Recently, our friend Gary Gates, a demographer specializing in LGBT data at the Williams Institute, published a new report on LGBT parenting in the United States. This report contains the most accurate data to date on the LGBT parenting population. It is the result of analysis from several data sources, including the 2008/2010 General Social Survey, the Gallup Daily Tracking Survey, Census 2010, and the Census Bureau’s 2011 American Community Survey.
Much of the information in the report affirms what we already know – and what we’ve already written about in our 2010 All Children Matter report: families headed by LGBT parents live in virtually every county in every state across the country; they are more diverse than their opposite-sex counterparts, and tend to be more economically disadvantaged than non-LGBT headed families. However, this new analysis tells us that as many as 3 million LGBT people have had a child, which means that approximately 6 million Americans – from infants to grown adults – have at least 1 parent who is LGBT. What does this data on modern families tell us? The new information confirms that LGBT families are woven into the fabric of every aspect of American society.