News, Advice, and Tips for Parenting Teenagers

Gay and lesbian young people are three to four times more likely to be victims of bullying than heterosexual and bi-sexual adolescents.

A study team led by Elise Berlan and Bryn Austin of the Children's Hospital Boston Division of Adolescent Medicine analyzed data from 7500 students ages 14 to 22 years old. Nearly half of the one percent of the participants who described themselves as gay or lesbian reported being bullied.

"We know that sexual minorities are more likely to smoke, drink, use drugs and have eating disorders and depression, said Austin. "We suspect that social isolation, harassment, bullying and sometimes frank violence against these adolescents may be an explanation."

Austin presented the study at the annual meeting of the Society for Adolescent Medicine on March 20, 2007.

Labels: bullying, gay, lesbian

Posted By: Aspen Education Group 1 Comment

Children of lesbian parents score above-average on measures of social ability, academic achievement, and psychological adjustment, according to a new study from the University of California Los Angeles.

• Dr. Nanette Gartrell and her colleagues plan to follow 78 children from birth to 20 years old.
• The children in the study are now 17 years old.
• The research team checks upon the children periodically, with the last two assessments being at ages ten and 17 years old.
• The results of their tests were compared to a group of children the same age from traditional families with biological fathers and mothers.
• Dr. Gartell concluded that the children of lesbians demonstrate "healthy psychological adjustments and have fewer social problems, less aggression, and fewer rule breaking behaviors" than other teens.

"One of the things that opponents of equalities of gays and lesbians in marriage, parenting adoption and foster care often bring up is the so-called gold standard of parenting, which is defined by them as the traditional family where children are conceived in a traditional way, and not through insemination or surrogates," Dr. Gartrell said. "When we compare the adolescents in our study to the so-called gold standard, we found that teens with lesbian mothers were actually doing better."

This study appeared in the journal Pediatrics.
 

Labels: parental influence, gay, lesbian

Posted By: By Parents For Parents 1 Comment

A study of gay, lesbian and bisexual teenagers found that they benefitted from same-sex relationships, but relationships with the opposite sex had no effect on their self- esteem, depression or anxiety.

Researchers from the University of Michigan School of Health studied 350 teenagers from three Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual/Transgender drop-in centers in New York City. Same-sex relationships helped girls in the study reduce internalized homophobia; for boys, such relationships raised self-esteem, if the relationships lasted long enough.

"I actually expected to see more associations between psychological distress and having an opposite sex partner," said Jose Bauermeister, lead author of the study. "But there was no association with self-esteem, depression, or anxiety. ... Having an opposite sex partner is not protective, but it is not harmful either."

The study appears in the journal Youth and Adolescence.

Many gay youth experience anti-gay slurs and other types of sexual bullying in school -- traumatic experiences that can inflict significant damage on their physical, emotional and mental well-being.

Labels: relationships, gay, lesbian

Posted By: By Parents For Parents 1 Comment