Children who question their heterosexuality.

Abstract

Many gay, lesbian, and bisexual adults report a period of childhood sexual questioning--an uneasy questioning of their heterosexuality brought on by same-sex attractions and motivating same-sex sexual exploration. This article evaluates hypotheses about the correlates, causes, and consequences of childhood sexual questioning. Participants were 182 children in the 4th through 8th grades. Compared with children more confident in their heterosexuality, sexual-questioning children reported more impaired self-concepts, fewer same-sex-typed attributes (but not more cross-sex-typed attributes), a greater sense of feeling different from same-sex others, and lesser satisfaction with their gender assignment. Short-term longitudinal analyses indicated that sexual questioning is more likely a determinant than a consequence of these correlated variables. However, influences of sexual questioning on these outcomes were small.

Continuity in Sex-Typed Behavior from Preschool to Adolescence: A Longitudinal Population Study of Boys and Girls Aged 3–13 Years

“…At age 13, the children were administered the Multidimensional Gender Identity and Sexual Questioning Scale (Carver et al, 2004;Egan & Perry, 2001). This questionnaire was designed to assess adolescents' feelings of compatibility with their own gender and was specifically designed for this age group.…”

“…The Multidimensional Gender Identity Scale (Carver et al, 2004;Egan & Perry, 2001) was used to assess adolescents' sex-typed behavior. In the present investigation, the following (6) Female-typed activities-children's self-efficacy for female-typical activities, such as baby-sitting or looking after younger children [8 items].…”

“…In an earlier phase of this study involving 2,726 boys and 2,775 girls, it was found that those children who were the most sex-typed at age 2.5 remained so at age 8 (Golombok et al, 2008). In the present study, conducted at age 13, sub-samples of extremely masculine boys and girls, extremely feminine boys and girls, and comparison groups of randomly selected boys and girls, categorized according to their PSAI score at age 3.5 years, were administered the Multidimensional Gender Identity and Sexual Questioning Scale (Carver, Egan, & Perry, 2004;Egan & Perry, 2001), an age-appropriate measure of sex-typed behavior. The aim was to examine the continuity of sex-typed behavior from the preschool to the adolescent years, i.e., to establish whether ''masculine'' boys and ''feminine''girls, and''feminine''boys and''masculine''girls, continued to show sex-typed and cross-sex-typed behavior, respectively, following the transition to adolescence.…”

Toward an LGBT-informed paradigm for children who break gender norms: Comment on Drummond et al. (2008) and Rieger et al. (2008).

“…Longitudinal research in which multidimensional models were used suggests how the kind of retrospective studies reviewed by Bailey and Zucker (1995) might be improved by stepping outside of the MF model. For example, Carver, Egan, and Perry (2004) found that children who question their heterosexuality engage in fewer same-sex activities than their peers, but they do not engage in a greater number of opposite-sex [page897] activities. Such children also come to see themselves as more atypically gendered as a consequence of questioning their heterosexuality.…”

“…Finally, the intervention does not posit an "essence" to MF but recognizes that gender nonconformity may persist or desist and may lead to gay/lesbian, bisexual, or straight adult identities (cf. Carver et al, 2004). In short, the intervention is interested in the child's well-being, understands familial bonds to be key to that well-being, and disattends to anxious questions about the child's eventual gender [page 898] identity or sexual identity on the basis of his or her current gender nonconformity.…”