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Children raised by lesbian couples do as well as those raised by heterosexual couples, according to new research.

American sociologists found that lesbian couples spent more time with their children and were less likely to use physical discipline than heterosexual couples. In turn, their children were more accepting of difference in others.

“It’s more about the quality of the parenting than the gender of the parents,” said Judith Stacey, co-author of the study published in the Journal of Marriage and Family on Friday.

“Children being raised by same-gender parents, on most all of the measures that we care about - self-esteem, school performance, social adjustment and so on - seem to be doing just fine and, in most cases, are statistically indistinguishable from kids raised by married mums and dads on these measures,” added co-author Timothy Biblarz.

Overall, the study found nothing to suggest that children being brought up without a father were adversely affected. Conversely, children brought up by lesbian couples might be better off, because non-biological female parents were found to spend more time with their children than biological heterosexual fathers.

In addition, lesbian couples were slightly more likely than heterosexual couples to be actively committed to hands-on parenting. Stacey suggested that this might be because two women have to actively choose to become parents.

“Women have a slight advantage for all sorts of reasons – cultural, and possibly biological reasons – but on average there are more women who are really eager to be parents and be really invested in it,” she said.

The study encompassed 81 studies of gay and heterosexual parents over a five-year period. It focused almost exclusively on lesbian couples raising children, because gay male parenthood was considered to be too recent a phenomenon to provide evidence of child outcomes.

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