Lesbians make better parents than conventional couples, according to a director of the government’s parenting academy.

Stephen Scott, director of research at the National Academy for Parenting Practitioners, told a meeting last week that the latest research showed that children of such couples did better in life.

Speaking at the launch at the think tank Demos of a report on the influence of character on life, Scott said: “Lesbians make better parents than a man and a woman.”

His arguments are supported by experts who have found, over years of research, that children brought up by female couples are more aspirational and more confident in championing social justice. They show no more tendencies towards homosexuality than the offspring of heterosexual parents.

Such strong endorsement from the government’s main agency for parenting will give a boost to gay parents. The speech from the academy, set up by the Department for Children, Schools and Families in 2007, will alarm traditional family supporters and those who raise concerns about the lack of a father figure in a child’s life.

Parenting groups have recently been accused of turning into vocal advocates for the tiny minority of parents who are gay couples. There was a row this year when the British Association for Adoption and Fostering described opponents of gay adoption as “retarded homophobes”. It had to pulp copies of a guide using the phrase.

However, more than a third of people now believe a lesbian couple can be at least as good parents as a man and a woman, according to the annual British Social Attitudes report.

Research at Birkbeck college, part of London University, and at Clark University in Massachusetts, says there is no evidence to show children of lesbian parents are disadvantaged in any way.

By the nature of their relationship, lesbian couples cannot have children by accident. They use a sperm donor, often a gay man, or adopt. The child then has two “mothers”.

Daughters of lesbians are more likely to aspire to professions that were traditionally considered male, such as doctors or lawyers.

Mary Cheney, the lesbian daughter of Dick Cheney, the former American vice-president, who is expecting her second baby later this month, said in a recent interview: “Every piece of remotely responsible research that has been done in the last 20 years has shown there is no difference between children raised by same-sex parents and children raised by opposite-sex parents. What matters is being raised in a stable, loving environment.”

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