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Title: Aunties, Aunts, and Tías : The Forgotten Othermother Supporting and Housing LGBTQ Youth

Research on youth can miss important aspects of their lives if this work focuses only on the parent-child relationship. This focus can also overlook Black feminist interventions to understanding the roles of othermothers and can miss how nonparental relatives such as aunts may provide support, housing stability, and safety for youth. On the basis of a mixed-methods longitudinal study with 83 lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) youth in South Texas and the Inland Empire of California, the authors intervene through examining how aunts’ supportive practices shape LGBTQ youth’s experiences of housing stability and safety. The findings empirically demonstrate how LGBTQ-supportive aunting practices, such as educating other family members about LGBTQ people and housing an LGBTQ nibling, actively challenge cisheteronormativity. This study moves forward research on family processes by not focusing on parent-child relationships or LGBTQ “families of choice” to instead examining how aunts can support LGBTQ youth, disrupt cisheteronormativity, and prevent LGBTQ youth from becoming unhoused.

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Award ID(s):
2148934 2148933 2312179 2312178
PAR ID:
10493082
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ;
Publisher / Repository:
SAGE
Date Published:
Journal Name:
Socius: Sociological Research for a Dynamic World
Volume:
9
ISSN:
2378-0231
Subject(s) / Keyword(s):
aunts family gay youth
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
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