The Williams Institute

A new chapter in "The Future of Children" by Gary J. Gates, Blachford-Cooper Distinguished Scholar and Research Director at the Williams Institute explores what's next for research on LGBT families. As debates about marriage equality cool, researchers can explore new questions about LGBT family dynamics, including how parents divide labor in the absence of gender differences between spouses or partners and whether parent-child relationships change in ways that are consistent with gender norms when a parent transitions from one gender to another. For the first time, the 2014 General Social Survey showed that the portion of Americans who think same-sex sexual relationships are never wrong (49%) is substantially higher than the proportion who say such relationships are always wrong (40%), according to the chapter. The chapter, titled "Marriage and Family: LGBT Individuals and Same-Sex Couples," appears in the newest issue of "The Future of Children," a collaboration between the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University and the Brookings Institution.