Correlational research finds that transgender youth who have been homeless are more likely to have attempted suicide; however, there is not yet research explaining why this correlation might exist. To understand connections between housing insecurity and suicidality for transgender people the present study analyzed in-depth interviews with 30 transgender young people (ages 15–25) in the United States who had experienced homelessness. Interviews took place in LGBTQ community centers, and were analyzed for inductive themes using Qualitative Content Analysis. In contrast with theories suggesting that homelessness predicts increased suicidality because of the stressors of homelessness, this study found that gender-based parental rejection and other dysfunctional family dynamics interacted to create a hostile environment that contributed to both suicidality and homelessness for trans participants. In fact, suicide attempts occurred most often while participants still lived in disaffirming homes and usually ceased after participants left the unsafe home, suggesting that leaving a disaffirming family home, even if it results in homelessness, may decrease suicidality for some youth. Findings suggest that service providers working with transgender youth experiencing homelessness must consider familial gender disaffirmation, other familial stressors, and lack of access to shelter as equal threats to trans youth’s wellbeing and design interventions accordingly.
Existing research on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) youth homelessness identifies family rejection as a main pathway into homelessness for the youth. This finding, however, can depict people of color or poor people as more prejudiced than White, middle‐class families. In this 18‐month ethnographic study, the author complicates this rejection paradigm through documenting the narratives of 40 LGBTQ youth experiencing homelessness. The author examines how poverty and family instability shaped the conditions that the youth perceived as their being rejected because of their gender and sexuality. This rejection generated strained familial ties within families wherein the ties were already fragile. Likewise, the author shows how being gender expansive marked many youth's experiences of familial abuse and strain. This study proposes the concept of conditional families to capture the social processes of how poverty and family instability shape experiences of gender, sexuality, and rejection for some LGBTQ youth.
more » « less- PAR ID:
- 10050379
- Publisher / Repository:
- Wiley-Blackwell
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Journal of Marriage and Family
- Volume:
- 80
- Issue:
- 2
- ISSN:
- 0022-2445
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- p. 383-396
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Background Most research on LGBTQ+ youth's family relations centers on the parent–child relationship. Grandparents are important for racially marginalized families, particularly Latinx families. Additionally, Latinx LGBTQ+ youth are impacted by precarious familismo—the disparate experiences with family members in which their gender and sexuality are simultaneously accepted and rejected.
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