In their recent consideration of legislation banning same-sex marriage, some Supreme Court justices expressed uninformed concern over how little we know about the long-term impact of such unions.
Justice Anthony Kennedy said that because same-sex marriage only emerged in the last five years, there isn't enough information to draw conclusions on these unions. Similarly, Justice Samuel Alito argued that gay marriage is "newer than the cellphones" and that the justices "do not have the ability to see the future."
As an academic who studies cross-cultural child development, I am shocked at the narrow perspectives expressed by some members of the court. Kennedy and Alito's blindness is not due to a lack of data on the topic. Rather, it is due to a failure to look beyond American borders in examining how families function.
Western European nations began legalizing gay civil unions as early as 1989 (Denmark) and same-sex marriages beginning in 2001 (the Netherlands ). What we've learned from these examples is that same-sex marriage does not undermine other social systems. In fact, by providing more security for children, these marriages are more a blessing than a threat to American values.
Many opposing gay unions — who have looked outside the U.S. — cite fears that they devalue the institution of marriage. They say that gay marriage and civil unions in Western Europe contributed to decreasing heterosexual marriage rates, increasing divorce rates and a rise in the number of children born out of wedlock in those societies. However, in a meticulous analysis, economist M.V. Lee Badgett clearly shows that all of these trends were well established long before nations such as Denmark and the Netherlands legalized same-sex unions.
My recent research in the Faroe Islands, an autonomous province of Denmark located in the North Atlantic, dovetails with Badgett's findings. Perhaps because in the Faroe Islands many individuals are more traditional and religious than their Scandinavian neighbors, they have not legalized gay marriage or same-sex unions. Nonetheless, they've experienced the same marital trends, such as low marriage rates and increasing divorce rates, observed in other Scandinavian societies. In recent years, as many as 50 percent of Faroese children were born to unwed parents. This strongly suggests that something else is driving the trends that concern advocates of "traditional" marriage.
We don't need to limit our scope to assessing recent developments in Western societies. Anthropologists have long known that Western concepts of marriage describe only a fraction of the variation observed around the world. High in the Himalayas of Nepal and Tibet, several populations practice fraternal polyandry — in which two or more brothers wed the same woman. All of the brothers contribute to the care of the children of their union and claim to not recognize who a child's actual genetic father is. Similarly, the Bari of Venezuela believe that a single child can have multiple fathers. Not only do multiple men recognize shared paternity of children, but research shows that Bari children with two fathers fare better than those with one.
However valuable fathers' contributions may be, they are not essential to successful child rearing. The Mosou of southwestern China embrace an informal system, sometimes called "walking marriage," in which fathers play an extremely minimal role. There, women and men continue to live with their separate kin groups. A woman's partner only visits her at night. So how does she handle child rearing alone? She doesn't. Her family helps her raise her children — regardless of who the father may be. Her child's father, instead of caring for his children, likely helps his sister to raise hers.
Although there is no universal marriage tradition, a common theme arises again and again across cultures. Studies from around the world clearly demonstrate that children thrive when they can rely on a stable family. This explains why, in spite of the diversity described here, all cultures have systems in place to promote children being raised in secure and loving environments.
The emergence of same-sex marriage in our society does not, as some suggest, propel us into a new frontier with potentially unpredictable outcomes. Rather, it is the natural and logical extension of universal policies designed to protect and care for children everywhere.
Mariah Schug is a visiting assistant professor in psychology at Wesleyan University who specializes in cross-cultural child development.