A new study has found that children raised by same-sex couples tend to rate better in terms of physical health and social well-being than children in the general population.

Lead researcher Simon Crouch said his team of University of Melbourne researchers' findings, published in the journal BMC Public Health, refute the long-standing notion that children would suffer socially from having parents of the same sex, The Washington Post reported.

"It's often suggested that children with same-sex parents have poorer outcomes because they're missing a parent of a particular sex," Crouch said. "But research my colleagues and I published ... shows this isn't the case."

The survey included 315 same-sex parents with a total of 500 children from throughout Australia. Roughly 80 percent of the parents are female, while about 18 percent are male, according to the study.

Crouch wrote in The Conversation that the researchers found no differences in terms of emotional behavior and physical functioning when comparing the children of same-sex couples with children from the general population -- but the children of same-sex parents did score about 6 percent higher on general health and family cohesion.

Crouch said the higher cohesion rates could be attributed to parents who equally distribute the work load at home and added that same-sex couples are likely to share responsibilities more equally than are heterosexual parents, according to The Post.

"It is liberating for parents to take on roles that suit their skills rather than defaulting to gender stereotypes, where mum is the primary care giver and dad the primary breadwinner," Crouch said.

However, not everything the study found was positive for the children of same-sex parents. According to the study, roughly two-thirds of the children with same-sex parents faced stigma because of their parents' sexual orientation. Such stigmas ranged from issues of sending letters home addressed to a "Mr. and Mrs." to the more harmful bullying at school.

Crouch said a child's social and emotional well-being could be greatly impacted by the amount of stigma the child faces, The Post reported.

On the other hand, the American Academy of Pediatrics published a study last year that stated that based on three decades of analyzing children of same-sex parents, children showed resilience "with regard to social, psychological and sexual health despite economic and legal disparities and social stigma."

"Many studies have demonstrated that children's well-being is affected much more by their relationships with their parents, their parents' sense of competence and security, and the presence of social and economic support for the family than by the gender or the sexual orientation of their parents," study co-authors Drs. Ellen Perrin and Benjamin Siegel wrote in the study.

But Siegel, a professor of pediatrics at the Boston University School of Medicine, told BU Today last year that there are limits with research on children with same-sex parents because none of the studies so far have been randomized or had a controlled trial. He also argued that such studies are small because there aren't that many same-sex parents.