The Family Environment and Its Relation to Health and Well-Being Among Sexual and Gender Minority Youth
We examined youth-reported family environments using multiple indicators (parent education, participants' first language spoken, and parent immigration status) to consider the family environment and its links to youth health and well-being. To do so, we utilized cluster analysis methodology to identify potential groupings of family environments among a national sample of 14,578 sexual and gender minority (SGM) youth from the LGBTQ National Teen Survey, collected in 2017. Three distinct clusters of SGM youth emerged, labeled “College-educated, U.S.-born parents,” “High school-educated, U.S.-born parents,” and “College-educated, immigrant parents.” “A series of one-way between-subjects ANCOVAs revealed each cluster significantly differed from each other on health and family outcomes, indicating that parent immigration status, parent education, and youth first spoken language are uniquely and collectively imperative for SGM youths' health and well-being.” Of note, despite reporting parents with the highest level of post-high school education, SGM youth in the “College-educated, immigrant parents” cluster reported the lowest levels of parental acceptance and the lowest levels of outness in comparison to the youth in the other two clusters. In light of these results, we review the importance of the need for more nuanced ways of defining the family context among vulnerable youth—in particular for SGM youth. Given that much of the research to date defines the family environment by single indicators (e.g., parent education), we review the importance of broadening our conceptualization and measurement of the “family environment.”