GAY and LESBIAN PARENTING
Our Guest Leaders on March 8, 2011 were Dr. Roger Mills-Koonce , Assoc. Director of the Behavioral Sciences Research Division, Center for Developmental Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Dr. Nicole Heilbron, Clinical Associate, Dept. of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Duke University Medical Center
Our PFLAG was among several groups that have been invited to participate in a community-level partnership on scientific research on lesbian-mother and gay-father families. Very little scholarly study has been done on this subject, which impacts government policy, local support systems for non-traditional families, and family systems study.
They are NOT comparing gay families to heterosexual families; that has been done. They are studying how gay and lesbian families work and what the community and therapists can do to help them.
Two researchers – from the medical centers at Duke and UNC Chapel Hill – have prepared a grant application to National Institute of Child Health and Human Development to fund this research, and they feel that community partners such as PFLAG could be very important to both the successful application and execution of this grant. They presented details of their study and explained how we can help.
If you are a lesbian/mom or gay/dad, they would like you to contact them by email. They cannot contact YOU if you do not contact them first. They will tell you more about their study before they ask you to commit to be interviewed. Your email would only express your tentative interest.
The researchers can be reached at rmk@email.unc.edu and nicole.heilbron@duke.edu
PFLAG Alamance 