title: 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.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, FL 33431, USA.
authors.forename: Priscilla R
authors.initials: PR
authors.lastname: Carver
authors.forename: Susan K
authors.initials: SK
authors.lastname: Egan
authors.forename: David G
authors.initials: DG
authors.lastname: Perry
mesh_terms: D002648:Child; D005260:Female; D005783:Gender Identity; D006716:Homosexuality / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010379:Peer Group; D010555:Personality Inventory / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D011594:Psychometrics; D011606:Psychosexual Development; D012649:Self Concept; D012917:Social Adjustment