Greater Good - The Science of a Meaningful Life

The SF Chronicle recently ran an article illustrating a recent report that gives some facts and figures about same-sex couples in California and the SF Bay Area. Greater Good's Fall 2007 issue included Stephanie Coontz's article on 21st Century Families and "Does Barbie Need a Man?" by Amie Miller on raising her daughter in a lesbian household, so it was interesting, being a gay dad myself, to get a larger sense of this trend in new families.

The report by The Our Family Coalition, along with the San Francisco Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Community Center and Children of Lesbians and Gays Everywhere (COLAGE)

"paints a more accurate picture of gay and lesbian parents and their children. They drew on data from the U.S. census of 2000 … as well as on several other studies [that] found 1,400 same-sex couples raising children in Alameda County and close to 700 in San Francisco. San Francisco and Alameda counties, which are ranked No. 2 and No. 4 respectively for the number of gay and lesbian couples among counties in the state. Los Angeles is No. 1, and San Diego is No. 3.

In Alameda and San Francisco counties, the report found, a large proportion of gay and lesbian couples raising children were nonwhite. In addition, 69 percent of same-sex parents were women. The groups hope that by better understanding the demographics of gay and lesbian families, they not only can help fight bias affecting children in those families, but also help improve economic equity. "