Young Adults with Lesbian Parents More Likely to Report Same-Sex Attraction, Identity, & Experience (but Not Because their Parents “Made” Them That Way)

Young adults with lesbian parents were more likely than their peers to report a same-sex attraction, identity, or experiences, according to the latest results from the longest-running study of any LGBTQ-parent families. But while this might trigger panic among those who have fought for years to convince the world that queer parents don’t “make” our kids queer, too, we should all just calm down. Here’s the deal–and why these findings should be celebrated.

The National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study (NLLFS) has focused on the same group of subjects over many years (what researchers call a “longitudinal” study) and offers a picture of lesbian-headed families that few other studies can match. Principal Researcher Nanette Gartrell, M.D., a psychiatrist and Visiting Distinguished Scholar at the UCLA School of Law’s Williams Institute, and her colleagues began interviewing the mothers in 1986, when they were inseminating or pregnant, then again when their children were a year and a half to two years old, five, 10, 17, and 25. (They focused on donor-insemination families in order to limit the number of variables, especially with the few resources they had for the study.) They also directly questioned the children at 10, 17, and 25 years of age. The study has had a remarkable 92 percent retention rate since it began.

The latest published results from Gartrell and her colleagues are based on an analysis that compared 76 offspring of lesbian parents and 76 demographically matched participants from the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG), which is conducted by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). They found that “the female and male offspring of lesbian parents were significantly more to likely to report same-sex attraction, sexual minority identity, and same-sex experience,” specifically:

• 31% of female and 73% of male NLLFS offspring reported being only attracted to the opposite sex, compared to 54% and 91% of NSFG females and males.
• 54% of female and 33% of male NLLFS offspring reported having a same-sex sexual experience, compared to 38% and 9% of NSFG females and males.
• 70% of female and nearly 90% of male NLLFS offspring identified as heterosexual or straight, compared to 88% and 98% of NSFG females and males.
• Among the NLLFS female offspring, the percentage identifying as sexual minorities decreased from 49% to 30% between the ages of 17 and 25. In contrast, the percentage of NLLFS females who had engaged in same-sex sexual behavior increased from 15% to 54% in the same period.
• The percentage of NLLFS male offspring identifying as sexual minorities decreased from 22% to 10% between the ages of 17 and 25, and the percentage reporting same-sex sexual experiences increased from 6% to 33%.

One of the most interesting conclusions from all this to me is that, as the authors write, “These findings support prior studies demonstrating variability and fluidity in sexual development, expression, and self-identification over time, particularly in the span from adolescence to early adulthood”—in other words, sexuality can be fluid! Many of us have known this from our own experiences; here’s academic proof that there’s something to it.

Why is this so, however? The authors speculate that “It is possible that the higher rates of same-sex attraction, orientation, and behavior among the NLLFS offspring result from their genetic linkage to sexual minority parents,” but it could also be a matter of environment: “It is conceivable that the NLLFS offspring might have more expansive perspectives on gender and sexuality because they were raised by parents who are nonjudgmental about their exploration of non-heterosexual relationships. Likewise, the offspring of sexual minority parents may be more attuned to their own same-sex sexual feelings because of the environment in which they were raised.” [Citations removed for ease of reading; find them at the full study linked below.] Here’s the key point, though. They write, “Although our data could lend support both to genetic and social learning theories on the origins of sexual identity, they offer conclusive evidence for neither, particularly since most NLLFS offspring identify as ‘heterosexual or straight.’ Scientists have attempted to uncover the determinants of sexual identity for more than 50 years, and the findings to date—including within the present report—suggest that multiple factors may contribute.”

In other words, sexuality is a many-splendored thing and it’s incorrect to attribute it to any one factor, like having one or all parents of a certain sexuality. But having lesbian parents, this study suggests, may offer young people a supportive environment in which to discover their own sexuality, whatever that may be.

As always, the NLLFS researchers note the limitations of their sample, namely, that the vast majority of families in it are White and middle- or upper-middle class—but as Gartrell explained to me last year, many prospective lesbian parents in 1986 were “terrified about losing custody of their children. There was no opportunity to obtain a representative national sample.” The researchers call for their results to be replicated “with an intersectional approach and a more diverse, population-based sample.” They also note that the CDC’s NSFG did not assess gender identity, so they could not look at how this compared across the two samples.

These findings add to those published last year about the 25-year-old cohort, which found that young adults with lesbian parents are just as mentally healthy as their peers. (Additional NLLFS findings also listed there. See also my interview with Gartrell about last year’s study.)

This seems a good time, then, to remind folks that some children of LGBTQ parents may also feel pressure, because of the “queer parents make queer children” myth, to stay closeted if they are LGBTQ themselves, as Abigail Garner has documented in her highly recommended book Families Like Mine: Children of Gay Parents Tell It Like It Is. “Children [of LGBT] often feel more pressure to identify as straight,” she writes. They “feel torn, choosing between being honest about themselves or staying in the closet to present the preferred public image of their families.” She asserts, however, “Children should not be put in the middle of this homophobic hypocrisy.”

Amen to that—and kudos to the NLLFS parents and all others who are supporting their children in finding and valuing themselves.

“Sexual Attraction, Sexual Identity, and Same-sex Sexual Experiences of Adult Offspring in the US National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study (NLLFS)” appears in Archives of Sexual Behavior and is co-authored by Nanette Gartrell, M.D., Visiting Distinguished Scholar, along with Henny Bos, Ph.D., former Visiting International Scholar at the Williams Institute, and Audrey Koh, M.D., Associate Professor, Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences, University of California, San Francisco.