Gay and Lesbian Youth

Gilbert Herdt

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780866568173
• eBook ISBN: 9781317773535
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Here is a pioneering volume that explores adolescent homosexuality around the world. Social scientists examine the personal experiences of gay and lesbian teenagers from culture to culture and address the problems and obstacles these young people face. The changing contexts, values, and goals of societies worldwide are affecting how these adolescents adapt to being homosexual, and this compelling book gives keen insight into how changes in the United States contrast with changes elsewhere. A unique and thorough description of the identities, situations, and relationships of homosexual teens in many societies, Gay and Lesbian Youth will help social scientists, health care professionals, counselors, gay teenagers, and their parents to better understand the similarities of the problems facing these youth, while recognizing the minor differences in their social and personal situations. How do the personal experiences of gay and lesbian teenagers vary from culture to culture? Here is the best, most complete description of the identities, situations, and relationships of homosexual teens in many societies. The changing contexts, values, and goals of societies worldwide are affecting how these adolescents adapt to being homosexual, and this compelling book gives keen insight into how changes in the United States contrast with changes elsewhere. Social scientists, health care professionals, counselors, gay teenagers, and their parents will better understand the similarities of the problems facing these youth, while recognizing the minor differences in their social and personal situations. These differences must be understood by interpreting the adaptations of gay and bisexual teenagers around the world.

The Life Course of Gay and Lesbian Youth: An Immodest Proposal for the Study of Lives

Andrew M. Boxer, PhD (cand.)
Bertram J. Cohler, PhD

The University of Chicago

SUMMARY. The authors raise questions about several fundamental assumptions and methods regarding study of the development of gay and lesbian youth. Primary among these are the validity of reliance on respondents’ recollections regarding their childhood and adolescent experiences; inferences about developmental processes and outcomes made on the basis of cross-sectional samples; the time-specific, cohort-bound nature of many previous constructs and findings; and the persistent search for continuities between childhood gender behavior and adult sexual orientation. In consequence, the emerging body of theory is largely a developmental psychology of the remembered past. Strategies are suggested for longitudinal, prospective research on homosexual adolescents, shifting attention from child-based, “causal” models to those of adolescent and adultcentered perspectives. Aimed at understanding life changes and the developmental processes and course of negotiating them, longitudinal methods will more accurately reflect current experiences of gay and lesbian youth coming of age in a unique historical context. Findings from studies of the life course have direct implications for modification of current developmental theories, particularly those that can inform gay and lesbian-sensitive clinical services for all age groups.

We have come to a time when the basic processes of human learning have been used to develop science and technology far beyond the dreams of our ancestors. This has made possible the emergence of modem societies very different from the societies of our past. As a byproduct of these developments—an authentic paradox of success—we have inadvertently made the process of growing up in some ways more complicated than ever before—there are now so many changes within a lifetime, so many requirements for learning and relearning, so many moving targets to hit … Thus, adolescence, as the critical passage from childhood to adulthood, more than ever deserves careful, patient attention and responsible innovation. (Hamburg, 1986, p. 13)

INTRODUCTION: GAY AND LESBIAN YOUTH AND ADOLESCENT RESEARCH

Several national publications, particularly those serving gay and lesbian communities across the United States, have recently focused attention on the emergence, problems, and prospects of gay and lesbian youth (see Hippler, 1986; Kogan, 1986; Olson, 1986; Sadownick, 1986; Suggs, 1987). From a life span perspective, these youth are a group of pioneers negotiating uncharted territory that, indeed, requires new and complex learning and creative innovation. The new groups of self-identified gay and lesbian youth underscore that previous researchers of adolescence have, perhaps unwittingly, made heterosexual assumptions with regard to their samples and research questions. At the same time, various social changes are occurring which differentially affect the development of all adolescents in our society (Boxer, Gershenson, & Offer, 1984). The label “gay” or “lesbian” adolescent appears to represent a unique cultural category in history. It seems unlikely that past groups of “pre-Stonewall” youth would have labeled themselves gay or lesbian, let alone had the same opportunities for organized, collective socializing or socialization that some do today. Thus, this aspect of the life course, self-identification as gay or lesbian during adolescence, may be a unique developmental process found only in current cohorts of some homosexual youth (see Herdt, 1988, herein) and carry different consequences for later life course development. For that reason alone, studies of gay and lesbian youth are a timely occurrence.

The developmental study of adolescence, in general, is currently burgeoning.¹ Research on this phase of the life course has come of age. In partial consequence of the increasing attention directed to its study by interdisciplinary researchers, adolescence is now the focus of varying kinds of new public attention, from the drama of the humanities and popular journalism (Spacks, 1981; Coons, 1987), to the sway of blue ribbon presidential commissions (see Coleman et al., 1974). A recent example of this concern is represented by an issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (1987) devoted to research on adolescent health concerns. Most obviously, little of this work has directly addressed the concerns of gay and lesbian youth.

However, the accumulating body of research findings on adolescence has been particularly useful in joining public health and education interventions in beginning to address national concerns regarding youth, such as teen pregnancy and parenting, substance abuse, school failure, and most recently, it is hoped, with regard to education about AIDS. But without a “remapping” of adolescent development, sustaining the efforts such as those represented in this present volume (Herdt, 1988), the experience and needs of a significant group of youth cannot be understood and addressed.

Recently there has been increased interest in the study of lives from the perspective of the life span as a whole, rather than as based on cross-sectional studies of human development. This new focus may be traced in large part to the failure of much previous research to account for significant changes in personality and adjustment from childhood to adulthood (see Cohler, 1982, 1983). Studies of both cognitive and affective development (Lennenberg, 1967; Kagan & Klein, 1973; Clarke & Clarke, 1976) and of early childhood deprivation (Rutter, 1987; Dennis, 1973) all show that there may be remarkably little consistency between early childhood development and later adult outcomes. Longitudinal research all too often has been concerned with the demonstration of stability of lives over time and, perhaps for this reason, has failed to address the most interesting question, that of conditions accounting for change in lives. As Baltes (1979) has suggested, on the basis of a thorough review of developmental research, there is no single point in the life cycle that can claim such primacy for developmental change (see also Kohlberg, Ricks, & Snarey, 1984).

The search for developmental continuities² has implicitly characterized many investigations of adult homosexual men and women, which focus on delineating childhood correlates of adult sexual orientation (see section 3 below for a brief review of this work). This is in striking contrast to the discontinuities and changes that characterize the lives of many gay and lesbian adults, particularly when internalized societal expectations and early socialization experiences require strategies for dealing with the many cultural discontinuities experienced throughout the adult life course (Bell & Weinberg, 1978; Bell, Weinberg, & Hammersmith, 1981; Cass, 1979, 1984; Humphreys & Miller, 1980; Martin, 1982; Minton & McDonald, 1983/1984; Troiden, 1979; Weinberg & Williams, 1974).

Contemporary studies of lives have recognized the importance of providing a more complete ecology of the life course, including study of individuals’ wishes and intents as shaped by development and maturation, aspects of social context, and, in particular, those historical circumstances which so dramatically affect the lives of persons within a specific generation or age-linked cohort (Cohler & Boxer, 1984). There is, consequently, increased interest in the study of those factors that might be associated with individual differences in stability and change over time.

The determinants of continuity and discontinuity are also related to factors of vulnerability and resilience (Cohler, 1987). Of particular interest for the study of gay and lesbian youth are those qualities and features associated with the capacity to remain resilient when confronted by adverse life circumstances. Such resilience has been identified as a characteristic of many older gay and lesbian adults, developed as a result of their dealing with the adversity of various types of discrimination, homophobia, and other social stigmata throughout a significant portion of their lives (see e.g., Berger, 1982; Kelly, 1977; Kimmel, 1978, 1980; Lee, 1987; Robinson, 1979; Weinberg & Williams, 1974). The study of resilience and coping requires consideration of the characteristics associated with particular life changes, as well as their timing and synchronization. These characteristics of events must be considered together with attributes of persons at particular points in the life course. This predictive approach, based on information regarding the type of life change, the social context in which particular changes take place, and the developmental attributes of persons, must be complemented by a narrative or interpretive approach, that is concerned with the manner in which persons experience and interpret or “make sense” of these life changes.

Little is known of the manner in which persons create a narrative that renders adversity coherent in terms of experienced life history, or the manner in which presently constructed meanings of life changes may be altered in order to maintain a sense of personal integration (Cohler, 1981, 1982, 1987). For some persons, the experience of adverse life events may be used as an explanation for the failure to realize personal goals. For others, this misfortune becomes the impetus for increased effort in order to attain these goals. The value of an interpretive approach as a complement to the predictive one becomes even greater as a result of findings emerging from longitudinal studies (Emde, 1981; Jones, Bayley, Mac-Farlane, & Honzik, 1971; Kagan & Moss, 1962; Livson & Peskin, 1980; Moss & Sussman, 1980; Rutter, 1987), showing that lives are not as ordered and predictable over time as had previously been assumed. To the extent that lives show predictability, this order may be more a function of shared understanding regarding the linear organization of the expectable course of life in this culture, than of continuity reflected by data collected at multiple observation points. (For a more comprehensive review, see Cohler, 1987; Anthony & Cohler, 1987.)

The concept of life course, which is socially structured, must be differentiated from such terms as life cycle or life span, which refer only to change over time, without consideration of the normative cultural element implicit in making sense of such change. It is clear that age as a chronological marker is of little significance for the study of the life course, except as represented by the socially shared meanings attached to particular ages across the life cycle. Without such cultural and historical knowledge, age itself becomes an “empty” variable in the study of lives. It is precisely this social definition of the course of life which transforms the study of the life span or life cycle into the study of the life course.

In this paper our focus is on the study of gay and lesbian youth from the perspective of life course social science. We argue for the necessity of prospective, longitudinal, life span investigations (employing both predictive and interpretive methodologies), which will have an impact not only on our understanding of vulnerability, resilience, and well-being for gay and lesbian youth as well as for adults, but will also carry important implications for models, methods, and theories within the social sciences for the study of lives (see for example, Lee, 1987). First, from the vantage point of the life course, we delineate some critical developmental questions emerging from our current knowledge of gay and lesbian youth. We briefly examine applications of the developmental paradigm to homosexuality, which have been primarily focused on causal inferences based on adult retrospections. To illustrate the potential benefits from employment of longitudinal methods, we review longitudinal perspectives as applied to adolescence. Finally, the significance of developmental research to the provision of adequate gay and lesbian-sensitive clinical services is highlighted.

GAY AND LESBIAN YOUTH-SOME QUESNONS ON THE COURSE OF DEVELOPMENT

The papers collected here (Herdt, 1988) constitute some of the first major advances in our understanding of a heretofore neglected group of youth coming of age. They leave us, however, wanting to know more. For example, what happens to adolescents after they have traversed the coming out phases as outlined by Troiden (1988)? How do gay and lesbian youth further negotiate their relationships with mothers and fathers during young adulthood and well after, having come out to family members (Savin-Williams, 1988)? How will the differing life biographies and self-representations of “José” and “Pedro” in Mexico, elaborated by Carrier (1988), evolve as adults? How and in what form will the young lesbian, discussed by Schneider (1988), create the life she desires as “normal and gay”? More generally, what we do not yet know is how the experiences of gay and lesbian youth are evolving through the course of adolescence, how continuity and change are prefiguring their lives, how resilience and vulnerability are at work. In short, little is yet known about how they experience their lives as they are living them, rather than as they are remembered? Nor do we know how the experience of these youth will be different from or similar to other gay and lesbian individuals who have grown up in different settings and historical periods.

In addition, a frequently asked and still unanswered question is: How do gay and lesbian adolescents differ from their heterosexual peers? Is the normative adolescent “storm and stress” exacerbated among these youth?³ The studies represented in this issue clearly describe groups of gay and lesbian youth in various contexts and ecologies, from diverse ethnic and social groups. They sensitize us to important variations in development as a function of cultural and ecological factors (Barker, 1968; Bronfenbrenner, 1977; LeVine, 1973) or what used to be called the individual’s “total life space” (Lewin, 1946).

We are left, though, with the question of what happens to these youth over time, and especially after initial “coming out” experiences. How will the individual’s adulthood be affected by his or her adolescent experiences, and more specifically, how will coming out in the current...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• ABOUT THE EDITOR
• Table of Contents
• Adolescent Homosexuality: Preface
• Introduction: Gay and Lesbian Youth, Emergent Identities, and Cultural Scenes at Home and Abroad
• The Formation of Homosexual Identities
• Widening Circles: An Ethnographic Profile of a Youth Group
• Parental Influences on the Self-Esteem of Gay and Lesbian Youths: A Reflected Appraisals Model
• Sappho Was a Right-On Adolescent: Growing Up Lesbian
• The Development of Male Prostitution Activity Among Gay and Bisexual Adolescents
• Male Prostitution and Homosexual Identity
• Gay Youth and AIDS
• Lesbian and Gay Youth in England
• Gay Liberation and Coming Out in Mexico
• Growing Up Gay or Lesbian in a Multicultural Context
• Youth, Identity, and Homosexuality: The Changing Shape of Sexual Life in Contemporary Brazil
• To Be 20 and Homosexual in France Today
• Gay Youth in Four Cultures: A Comparative Study
• The Life Course of Gay and Lesbian Youth: An Immodest Proposal for the Study of Lives