Original article (in Slovenian) was published on 16/10/2025; Author: David Bajec
Research shows, developmental psychology professor Ljubica Marjanovič Umek told Razkrinkavanje.si, that children from same-sex families achieve the same outcomes in all key areas of development as their peers from heterosexual families.
Appearing on the podcast of Slovenian traveller and entrepreneur Tomaž Gorec on 16 September, psychologist Andrej Perko stated that “you cannot raise children without biologically different parents, you cannot have normal upbringing without that.”
Perko works as a therapist at Mitikas, an organisation he founded in 2006 that provides therapeutic support to people struggling with addiction, including alcoholism and drug dependency. Its website states that Mitikas uses the approach developed by the late Slovenian psychiatrist Janez Rugelj.
Rugelj is best known in the Slovenian public for his distinctive approach to alcohol addiction treatment known as the social-andragogical method. He elicited controversy with his frequent politically incorrect public statements, having been convinced that every public appearance should be provocative.
Professor Marjanovič Umek, who teaches developmental psychology at the University of Ljubljana’s Faculty of Arts, told Razkrinkavanje.si that numerous studies confirm that children from same-sex families achieve the same outcomes as their peers from heterosexual families in all key areas of development, be it social, emotional, cognitive or academic.
The quality of child-rearing, she emphasised, is not inherent to biological differences between parents but depends on the quality of parenting. Regardless of gender, parents must provide a secure emotional bond, support, love, and open communication. In her view, family structure is not a key factor in child-rearing, as shown by multiple studies on child development and learning in single-parent families.
Parents in same-sex families typically have well-developed social networks. These allow their children to identify with people of the opposite sex, supporting a balanced development of social roles and identities. Aside from good parenting, other important factors for a child’s development include the parents’ education, value orientation, and societal norms, according to Marjanovič Umek.
Children in same-sex families may face social prejudice due to societal stigma, which can affect their emotional and mental well-being, she explained. “However, same-sex families provide children and adolescents with diverse socio-cultural contexts that teach them effective psychological adaptation, stress management, independence, boundary-setting, the overcoming of gender stereotypes, and greater tolerance for diversity in general.”
There are both high-quality longitudinal studies and meta-analyses on the development of children in same-sex families, she added. The authors of the review paper The Kids Are OK, published in The Medical Journal of Australia in 2017, analysed studies and meta-studies to find that children raised in families with same-sex parents achieve the same emotional, social, and educational outcomes as children raised in heterosexual families.
That paper also cites a meta-analysis examining the quality of development and the relationship between same-sex parents and their children. According to the authors, some studies even indicate that children of same-sex parents achieve better outcomes than other children: for example, they have been found to be better at adapting psychologically and more open to social differences. The authors add, however, that these positive differences may reflect the high quality of parenting, socioeconomic status, and family stability observed in the same-sex families included in the study.
In a longitudinal study of children in planned lesbian families, published in 2010 in the American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, Dutch researchers examined how social stigmatisation affects children growing up in such families. They found that the psychological development of these children does not differ from that of their peers, even though some experience various forms of stigmatization due to their parents’ sexual orientation, such as social exclusion among boys and gossip among girls.
The authors also emphasised that forming connections with other children from same-sex families serves as an important protective factor, helping to mitigate the negative effects of stigmatization and strengthen children’s positive self-image.
We have informed psychologist Andrej Perko of our findings and will publish his response once we have received it. The claim that “you cannot raise children without biologically different parents, you cannot have normal upbringing without that” is not true.
