates this technology will become available (though i don't know what it will cost) and there is a tonne of research being done on fertility which will help make it happen (including a recent breakthrough in three-parent babies, which is an amazing achievement in itself)

is this thread a "troll" ?
when I was a lad there was 23 of us living in a paper bag, Dad would wake us up an hour before we went to bed, make us lick road clean with tongue, then work down coal mine for 12 hours and then beat us to death with a broken beer bottle each night.......

all this over parenting that goes on these days..""helicopter" parents hovering over their offspring...

the best way to raise children is the "benign indifference" approach
give them a piece of fruit and send them outside to play unsupervised
survival of the fittest
send one to University and the other one into the Military

"send one to University and the other one into the Military"

Is it the intelligent one or the dumb one that gets sent to University?

Better question is which will be the intelligent one ad dumb oe AFTER university vs. military.

Well, the military one can then go onto university on the government's dime... Likewise, the university one can voluntarily go into ROTC then serve active duty as an officer in the service after he or she graduates.

Gays being better parents may not be so unexplainable with the application of critical thinking, psychology, and skepticism.
Skepticism .... wtf, is that now a science being a skeptic !!
I thought skeptics were just people that had been bullied at school !!

Nigee -1 - That was a crappy attempt at a troll, dude.

I think that a couple of pedophiles would make TERRIBLE parents. Shame on you all.

^obvious troll is obvious.

Wow Draug, you're on a roll tonight. Way to sniff out all those trolls. We commend you.

@ mapleleaf, not all heterosexual parents are pedophiles,
in fact it's only a minority of them or their family members who commit acts of
pedophilia
I am not sure how your comment relates to happy and gay parents
surely happy and gay parents are better than grumpy and sad parents

"I think that a couple of pedophiles would make TERRIBLE parents."

He's got a point, paedophiles would probably make bad parents. And how do you know you're not a paedo, it might be that you just haven't met the right kid.