The Influence of Parental Messages about Sexual Orientation on LGBT Sexual Affect and Sexual Experience

Abstract

Parent-child communication on sexuality has sexual orientation, the emotions Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender (LGBT) individuals experience surrounding their own sexuality and the impact on their sexual experiences. The current study aimed to provide findings to help bridge this gap in literature by examining the influence that positive parental messages about sexual orientation, specifically LGBT, have on one’s positive, negative, and shameful sexual affect and level of sexual experience in 177 participants who identified as exclusively LGBT, predominately LGBT, bisexual, predominately heterosexual and unsure. It was predicted that higher levels of positive parental messages about LGBT sexual orientation would be associated with higher levels of positive sexual affect, higher levels of sexual experience, lower levels of negative sexual affect, and lower levels of shameful sexual affect. Between parental messages and level of sexual experience, a positive correlation was found while there was no correlation was found between parental messages, positive, negative or shameful sexual affect. In accordance with previous research, gender differences were found between parental messages and sexual affect since males usually receive sex positive messages and females usually receive cautionary, sex negative messages. Males were found to experience higher levels of positive sexual affect than females and females exhibited higher levels of negative sexual affect than males. The results of this study suggest a need for larger scale research in order to broaden the field of parental communication in the LGBT community.