It’s probably no surprise to anyone that parents have a profound impact on how their children develop, grow, and function in the world. However, research on the LGBTQ+ population has traditionally been scarce, and research related to the youngest members of that population and their families has been even more so. The Family Acceptance Project (FAP) of San Francisco State University began to shed some light on that, though, with some groundbreaking research over a decade ago. Their findings show just how powerfully parent and caregiver responses to their LGBTQ+ children really do impact their children’s mental and physical health and well-being now and into adulthood.
The researchers have conducted interviews with hundreds of families over the years and identified more than 100 types behaviors exhibited in response to their LGBTQ+ children’s identities. They found that about half of these behaviors could be categorized as accepting and the other half as rejecting. Then they evaluated the effects of these behaviors to see how they impact their LGBTQ+ children, and what they found was striking.
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