Sexual‐ and Gender‐Minority Families: A 2010 to 2020 Decade in Review. Corinne Reczek. Journal of Marriage and Family, January 5 2020. https://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12607
Abstract: This paper critically reviews research on sexual and gender minority (SGM) families, including lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, asexual, intersex, and other (LGBTQAI+) families, in the past decade (2010–2020). First, this paper details the three primary subareas that make up the majority of research on SGM families: (1) SGM family of origin relationships, (2) SGM intimate relationships, and (3) SGM‐parent families. Next, this paper highlights three main gaps in this decade's research: (1) a focus on gay, lesbian, and same‐sex families (and to a lesser extent bisexual and transgender families) and a lack of attention to the diverse family ties of single SGM people as well as intersex, asexual, queer, gender non‐binary/non‐conforming, polyamorous, and other SGM families; (2) an emphasis on white, socioeconomically advantaged SGM people and a failure to account for the significant racial‐ethnic and socioeconomic diversity in the SGM population; and (3) a lack of integration of SGM experiences across the life course, from childhood to old age. Future research should refine the measurement and analysis of SGM family ties with novel theory and data across the methodological spectrum.
SGM-Parent Family Effects on Children
Child well-being in SGM-parent families captured the attention of the scholarly, legal, and
policy communities during the past decade,
with research attempting to find consensus
regarding whether children raised in SGM
families are “worse off” than those raised in
cisgender heterosexual families. Studies using
new nationally representative population-based
survey data put this question to rest, consistently
showing that children in same-sex households
experience similar health, behavioral, and educational outcomes when compared with children
in different-sex households (Calzo et al., 2019;
Farr, 2017; Patterson, 2017; Reczek, Spiker, Liu,
& Crosnoe, 2016, 2017; for reviews, see Adams
& Light, 2015; Manning, Fettro, & Lamidi,
2014). When differences are found across
groups they are accounted for by variables other
than sexual-minority status, including lower SES and family transitions (Potter, 2012; Potter
& Potter, 2017).
Notably, most studies in this area deploy
household rosters and thus are only able to capture children in households with parents of the
same-sex, not households with a parent who
identifies as a gender or sexual minority. In
one of the first large-scale surveys using such
data, Rosenfeld (2010) examines U.S. Census
data to show that children of same-sex couples
are as likely to make typical progress through
school as children of other family structures;
any advantage for heterosexual married couples’ relative to other groups was explained by
SES. Similarly, Reczek, Spiker et al. (2016,
2017) analyzed the National Health Interview
Survey data to show that children raised in
same-sex married families had overall similar
health and behavioral outcomes relative to children in different-sex married families, and children in same-sex cohabiting families had overall
similar outcomes to those in different-sex cohabiting families. In a study using the American
Community Survey Waves 2008 to 2015, Boertien and Benardi (2019) showed that children living with a same-sex couple were likely to exhibit
worse achievement outcomes relative to their
peers in different-sex households in the past, but
that this gap disappeared during the study period.
A study of psychological adjustment after adoption found no differences in outcomes across
children in gay, lesbian, and heterosexual families (Goldberg, 2013). In contrast, Regnerus
(2012) showed that children who were older than
18 years who reported a parent had a same-sex
relationship at some point during their childhood reported worse well-being outcomes than
children raised in long-term heterosexual married households. However, Cheng and Powell
(2015) reanalyzed Regnerus’s data to reveal that
these negative effects were the result of inappropriate comparison groups (e.g., comparing married to divorced families). Moreover, although
not viewed as a negative outcome for children,
Goldberg and Garcia (2016) reported that children in lesbian families had less gender-typical
behavior than children in heterosexual and gay
families.
Several recent studies attempt to move
beyond comparing children in same- and
different-sex households and articulate the
unique contextual experiences of being a
child in a SGM family. Lick, Tornello, Riskind,
Schmidt, and Patterson (2012) used county-level
social climate data to analyze the psychological
well-being of children raised by same-sex parents and found better psychological outcomes
for children in areas with antidiscrimination
laws, suggesting it was institutional factors—not
something inherent in the same-sex family—that
would cause any negative child outcomes. In
addition, in a study of 84 adult children with
gay fathers, Thomeer, Donnelly, Reczek, and
Umberson (2017) found that children feel closer
to fathers when their fathers disclosed their gay
identity earlier in the life course; those who
report closer relationships with their fathers
report greater well-being, suggesting that it
is the context and content of the parent–child
tie that shapes child well-being outcomes, not
simply being from a gay family. Calzo et al.
(2019) further showed that children of bisexual
parents had higher rates of externalizing behaviors (e.g., physical aggression) than children of
heterosexual parents, but that parents’ psychological distress accounted for this difference.
Moreover, some research suggests benefits to
being in SGM families; Prickett, Martin-Storey,
and Crosnoe (2015) showed that there was an
increase in parenting attention for children in
gay and lesbian families, which may benefit later
life outcomes such as educational attainment
and employment.
Although the vast majority of research
focuses on children in same-sex households, a
small number of studies, primarily qualitative,
examine child well-being in gender-minority
parent families (for a review, see Stotzer,
Herman, & Hasenbush, 2014). For example,
Pyne et al. (2015) showed that when a parent
with minor children transitions, the child’s
well-being was strongly shaped by whether the
cisgender parent was transphobic and rejecting
or accepting of the transgender parent. Tabor
(2018) used 30 in-depth interviews with adult
children of transgender parents to document the
unique negotiation of role ambiguity children
experience when a parent transitions. Significantly more research is needed on children in
families other than same-sex, gay, or lesbian
family structures.
Critiques and Future Research
Research on SGM family-of-origin relationships, intimate relationships, and parenthood
have proliferated in the past decade. Yet important limitations in research on SGM families
persist. Next I provide an account of the following three overarching limitations in SGM family
research: (a) a lack of focus on the diversity of
SGM family types such as bisexual, transgender,
asexual, and polyamorous families as well as
single SGM people; (b) a lack of racial-ethnic
and socioeconomic diversity; and (c) a failure
to account for the life course of family ties. I
outline how future research on SGM families
should address these three deficits. I also discuss
data and practical constraints that contribute to
these limitations.
SGM Diversity
Research in the past decade focuses primarily on
cisgender gay and lesbian identified people and
individuals who live in same-sex households. A
smaller but important body of research examines bisexual and transgender partnered families,
although research has not kept up with the rapid
growth of both of these family forms during
the past decade. Comparing cisgender gay
and lesbian families to cisgender heterosexual
families was an important first intervention to
a historically cisgender heterosexual-dominant
field. Yet there has been very little empirical
research on the families of other SGM populations, including intersex—people born with a
range of intersex traits normatively presumed
to be exclusively male or female (e.g., physical
genitalia or gonads incongruent with sex chromosomes; Davis, 2015); pansexual—someone
attracted to all genders; asexual—someone
who does not experience sexual attraction or
sexual interest to people of any gender (Carroll,
2019); bisexual—someone who is attracted to
more than one sex; or polyamorous—someone
who rejects the monogamous imperative and
is romantically involved with more than one
person at once. These gaps neglect the full range
of SGM minority families, especially those
who may be the most stigmatized as well as
those who offer the most robust challenges to
paradigms of monogamy, the gender binary, and
heteronormativity. Consequently, family forms
outside of the limited cisgender, gay, lesbian,
and same-sex scope are marginalized—this
exclusion has important implications for our
ability to fully understand SGM family life.
Importantly, research on family life has almost
exclusively focused on partnered SGM people
and has failed to articulate the family dynamics
of single SGM people. Demographic profiles
show that more than 50% of SGM people are
single (Jones, 2017), yet virtually no research
explicitly engages the family lives of SGM
single people.
The lack of inclusion of diverse SGM populations is in part due to data limitations given
the relatively small number of individuals in
these groups, although this is not the case for
bisexual people, who are among the fastest
growing sexual-minority group today (Bridges
& Moore, 2018). These data limitations are
especially prevalent in demographic and survey
research but also in qualitative research. The
majority of population-based research is reliant
on a few national surveys of same-sex household
rosters that do not ask sexual or gender identity
(e.g., U.S. Census) or rely on questions on sexual
or gender identity that are limited (e.g., identifying oneself as gay, lesbian, straight, bisexual,
or “other”; e.g., National Health Interview Survey). We need better data—especially nationally
representative survey-based data—that account
for the range of identities, behaviors, and attractions in the SGM community. Although recent
surveys have added sexual identity questions or
questions on sex at birth and transgender status,
reliable and valid survey questions that account
for all SGM populations are relatively rare in
datasets that also include comprehensive measures of family relationships. Moreover, because
some SGM groups are small proportions of the
population, analyzed data can be untrustworthy.
Future data collection efforts should oversample
smaller SGM groups to allow for greater analytical power.
Qualitative research has been more effective
at providing high-quality, in-depth data on SGM
families today and will be an important aspect
of SGM family research in the next decade. Yet
qualitative studies, too, should be stretched to
include more marginalized and less-studied populations within the SGM group to develop new
theoretical approaches to understanding family
life (Compton, Meadow, & Schilt, 2018). Qualitative approaches are especially primed to fill the
dearth in research on relatively small subpopulations (such as intersex, pansexual, polyamorous,
and asexual individuals). Future research on
these populations will lead to new theoretical
advances that will influence the broader field of
family studies. Moreover, qualitative studies are
imperative in articulating the meaning of sexuality and gender identities as they change across
the next decade.
In the context of family-of-origin ties, better data with more comprehensive questions on
gender identity and sexuality and the oversampling of SGM subpopulations would allow us to
examine the nature of family-of-origin ties and
the effects of those family ties on well-being
for all SGM youth and adults. This is especially important as more youth are identifying in
non-cis, non-hetero categories than ever before,
and a continued exclusive focus on gay, lesbian, and bisexual identities will prevent us from
understanding the full range of sexual and gender diversity in the next generation of SGM
families. Questions could include the following:
How do SGM youth and adults experience and
reframe family violence, rejection and disownment, ambivalence, and support? What are the
processes through which people with different
SGM identities cope and thrive in less supportive environments? How do parents perceive and
negotiate ties with their SGM children across the
diversity of SGM statuses? How are intergenerational ties renegotiated as SGM statuses change?
How do single SGM people conceive of their
intergenerational relationships, and how does
being single shape disclosure, identity maintenance, and family relationships?
These are just some of the questions that might emerge when
we broaden the range of SGM diversity within
the realm of family of origin.
In the context of intimate ties and parenthood,
scholars continue to reify cisgender different-sex
or heterosexual couples as the gold-standard
reference category from which to compare
dynamics and outcomes of cisgender same-sex
or gay or lesbian couples. To move beyond a
focus on this comparison, future research must
explore the marital and parental decisions of
partners across sexual (e.g., polyamorous, asexual) and gender (e.g., transgender, genderqueer)
categories and include multipartner and single
families across the SGM spectrum. In doing
so, new questions and insights will arise, such
as the following: How do people of different SGM identities understand intimate and
parenthood relationships and make decisions
about entering into these relationships? For
example, polyamorous relationship formation
is notably absent from current research (Shippers, 2016). Bisexual people are more likely
to be in different-sex marriages than same-sex
marriages, yet we do not know how bisexuals understand their identity as a SGM within
different-sex relationships. Moreover, do various
SGM groups of young adults today retreat from
marriage due to queer or feminist principles,
or seek marriage to access the legal and social
protections afforded to cisgender heterosexual
individuals? How does relationship quality and
predictors of divorce vary across the SGM spectrum? How do more marginalized SGM family
configurations challenge and redefine how we
measure the division of labor? In addition, do
all SGM groups experience health benefits with
marriage, or is this benefit found only for those
that are in monogamous same-sex long-term
relationships? How do dissolution processes differ across the SGM spectrum and what can we
learn about this dissolution? How do single SGM
people conceive of the prospect of intimate relationships, and do friends become more important
as sources social support when not in an intimate
relationship? Finally, studies of parenthood must
definitively move away from proving children
in same-sex couples are equally well-off to their
heterosexual counterparts to thinking more creatively about how SGM parents across the spectrum are negotiating their parental roles in ways
dependent on socio-institutional and political
contexts. How do single SGM parents negotiate
their SGM identity and find social support and
cope with strain in both SGM and cisgender
heterosexual communities? These are just a few
of the ways in which the next decade of research
can further advance science on diverse SGM
family life.
Integration of Racial-Ethnic and Socioeconomic Diversity
There are intersecting aspects of inequality
that shape SGM people’s lives, including gender, race-ethnicity, and SES. Yet attention to
multiple, intersecting forms of inequality has
not been systematically integrated into SGM
family research (Acosta, 2018). Racial-ethnic
minorities make up a larger percent of the SGM
population than the general population (Gates,
2014), yet research on SGM families lacks racial
diversity as well as thoughtful racial analyses
with consistent and robust considerations of how
family processes are always already racialized
regardless of sample racial-ethnic composition
(Acosta, 2018). Furthermore, there is a lack of
focus on cross-cultural comparisons as well as
non-U.S. or non-Western contexts, limiting our
ability to understand the global landscape of
SGM families.
Moreover, this body of work pays inadequate
attention to socioeconomic diversity within the
SGM population. Despite assumptions of gay
affluence, recent research that suggests SGM
people are socioeconomically disadvantaged
relative to their cisgender heterosexual counterparts (Gates, 2014). Given the racial-ethnic and
socioeconomic diversity of the SGM population
and the clear importance of race-ethnicity and
SES in every facet of family life, our conclusions thus far provide limited, primarily White
and socioeconomically advantaged views of
SGM family life. Data limitations prohibit our
ability to study SES and race-ethnicity by SGM
status; most national data sources have variables for race and SES but the sample sizes of
racial-ethnic minority and SES sexual-minority
groups are small. Future data collection efforts
should oversample SGM racial-ethnic groups
to allow scholars to examine racial-ethnic and
socioeconomic variation. Notably, even qualitative and smaller-scale research in this area
fails to adequately account for racial-ethnic and
socioeconomic diversity; future studies of all
kinds need to collect a great deal of data from
non-White, non-middle-class populations to
drive research forward.
A small body of research on family-of-origin
relationships reveals the importance of examining race-ethnicity variation. In a qualitative
study with 90 parents and 90 LGB children (ages
15–24), with 59% of the sample an ethnic minority, Black, Hispanic, and Latino parents report
more parental rejection of their children and
more homonegativity than White parents, with
children corroborating these results (Richter,
Lindahl, & Malik, 2017). In an ethnographic
and in-depth interview study with 40 lesbian,
gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer youth,
Robinson (2018) showed how families who
were already economically disadvantaged experienced additional instability when a child was
gender nonconforming, leading to increases in
adolescent and young adult poverty and homelessness. Considerably more research needs
to address what might be unique stressors—or
sources of resilience—for SGM youth and adults
of color and across the socioeconomic spectrum
within their family-of-origin relationships.
Questions stemming from an intersectional
approach may include the following: How do
the interpretations, experiences, and consequences of family-of-origin support, strain,
and ambivalence vary across race-ethnicity
and SES? How do negotiations of rejection or
ambivalence depend on racialized and classed
experiences? How are our conceptualizations
of what family of origin is or should be dependent on White, middle-class SGM notions of
family? How do sibling and extended family relationships differ across racial-ethnic and
socioeconomic groups, and how does this matter
for health outcomes? What are unique adaptive
pathways taken when SGM of color across
SES are faced with family-of-origin rejection
or strain? Overall, greater theorizing of the
racial-ethnic and socioeconomic experiences
of the family of origin must be addressed to
fully understand the nature of family-of-origin
relationships.
Research consistently shows that intimate
relationship dynamics are also racialized and
vary by SES. As such, race-ethnicity and SES
are likely central to family relationships among
SGM populations. For example, research suggests that SGM people are more likely to
date and marry individuals of a different race
than themselves relative to heterosexual and
cisgender people. Due to the lower levels of
marriage and higher rates of parenthood among
racial-ethnic and socioeconomically disadvantaged people in the United States today,
racial-ethnic minority and working-class SGM
individuals may experience a lower likelihood
of marriage and a higher likelihood of parenthood, yet previous research has not explored
this possibility nor its implications. Once in
an intimate relationship, research suggests that
relationship quality, division of labor, and dissolution may operate differently by race and
class (Moore, 2011), and thus work is needed
to address how relationship patterns—and the
predictors of these patterns—differ across race
and class across SGM groups.
With regard to SGM parenthood, although
the past decade confirmed that children with
same-sex parents fair equally well as children
in different-sex families, the next decade should
turn to how interlocking systems of oppression
including homophobia, racism, and classism
at the individual and institutional levels matter for children’s well-being across the SGM
spectrum. Scholars should also examine the
resilient characteristics of children who experience these multiple vectors of inequality. For
example, an intersectional approach should be
used to examine how racial-ethnic minority
parent families experience increased stress and
resiliency as both SGM and racial-ethnic stigma
as well as the specific ways in which SGM parents who have fewer socioeconomic resources
negotiate parenting intentions and parenting
dynamics.
Integrating a Life Course Approach
Scholars have long articulated the accumulating
effects family ties play across the life course.
Yet to date research has narrowed in on specific
family ties within certain life course moments,
most notably family of origin during youth and
adolescence and romantic ties and parenthood
during mid-life. Yet what is missing is an understanding of how family relationships unfold and
accumulate across the life course as well as
how cohorts and historical periods shape the
life experiences of SGM families. A holistic
approach to SGM families requires longitudinal studies of SGM people from childhood to
later life, with attention to cohort and historical period. To answer questions that explore
life course processes, we need more qualitative
and quantitative longitudinal datasets that trend
across time, with attention to how age, period,
and cohort effects may have significant consequences for SGM individuals’ understanding of
their own family lives. Even if data cannot be
prospective over decades, scholars should work
to account for these important contextual processes retrospectively. Data should also capture
the period and cohort effects and the historical events that shape the lives of SGM people,
including marriage equality, SGM-related laws
and policies, and political change such as new
presidential administrations that likely influence
SGM family life. A nuanced account of these
historical events will be key in understanding
changes in family patterns as we continue into
the next decade.
In terms of family-of-origin ties, significant
gaps remain in understanding how early life
experiences with parents translate into midand later life relationships. Future scholars may
ask the following: How do family-of-origin
ties change during the transition to adulthood,
and do they become more or less salient for
health and well-being? How do family-of-origin
ties continue to matter for the everyday lives
of SGM long after adolescence and into old
age? Do adaptive strategies used to cope with
family conflict change over time? Does strain
in adolescence, emerging adulthood, and young
adulthood shape educational outcomes, poverty,
and occupational status later in life? Moreover,
virtually no research examines intergenerational ties in later life, yet this is an especially
important life course moment given increased
longevity, increased stigma in old age for SGM
people, the rising of “gray divorce,” and potential loneliness of SGM adults. In later in life, we
may ask the following: Do elderly SGM adults
in need of care have family-of-origin members
to support their health needs? How is the provision of care for SGM older adults shaped by
earlier life experiences with family of origin?
Do siblings and other family members step in to
care for aging SGM adults, or do chosen family
members play this important role?
In the context of intimate relationships, a life
course approach suggests that understanding
intimate relationships in midlife is dependent
on one’s relationship biography in adolescence
and young adulthood. For example, the timing and dynamics of a first sexual-minority or
heterosexual relationship will likely have an
impact on subsequent relationship timings and
dynamics. Thus, we need the full relationship
history—including a full history of sexual
identities, behaviors, and attractions—to gauge
the meaning and consequences of intimate ties
across the life course. Moreover, a life course
approach requires better understanding of historical (i.e., period) context and cohort effects,
which means taking into account the recent
legal, social, and political changes including
marriage legalization and high-profile court
cases on discrimination (Baumle & Compton,
2015). For example, due to changes in marital
law, today’s SGM adolescents have grown up in
an environment where marriage between individuals of the same sex or gender is possible;
a unique position relative to other generations.
Yet we know very little about how different generations negotiate questions of legality in their
intimate ties based on these different cohorts
and periods. In addition, because relationship
quality changes over time, the next step of
research is the use of longitudinal data—both
qualitative and quantitative—to examine how
relationship biographies (e.g., moving in and
out of relationships) and relationship quality
changes across the life course. Longitudinal
type of data would allow for the identification
of predictors of SGM divorce and dissolution,
articulating, for example, whether being in a heterosexual relationship earlier in the life course
shape the risk of sexual-minority relationship
dissolution?
Similarly, the majority of research on the division of labor is in midlife, but we know very
little about the nature of household labor practices both in adolescence or in later life. Because
the division of labor appears to be related to
cohort, it may be that younger cohorts have
very different labor negotiations than older SGM
cohorts, perhaps due to period changes. For
example, Giddings, Nunley, Schneebaum, and
Zietz (2014) compared the division of labor of
couples with and without children across generations including the baby boomers, Generation X,
and Generation Y and found that same-sex couples were less likely than different-sex couples
to exhibit specialization overall. However, this
gap narrows across cohorts, wherein the division
of labor appears more egalitarian for heterosexuals in later cohorts and potentially less so among
same-sex couples. Future research should facilitate a greater understanding of how and why
such changes have shifted over time. Finally,
health in later life is of key importance to the
aging SGM population, and intimate ties may
serve as one protective factor for early mortality
and morbidity. Yet very little research examines
how SGM intimate relationships protect—or
undermine—health during times of illness and
injury in later life (see Fredriksen-Goldsen et al.,
2016). This research could include a study of
caregiving processes when a spouse is sick as
well as how relationship conflicts shape health
over time. Thomeer et al. (2017) showed that gay
and lesbian couples were much more likely to
plan for their end of life (e.g., wills, family planning) than were heterosexual couples. Yet we
know virtually nothing about end-of-life experiences among SGM families (see Marsack &
Stephenson, 2018).
In relation to parenthood, a life course
approach suggests that the processes of becoming and being a parent may differ across the life
course, by age, cohort, and period (i.e., historical
context), yet few studies consider these events
in research on SGM parenting. For example,
parenthood pathways constraints mean that
some SGM adults become parents later in life
than their cisgender heterosexual counterparts,
but what is unknown is how this shapes parenting practices and subsequent parent well-being?
Who becomes parents at any given point in
the life course, and who wants to parent but
is unable earlier in the life course? How does
becoming a parent shift SGM relationships with
their own aging parents and family of origin?
Does becoming parents at different life course
stages influence the parent–child relationship
later in the life course, including caregiving processes? How would cohort and period changes
in parenting intentions and approaches alter
the nature of SGM parenting today? Attention
to unfolding individual and collective history
will provide new insights into being a SGM
parent today.
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