Intergenerational Exchanges in LGBTQ+ communities

Intergenerational disconnection is a problem across society. However, through a CILIA-LGBTQI+ study on intersectional life course inequalities it has been discovered that this is particularly the case among LGBTQ+ people, whose ‘families of choice’ are often peer-group-based, without descendants and less likely to include members from their ‘family of origin’. The study also found that LGBTQ+ people often have generational identities based on different formative historical developments from mainstream generations (shaped instead by queer-specific events such as the Stonewall riots, Section 28, and marriage equality), and inflected by the life-stage when they came out or transitioned. 

This current project works closely with LGBTQ+ charitable organizations to co-design and pilot a set of intergenerational interventions that enable LGBTQ+ people to narrate and reflect on their generational identity in an intergenerational setting. Intergenerational disconnection is a problem across society. However, through a CILIA-LGBTQI+ study on intersectional life course inequalities it has been discovered that this is particularly the case among LGBTQ+ people, whose ‘families of choice’ are often peer-group-based, without descendants and less likely to include members from their ‘family of origin’. The study also found that LGBTQ+ people often have generational identities based on different formative historical developments from mainstream generations (shaped instead by queer-specific events such as the Stonewall riots, Section 28, and marriage equality), and inflected by the life-stage when they came out or transitioned.  This current project works closely with LGBTQ+ charitable organizations to co-design and pilot a set of intergenerational interventions that enable LGBTQ+ people to narrate and reflect on their generational identity in an intergenerational setting.