Involved, Invisible, Ignored: LGBT Parents and Their Children

The first comprehensive report on LGBT families’ experiences in education, Involved, Invisible, Ignored, has found that LGBT parents are more likely to be involved in their children’s K-12 education than the general parent population. At the same time, both LGBT parents and their children often report harassment because of their family structure.

The report was produced by GLSEN, in partnership with the Family Equality Council and COLAGE. At first glance, the findings seem to jibe with what I would have guessed—which makes it no less important to have this kind of data to support policymaking and drive change. I’m not sure whether to be shocked at how many LGBT families experience harassment or be relieved the numbers aren’t higher. I think I’d need a geographic breakdown to answer that.

The study’s authors note, too, that there may be some limitations to their conclusions because of the way the participants were recruited: through LGBT listservs and other online forums, through LGBT-family summer camps, and through the sponsoring organizations, giving a skew towards families active in the LGBT community. There were also few transgender parents or students, and few students of color.

I’ll offer my further thoughts on the report once I’ve had a chance to digest its 141 pages. In the meantime, below are some highlights from the press release:

Key Findings, Parents:

• LGBT parents are more likely to be involved in their children’s education than the general parent population. Compared to data from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), LGBT parents are more likely to attend a parent-teacher conference in the past year (94% to 77%) and more likely to volunteer (67% to 42%).
• More than half (53%) of parents described various forms of exclusion from their school communities: being excluded or prevented from fully participating in school activities and events, being excluded by school policies and procedures, and being ignored and feeling invisible.
• LGBT parents reported mistreatment from other parents in the school community and even from their children’s peers at school — 26% of LGBT parents in the survey reported mistreatment from other parents and 21% reported hearing negative comments about being LGBT from students.
• Parents whose child’s school had a comprehensive safe school policy that protected students from bullying and harassment based on actual or perceived sexual orientation and gender expression/identity reported the lowest level of mistreatment and that there were no differences between the no-policy and generic-policy groups.

Key Findings, Students:

• Nearly a quarter (23%) of students felt unsafe around other students at school due to others’ negative attitudes toward people with LGBT parents.
• 42% of students said they had been verbally harassed at school in the past year because their parents were LGBT. Over a third (37%) of students reported that they had been verbally harassed because of their actual or perceived sexual orientation and nearly a third had experienced verbal harassment because of the way in which they expressed their gender (32%).
• Nearly a quarter (22%) of students said that a teacher, principal or other school staff person had discouraged them from talking about their family at school, and more than a third (36%) had felt that school personnel did not acknowledge their LGBT family (e.g., not permitting one parent to sign a student’s form because s/he was not the legal parent/guardian). Furthermore, 28% said they heard teachers or other school staff make negative comments about LGBT families.