Abstract
A growing body of research indicates that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) students are often unsafe at school. Little research has examined school safety for students with LGBT parents. We examined adolescents' perceptions of school safety for students with LGBT parents using data from a survey of 2,302 California sixth through twelfth grade students. We examined the influence of adolescents' personal characteristics and school environments on perceptions of school safety for students with LGBT parents. Compared to heterosexual students, adolescents who identified as LGBT were less likely to perceive their schools as safe for students with LGBT parents. Students who received education on LGBT issues knew where to get information about LGBT issues and had teachers that step in to prevent harassment were more likely to say that their schools were safe for students with LGBT parents. Implications for educational policy and practice are discussed.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 11-27 |
| Number of pages | 17 |
| Journal | Journal of LGBT Youth |
| Volume | 5 |
| Issue number | 4 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Sep 2008 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This research was supported by a contract from the California Endowment to the California Safe Schools Coalition, and by a William T. Grant Foundation Scholar Award to the first author. The authors thank the Gay-Straight Alliance Network for their role in collecting the data, the California Safe Schools Coalition Evaluation Committee for access to the data and for their thoughtful input, Cesar Egurrola for assistance with data management, and Nicole Lehman for assistance with manuscript preparation. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2005 Annual Conference of the National Council on Family Relations in Phoenix.
Keywords
- Bullying
- California
- Children of LGBT parents
- Harassment
- LGBT parents
- School safety
