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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Especially in teen girls and even more so in teen girls with mental health problems it seems to be very common to experiment with orientations. If they are struggling with identity, it makes sense they are struggling in all realms.

[b]Same as how 50-60% of homeless kids identify as non-straight. Part of the culture.[/b] Teens in foster care/group homes also have much higher rates of non straight orientations.

When development hits big barriers (abuse, trauma, neglect, mental illness) one would expect that really all parts of development process would be impacted, including sexual orientation. People who identify as non straight report far more early life trauma.[/quote]

Did you ever think that these kids are being kicked out of their homes for being gay/bi?  [/quote]

That may be true for a very small proportion but for the most part it isn't. These aren't kids from great homes that are anti-gay. It is rarely situations where parents and straight sibs are at home having a great life and just this one child gets kicked out or leaves because s/he is gay. These are mostly kids from quite dysfunctional homes where there are tons of issues, and their parents and sibs are also having issues. And often these teens don't self-identity as non-straight until they are on the street. [/quote]

Link to reference on all of this info?  It seems like a lot of assumptions if you are not getting this from an actual study of homeless children and frankly it seems really unconvincing.[/quote]

I write this as a physician who specializes in adolescent medicine and one sub-area of expertise is on LGBT adolescents.    The first poster is using statistics incorrectly.   Homeless LGBT youth end up on the street because of familial rejection of their sexual minority status.   There is no data which suggests that family dysfunction causes homosexuality or gender discordance.    I would recommend that s/he examine the following data from thinkprogress.org.:

http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2012/07/12/515641/study-40-percent-of-homeless-youth-are-lgbt-family-rejection-is-leading-cause/#

Another reference from the Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine:

https://www.adolescenthealth.org/SAHM_Main/media/Advocacy/Positions/Apr-13-LGBT-Position-Final.pdf
[/quote]

You apparently are not very well read.

I could show you dozens of studies like these that show a connection between early childhood traumas and sexual minority orientation
[url]http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20395586[/url]
[url]http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10508-010-9636-x[/url]

Youth in the fostercare system have a much higher prevalence of identifying as non-straight as well. If you really think that most kids who live in group homes are there because their awesome families kicked them out, you have never spent much time with kids in care. Most come from extremely dysfunctional families.  same with youth who are homeless. A recent study (I'll find the link) said that 50-70% of youth who are on the streets identify as non-straight. Again, you will find that their homes are not all wonderful and that they were kicked out due to identifying as LGBT+. I highly doubt you work with homeless youth if they really think they are only on the streets because of family rejection for their sexual orientation and that all their straight siblings are happy and healthy and living wonderful lives with accepting, loving parents.

There are also studies showing that sexual orientation identity is quite fluid between the years of 15-22 with many identifying differently at 22 then they did at 15 or 16 or 17.

I think it is foolish to say that we know exactly how sexual orientation develops for every person and that it is the same for all. Some may clearly know and never question it but similar to personality development, I think that for others life events, particularly childhood trauma can shape that development. [/quote]

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