Special Issue Introduction: New Research on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Youth: Studying Lives in Context

Excerpt

In the past three decades there has been growing attention to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) youth among adolescence researchers. Beginning with a few seminal studies on the risk-factors, particularly suicide, faced by lesbian and gay youth (Martin and Hetrick 1988), research on these populations has emerged over the past 30 years as an important and critical area within the study of adolescence. Despite the proliferation of research, investigations of LGBT youth still remain largely oriented toward studying deficits such as the role of victimization on mental and physical health, academic achievement, and identity development (Espelage and Swearer 2008). In recent years, researchers have begun to criticize research paradigms that focus on sexual minority youth as “at-risk” and suggest that these paradigms contribute to a social context that views these youth as deficient (Savin-Williams 2005; Russell 2005). While it is necessary to continue examining of risks and challenges faced by these youth, as with any population of youth, it is important to acknowledge these criticisms and to incorporate additional perspectives of LGBT youths lives and to view these youth as resilient and thriving rather than simply “at-risk”. Yet much of the work from this “new” paradigm continues to treat sexual minority youth as a monothilic or homogeneous group and fails to examine the ways in which the social contexts that shape the lives of LGBT youth influence the persistent inequalities in health risk behavior, mental health, and long-term psychosocial adjustment of LGBT youth and adults. …