Raising a LGBTQ+ Child or Youth

There is a huge need for foster and adoptive homes for LGBTQ+ youth in foster care. We interview Holly Harridan and Dr. Shelly Ronen. Holly is a Senior User Experience Researcher at Bloom Works and an applied Anthropologist with a background in queer and feminist studies.  Dr. Shelly Ronen is a Senior User Experience Researcher at Bloom Works. She has a Ph.D. in Sociology and specializes in gender and sexuality.

In this episode, we cover:

• Terminology. LGBTQ+, LGBTQIA2S+, queer. What does each of the letters mean, and what is correct?
• What is the difference between sexual orientation and gender identity? 
• What are some of the unique challenges faced by LGBTQIA+ youth in foster care?
• What does it mean to have an” affirming” home?
• Some foster and adoptive parents know in advance that the child that they are fostering or adopting identifies as LGBTQ+, but other times, it is something that they find out later. If they know in advance, what are some things they can do to prepare?
• Age-dependent- how to allow exploration without pigeonholing a child too soon?
• How should parents handle it if they suspect their child is queer, but their child or youth does not want to talk about it?
• Are the issues different depending on whether the youth or young adult is lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender?
• How can parents encourage healthy romantic relationships?
• What if you’ve been raised to believe that homosexuality is a sin?
• How do you think agencies should balance a commitment to kinship caregivers against a commitment to the safety and affirmation of LGBTQ+ children and youth? 
• What is your response to people who say that since many foster parents are motivated by religious faith, requiring families to affirm LGBTQ+ children and youth would create a placement crisis?
• What resources can foster parents look to for guidance on being affirming of LGBTQ+ children and youth? 

Our goal is to provide a nurturing and supportive environment where LGBTQIA+ foster youth can grow, thrive, and develop a strong sense of self-worth and belonging.

For a list of resources from this episode, visit our post on Creating a Family.

Transcript

Please pardon any errors, this is an automated transcript.
Dawn Davenport  0:00  
This is creating a family. Talk about foster, adoptive and kinship care. Welcome back to our regular listeners and a special new welcome to our newbies. We are so glad that you've joined us. I'm Dawn Davenport. I am the host of the show as well as the director of the nonprofit creating a family.org. Today we're going to be talking about raising an LGBTQ plus youth or child. We will be talking with Holly Harridan. She is a senior user experience researcher at Bloom Works and an applied anthropologist with a background in queer and feminist studies. Holly lived with an informal kinship caregiver as a queer youth, and is passionate about improving child welfare systems for all. We will also be talking with Dr Shelly Ronen. She is a senior user experience researcher at Bloom Works. She has a PhD in Sociology and specializes in gender and sexuality. Her academic writing has appeared in peer reviewed journals including sexualities and gender in society, and Shelly and Holly have recently completed research on improving outcomes for LGBTQ plus youth and children in child welfare and their work centers the lived experience of queer young people who are currently or have recently been involved in child welfare. Welcome Holly and Shelly to creating a family.

Unknown Speaker  1:24  
Thanks for having us.

Dawn Davenport  1:25  
I want to start with terminology, because I think that part of the difficulty we have, even in talking about this subject, is that I think there's two issues. One, sometimes people don't really know what all the acronyms and initials stand for a grandparent in our kinship advisory committee said, I don't even know what all of it means, but I also think the other problem that we face when we talk about terminology is we aren't sure what's right, what's the correct way, what's The respectful way to refer to LGBTQ plus folks. So let's start with talking about what the actual letters mean, and it could go all the way up to LGBTQ. I A 2s plus. So however much you want to include, feel free, Holly. I'll start with you on that one great.

Speaker 1  2:19  
We definitely agree that terminology is one confusing, as you say, just knowing definitions, and then it's confusing how you actually put the terminology in to practice

Dawn Davenport  2:31  
Exactly. Good. You're going to solve this for us. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker  2:35  
no problem, but

Dawn Davenport  2:36  
we've got it. Yeah, good. Thank goodness.

Speaker 1  2:41  
So firstly, we're going to just start with an umbrella term for this long acronym. So there's this long acronym, LGBTQ to fi a plus, and even that rearrangement looks different sometimes, so that typically falls under an umbrella of what many of us call queer. Not everyone's going to agree with that. And queer, of course, has a sordid history of being a slur, definitely. Yeah, exactly. And so for older LGBTQ, IA, 2s plus folks, that really might not be the term, but in the spirit of reappropriating things that have caused harm and then using it to be tools for empowerment. The word here has been largely reappropriated under those intentions and usages, and it's used instead of the acronym people may say queer or queer and trans, because those are very distinct experiences, although they can intersect. I'm probably not necessarily helping clarify right now. I might be adding more complexity. So that's to say is that this alphabet will never fully capture every human experience, and will never fully capture even the human experiences that might be identified in that sort of acronym. And then queer and trans is more of this general term to use more quickly, or maybe more easily, to say we know we're not capturing everything, but here is a gesture towards all of this human difference. Is there more we'd like to add? Shelley

Speaker 2  4:08  
to get to my nuts and bolts, LGBTQIA, 2s plus stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer, questioning, intersex, asexual to spirit and plus, I'm happy to go more deeply as well into each of them. But the most important thing is that LGBTQ plus refers to any experience of sexual orientation, gender identity and expression that are anything other than straight or heterosexual and cisgendered, which is where your sex and gender align with what was assigned at buff in that moment when somebody yells out, it's a boy or it's a girl, and so lesbian refers to women who are attracted to the same gender people, gay refers to an attraction of the same gender, and it's. Sometimes also uses an umbrella term as well. By it refers to people who are attracted to people of more than one gender. Trans, as we mentioned, is a person whose sex and gender doesn't correspond to that that was assigned at birth, and the counter to transgender is cisgender. So I'm a cisgender person. I was assigned female and a girl at birth, and that is the way that I live and identify queer and questioning, as we've mentioned, queer is an umbrella term that we use. And questioning are folks who are unsure, haven't claimed an identity yet. The I stands for intersex. That's an umbrella term that describes sexual characteristics that fall outside of boy or man and girl or woman binaries. So there's actually lots of variation in people's genitals and sometimes their chromosomes as well, that can be encapsulated within this idea of intersex people. The A stands for asexual people who have no interest in sexual relationships. They may be interested in romance. They may have some kinds of relationships, but sexuality may not be something that they're interested in. Two Spirit is the 2s that goes together. Two Spirit refers to an indigenous or American Indian and Alaskan Native term for people who have both masculine and feminine spirit, and they're actually historically considered really sacred and valuable within indigenous and Native American custom and rights. Now the plus is super important not to be forgotten, because not everybody has a label, and there are actually many other sexual orientations and gender identities that we haven't explained here, and there are new ones being created all the time, because this is a dynamic aspect of human culture, and folks are coming up with new ways, new labels and new terms to express their identifications and their experiences. So the plus is important. What

Dawn Davenport  6:41  
is the difference, Shelley, between sexual orientation and gender identity? Yeah,

Speaker 2  6:47  
absolutely super important. Sexual Orientation refers to how people understand their attractions, whether it's romantic or sexual, sometimes also called sexuality, so you can be straight and feel attracted to having romantic and sexual relationships with people of other gender, sometimes called opposite gender, and that's different than your own gender identity and expression. So gender identity refers to how somebody identifies or understands their own gender. So as I mentioned, I'm a woman identifies a woman, and I'm also cisgendered, because that gender that aligns with what I was assigned at both and expression distinct from identity, can sometimes closely adhere to somebody's identity, and it can sometimes be quite flexible and variable. Gender expression really refers to how people display their gender in things like dress, how they behave, how they sound, kind of how they show up in the world. So for me, again, speaking from my experience, some days I wear frilly dresses with lace and castles, and some days I wear gender neutral or even masculine clothes. And so my gender expression may vary quite a bit, and I may not be using that gender expression to tell people around me any particular thing about my gender identity, which remains fairly constant as a woman. But for other folks, gender expression can be used to signal things about gender identity. Maybe it's fluid, maybe it's non binary, maybe it's changing from what folks used to think it was, and so that's kind of how we understand sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression.

Dawn Davenport  8:15  
Holly, something that I personally get caught up on because I'm often speaking or writing sometimes on this subject, and that is, we have been schooled for years to be people first, and yet it seems to be certainly the Autistic community is shifting that for themselves, has the and see, how do I say that? Is it the how does the queer community? But then that's not putting people first. Do I say the community that identifies as queer? Do I say the LGBTQ plus community, or do I say the community that includes LGBTQ plus people? Certainly when we're on social media or when we're applying for grants or whatever, and they're characters, each character counts people first is a pain in the butt, but I also 100% believe in it, but I'm not sure how the LGBTQ plus community wants to be referred whether it's people first are do they want to empower themselves by owning their labels?

Speaker 1  9:17  
Yeah, no, that's a critical question that, again, communities have no one right way to do things. I think in a lot of this at a higher level, there's some clear, maybe wrong ways to do something, but there's no one right way to do these things. But

Dawn Davenport  9:31  
tell us the wrong way, then that may be good start with the wrong okay, and then give us our options.

Speaker 1  9:36  
Yeah. So I think we need to have, like, a concrete example. So if it's the case of a grant writing, well, I

Dawn Davenport  9:42  
just threw that out. I just made that as a joke because of I have character counts often write grants in this area. So yeah, just if you're writing an article and you're speaking about a youth that is a part of the LGBTQ plus community,

Speaker 1  9:56  
yeah. So if it's about one person. And in this case, youth even more. So the need to sort of check in and get consent is extra important. And I say it's extra important just because, in general, young people aren't necessarily given the autonomy that adults have. So it's extra important to offer that and share that power and find out how they identify, and if you know this person, this is a real person in the world, and then use their terminology, but at a broad level, when you can't talk to someone specifically, or you're talking about communities or groups and not just one person, I think rather than the person first example you gave that might be used with people on the spectrum or in Disability Justice conversations here, I think that the stakes are slightly different, although all of those people, people with disabilities, people on the spectrum, queer and trans people, they're facing marginalization. It's happening in different ways. And so I don't think that it's a one to one rule, and people might push back on that, and that's okay. That's part of this conversation, is that it grows through healthy pushing back. So what I do, if it's talking about groups, I say, like queer communities, because there's not just one community, and so we're talking about that in plural. As a queer person, I wouldn't expect anyone to say a person who identifies as queer when they're talking about me, that feels like a mouthful, awkward, anyone? Yeah, and it feels the stress to me when I hear that. I feel the stress of the speaker being like, oh my gosh, I'm gonna get this right. And exactly, oh, I appreciate the good intention, but this is just wasteful for you and for me,

Dawn Davenport  11:28  
you know, for me and wasteful for you, right? Yeah. So

Speaker 1  11:32  
I think depending on the nature of the people you're interacting with or speaking on behalf of or engaging with, you know, anytime you can talk to people directly about how they identify, do that first, the right ways to do that, or the ways that would be wrong, I should say, would be to not ask them, not affirm them. And so we'll go into what affirmation looks like, I'm sure, a bit more in a moment. But in general, with a lot of ways that people identify, even beyond their sexual orientation or gender, it's really important to meet them where they are at and take them at their word. That's not a hard and fast rule in every circumstance, but in general, if I say I am something, then I need to feel believed when it's said. I

Speaker 2  12:13  
wanted to underscore something that I think is important. I think regardless of how you refer to somebody, it's important not to reduce them down to just one aspect of their experience and identity, such a good point. So however, we struggle to use the right language, we just need to remember that maybe their sexual orientation and their gender identity is just one small sliver of everything that makes them them, and so we need to just honor that and not reduce them down to just, oh, that lesbian, that gay person, that bisexual person, that trans person, like they have a richness of experience, they have relationships, they have family, they have hopes and dreams and hobbies. And so however, we can use language to honor the fullness of their being. That's the spirit, I think, that we would try to recommend.

Dawn Davenport  13:04  
Yeah, it's beautifully said. I think that because we are talking specifically today about raising a queer youth, we are focusing more. But you are so right that in addition to being queer, they are also perhaps a soccer player. They may be a piano player, they may sing in the church choir, they may whatever they may be funny, they may be serious, or, you know, whatever they have whole breadth of things that they bring, of which their gender identity and sexual orientation are just a small portion of it. That is such a very good point. So now let's move into talking about this will be kind of a broad question. And Shelley, I'll let you start. And Holly, you can jump in. What are some of the unique challenges faced by queer youth in foster care?

Speaker 2  13:50  
Yeah, super important context to have. The situation for queer children and youth in foster care is really serious. It's fairly dire. They really lack affirmation. In general, they're at higher risk of abuse and family reduction in their families of origin. They're overrepresented in the foster care system. When they enter into the system, they're more likely to experience harm, adverse outcomes, disrupted placements, experiences of abuse. They're more likely to be placed in residential facilities, and there are serious outcomes like health implications and lower well being that all result from these increased risks. So the need for us to tackle this head on. The need for us to create inviting, warm, supportive, affirming home environments for queer children and youth is just so pressing. It cannot be understated.

Dawn Davenport  14:52  
Okay, excellent. Halda, you referred to, I think you mentioned this earlier, so we're talking today about. Having an affirming home for these youth. What does it mean to have an affirming home? I think that's the gist of what we're trying to get at, if you're up for and as Shelly just mentioned, there is a huge need for families to step forward to raise queer youth who have entered the foster care system. And many times, some not many times, but very often, these children are in the foster care system because of the fact that they are queer. They need homes. So what does it mean to be an affirming home? Holly,

Speaker 1  15:33  
well, firstly, a lot of what needs to happen the queer youth needs to be protected from, and it should happen up front before a queer youth is ever even placed in a home. So with our research, we really emphasize the need for when families get certified for foster care, that they are affirming of queer youth, whether or not one gets placed in their care, and that especially with younger kids, but a child of any age, their sexuality and so on, emerges over time, but there is distinct differences pre and post puberty. So you may get a child that's very young who you don't know how they identify, and then later they say, Hey, I'm this or I'm that. So we really stress that if someone says they're not willing to take queer youth in care, then it's not really good idea to put any child in their care, because anybody could be queer, especially young kids. We don't we don't necessarily know, even though the data says to ask them about gender identity and expression early on, not necessarily sexuality pubescence. So that is a way to not essentially put a queer kid who is closeted, or queer kid who doesn't know how they identify yet in a non affirming home, it's also a way to create safety. Unfortunately, many kids get separated from their biological siblings, and let's say one sibling is placed in a non affirming home, and that sibling is hetero, and it's not an issue, but their other SIB, who is elsewhere, wants to visit, and that sibling is queer. Well, then now you've made it unsafe for that queer sibling to be bonding with their sibling at that original home. So before we even have advice on affirming youth when you're with them after placement, we want to make sure there's protections that you're open to that. And it's a journey. Nobody knows all of it, and there needs to be a lot of willingness and a lot of willingness to learn, and the humility of saying, oops, I messed up, and I want to learn and try again. To the first part of this conversation about getting language right. We all mess up on language. You know, I do as well. It happens you might misgender someone or just get it wrong. You apologize and check in with them, and you sort of generally, you move on and you just try to do better.

Dawn Davenport  17:44  
Shelly, let me turn to you. What does an affirming home look like? An

Speaker 2  17:49  
affirming home is one that celebrates the entirety of the child youth's experiences and identities, including their LGBTQ identification, including their LGBTQ explorations and questionings. We heard from some people in this project, and we heard from some queer youth about what affirmation looked like in their experiences. And they put it really well. They said, affirmation celebrates it does not merely tolerate. Oh, wow. Sometimes we have a pretty low bar for what we expect from foster families. We expect them to figure out how to get along with a queer identification just to tolerate it and make sure that it doesn't turn into a reason for an experience of harm. But actually, we'd like to raise the bar and have that be higher, that affirmations celebrates, because one of the big risks for queer children, youth in care is that they experience adverse outcomes as a result of having to hide this aspect of their experience, of being closeted, of keeping it a secret, of feeling like it's a stigma can't be talked about. They're feeling like they're having to hide a part of themselves. That's what some of them told us. And there can be situations in which placements are fine by every other measure, but they're still experiencing inner turmoil because they are queer. They want to talk to their foster family about it. They want their foster family to see them in their fullness of themselves, and it's something that isn't possible because it's not an affirming home where something like that would be celebrated and accepted. So that gives a bit of a picture. We also spoke to some queer Christian organizations, and there was one anecdote that just, or one, one quote really, that just really stuck with us. This person said that a church might be welcoming to LGBTQ people in that they're just allowed to be there, they're allowed to be in the congregation, but they're not allowed to serve in any of the ministries. They can't be in the band, they can't volunteer with children, they can't speak from the front of the church. You know, they're allowed to be there, but they're not involved. Whereas an affirming church is one where queer people are walking into all parts of the ministry, they are centered, they are accepted, they are celebrated, they are looked to. And that. Make all the difference for queer children, and

Speaker 1  20:02  
just to piggyback on that really quickly, the alternative to hiding is coming out when it may not be safe, and then those negative outcomes are also virtually guaranteed or possibly even worse. So that's why it's so critical, that it's not only harmful to have any sort of physical or emotional violence toward youth who are out. It's really harmful to not make it safe for them to come out as well with that hiding piece, and to not feel less than than their straight counterparts. I mean, personally, my partner's mom calls me their friend. I mean, she she's trying. She's, you know, come a long way, of course, and we don't take it too offensively, and she thinks I'm fabulous, but there's a marked difference between me and her son in law. She

Dawn Davenport  20:46  
likes you as a friend. Yeah, you're a good friend.

Unknown Speaker  20:51  
Yeah.

Dawn Davenport  20:54  
Let me pause here to remind you of our free courses that we offer on our website. These are brought to you by The jockey, being Family Foundation. They are one hour courses. They are self paced, so you take them on your own, you can get a certificate of completion if, in fact, you need that. They are really terrific courses. I can't recommend them enough. Check them out at Bitly slash JBf support. That's B, i, t, dot, l, y, slash, JBf, support. Holly, I want to go back to something you had said. Some foster and adoptive parents know in advance that the child they are fostering or adopting identifies as LGBTQ plus. But other times it's something that they find out later. But if they do know in advance, what are some things they can do to prepare? Because oftentimes they will be told, if the child has come out, if the child has self identified, then the let's hope child welfare is noted that and then is looking for a family so the family is accepting a placement, eyes wide open. What can they do to prepare because they want to be an affirming home?

Speaker 1  22:05  
Yeah, no, that's huge. And I mean age dependent, of course, but in general, thinking about how you want to talk to this new youth in your life about their queerness, and then I think one consent is huge, and the National Soji Center has a lot of good advice on how to speak to kids about this, depending on their age and developmental experience. But in the case of a teen or tween who are overrepresented in foster care, it's really great to have consent of like, hey, I want to talk to you. I saw this, and I was hoping we could talk about it. Are you okay with talking about it? If they're not okay talking about it, drop it, if they are okay talking about it, then it's like, do you feel comfortable telling me how you identify, what your pronouns are, you know? And then just kind of go bit from bit, but where it would be leading to is like, what are the needs this young person has around that? And they may not know, but some things that come up that we've heard from this work are making sure that there is community and connection, and we know that's stressed a lot by child welfare agencies, and this is harder and more rural places, but rural people are really just doing incredible work to get young people connected to communities where they can be with other queer youth, regardless if it's in a foster care common ground scenario, and Finding ways to sell it like what looked like celebration for this young person, they may want to go to pride. One young person we heard from said they told their foster parent that they are bi, and the foster parent made a cake for them out of the BI flag colors, and just was like, Woohoo, you know? And they love that, right? And really to that point of celebration. And then there's all these other ways that affirming queer youth is just affirming youth in general, right? A lot of what we heard is helpful for connection and trust, which is just vital for every young person is just hanging out, playing video games, playing games, you know, and youth of any background can be tough sometimes to engage, but especially when they've had really severe, often chronic trauma. You know, they might not feel like they have a big spring in their step, and there should be room for that. And I can't remember who exactly it was, but we heard from one service provider who works at a community organization in a rural area with queer youth, and they said, Yeah, I tried to engage a queer young person, and they really weren't talking to me at all. Every question I asked, but we were playing badminton, but they kept just hitting the little, what is that called, back and forth, right? Shuttlecock. Shuttlecock, yeah, they were just, they were still playing with me, even if they weren't talking. And I saw that as a good sign and as a way to build rapport and to build trust, and the more you connect and develop that intimacy, right, the more you can explore deeper what's really needed for that individual person.

Dawn Davenport  24:48  
This goes back to what Shelley had said that, yes, they may be queer, but they're also 16, just a person, or just a person who really likes Minecraft and really done one adaptive. Anything deep right now? Yeah. Shelly, I wanted to bring up something that we hear. I think science is pretty clear now that sexuality, especially in children, is a fairly fluid state, more so than I think a lot of parents are comfortable acknowledging. A lot of children are figuring things out and are uncertain. So we hear the question that so I've got a 10 year old in my home, and they may be expressing, let's say it's a female by birth, and they're expressing activities and perhaps pronouns in dress. And how does a parent handle the fluidity without pigeon holding the child too young?

Speaker 2  25:42  
This is such an important question. One of the things that we really hope comes through in our work and as a takeaway from conversations like these, is how important it is to include empower and listen to queer kids, and that means having conversations with them, if they are exploring a trans identity or gender transition, they're experts in their own experience right now, and we as caregivers can't make any assumptions about that experience or where it might go, how it might develop over time, so we need to take queer kids at their word. There's little that's more invalidating, I think, than coming out to somebody and then being told you're going through a phase. So I would definitely recommend that families avoid that kind of language. But there's a kernel of truth to it, in the sense that these experiences, these human experiences, are quite fluid sometimes, and whether you're LGBTQ identifying or heterosexual and cisgendered, there might have been some moments of fluidity in the development of your identities, sexual orientation and gender identity, and there may be additional fluidity coming in the future. I think anybody who has gestated a baby and given birth as I have can attest to how many transformations there are in our relationships with ourselves, with our identities and our bodies, and our experiences in terms of sexuality and gender. And so that fluidity is something that we're all living through, not just LGBTQ identifying children and youth. And so we can continue to have conversations about how identities, how desires to do things like gender transition might change over time, but we really have to take kids at their word. We have to believe them if they're telling us you know that they would like to continue to express their gender openly, and maybe that gender doesn't adhere to what they were assigned at birth. Okay, let's go with that. Let's think about ways to do that safely. Let's think about ways to do that that are authentic. And let's talk about what support can be provided by its parents, by caregivers,

Speaker 1  27:47  
just ongoing. Plus to all of that, but to just keep at it, because to your point, Don right. The child may change, likely will change, and don't want to pigeonhole them. Yeah, absolutely. Want to celebrate them where they are, and that can be a lot to balance, so keep checking in. And parents typically really observe their kids, not always, but you know, there's

Dawn Davenport  28:08  
a lot to observe there, and letting them know that the conversation is not frightening to you, right, and that you're right. You're willing to continue to have that conversation

Speaker 1  28:18  
right? Make it safe. Make it safe for them and make it safe for yourself. But as we stress in this work, safety and comfort aren't necessarily the same, we had a really great quote from the Child Welfare agent who identifies as queer and does a lot to affirm queer youth and does trainings, and before training says, I care about your safety, but you might feel uncomfortable. It's okay to feel uncomfortable. That doesn't mean you're unsafe. So anyway, making it safe for you is great to make it safe for the youth, but more importantly, it's okay if you're a little uncomfortable.

Dawn Davenport  28:51  
I am really enjoying this interview, and hate to interrupt but I want you to know about something that is really special at creating a family, and that is our new prenatal exposure workshop that's for families who either suspect or know that their child that they are raising was exposed in utero to alcohol or drugs. We have run two randomized control trials on this training. It is definitely evidence based. It is a three session training in total, four and a half hours. Some of the training is broken out by age of the child, because your issues differ depending on the age of the child. It is participatory, interactive and facilitated. It is one of the best things we have. I can't recommend it enough. Check it out at Bitly slash prenatal, dash exposure, dash training. That's B, i, t, dot, l, y, slash the word prenatal. Dash exposure, dash training. Holly, and this is a general question. We can't spend too much time on it. But do you see that there are issues different depending on whether the child or the youth or, I guess, the young adult? About is lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning, asexual, whatever is the way their identity or orientation. Are there different issues? Is one harder than another?

Speaker 1  30:13  
Well, I don't think any of us can necessarily ever say our one experience is harder than another. But you know, Shelley and I have social science backgrounds like you know, there are structures in place that make things harder on a large scale, depending on how you are in the world and how you show up, and there are definitely distinct need and a whole other host of endless details depending on whether you are LGBTQ and so on, yeah. And at the same time, so much of what is needed are basic needs that all people are entitled to and should have, and so it's really holding that nuance of a lot of what is needed is just basic care that goes a very long way feeling emotionally and psychologically safe, in addition to physical safety, is Huge for every child, and then to feel really affirmed and celebrated, especially, I would imagine with older kids who might be exploring sexuality and so on, some learning might need to be involved to be like, Well, how do I parent an aromantic but a Sexual Child? Right? Like, what does that look like? Or, how do I parent someone who's questioning or someone who's trans, but they maybe don't fit this bill of what we see in dominant discourse, of what trans should look like, right? I mean, trans doesn't always mean physical transition, or it might not be physical transition in all the ways that that's possible, right? There's puberty blockers, and there's replacement therapy, and then, as this work has shown, and as I think people in queer studies have been saying for a long time, modifying, and to Shelley's point, earlier, just gestation, which is one of the hugest things people can do, and it's also wildly common, is changing physiology all the time, hormones all the time. As one child welfare agent said, Who's cisgendered and talked about having kids and being married, so probably straight. We don't know, but she said, I use Rogaine, right? I try to prevent hair loss. A lot of what that hormone is is just what trans youth and like caseload are trying to use, right? So we somehow assign this huge moral judgment to physiological change, either by nature or by nurture, and yet it's a common thing all around

Dawn Davenport  32:22  
Shelly. I think sometimes parents, be they foster or adoptive or kin, struggle with how to encourage healthy romantic relationships for these kids, perhaps it's because they are uncomfortable that I'm not sure, but wanting to stress that a healthy relationship is a healthy relationship, regardless of whether it's two girls or two boys or any combination thereof. Any thoughts on that?

Speaker 2  32:47  
Yeah, I think you said it. Well, I think healthy relationships are going to have attributes and characteristics that are going to be common across children who identify as LGBTQ ia plus and children who identify as heterosexual. So there's going to be things that parents can be looking out for, around mutual respect, confidentiality, healthy boundaries, those things are going to be common across straight and not straight kids. We didn't look as deeply into this in our work, and so we don't have as much that we can draw on here, but we know that there are others who have looked at this closely. So you know we can definitely encourage additional conversations. Okay, Holly, did you want to add to

Speaker 1  33:30  
that? No, I think that's spot on. I guess I just wanted to piggyback on one thing I didn't say previously, which is, as much as we can't say I've had it harder than someone else. There are structures in place making it hardest for trans youth and trans youth of color. Always,

Dawn Davenport  33:43  
I'm glad you said that. I almost said that. I went I you know, it's just harder. There are more issues. There are more decisions that have they're being targeted, yes, but they're also harder decisions that have to be made when the children are young. That from a parenting standpoint, it's more complicated, because we make decisions that are lifelong when we want to do it in the best interest. Now for foster parents, honestly, it's less of an issue because it's the child welfare system that is going to be making these decisions, but that also poses problems, because the parents may feel that the child welfare is not making the best decision in the interest of this child. So I'm glad you said that, because it sure seems to me, on the outside looking in that trans people in general, but especially trans youth, they're just it's a harder position to be in. Yes,

Speaker 2  34:31  
yeah, and it's so, so important to underscore, like, how hard of an experience it is to be a trans girl or trans woman, and a trans girl or woman of color in particular, their experiences are marked by disproportionately higher rates of violence, death, homelessness, poverty, unemployment, family rejection. This is a section of our children and youth that are experiencing a lot of harm and violence, and we need to do a lot better by them, and that's not. Not necessarily something that's easy to act on from the perspective of a parent, but I think in general, collectively, we need to take this head on. We really need to do better by them.

Dawn Davenport  35:11  
Did you know that one of the best things you could do for us at creating a family is to rate or review this podcast Apple as well as the other podcasting apps use your ratings, and in particular, your reviews, to determine rankings for podcasts, as well as which podcasts they push and recommend. We really need your reviews, so go to whatever app you use to listen to the podcast, and generally, in the show notes area, there is an ability to just click on it, and it allows you to leave a star rating. Star ratings would be great if you're feeling particularly generous, if you would leave us a written review, that would be great as well. We would truly appreciate it. So let's go into a particularly sticky issue. There are certainly a number of people who get into fostering or adopting because of their religious beliefs, that there is a need, and that because of their faith, they step forward for that need. What if you have been raised to believe that homosexuality is a sin, but you're being asked to either before, as Holly said, before you become a foster parent, because any foster child coming in could be or because you specifically are being asked to take in a child who has already identified as queer. How do we handle that? Yeah,

Speaker 2  36:32  
we spoke to one policy advocate who thinks that it really, really well all children and youth have a right to safe and appropriate placements in foster care, but the people who want to become foster parents don't have a right to be a foster parent. So I think we have to think really hard about what we can and cannot expect of foster parents and whether everybody has the right to become a foster parent if there are aspects of a child's identity and experience that a parent cannot accept, cannot learn to love, cannot affirm. I think that we might be putting children in foster care at risk of harm, and I don't think we should be doing that. How do

Dawn Davenport  37:17  
we handle the fact that we're certainly a huge push now towards kinship care. And this is not to say that the older generation is homophobic, because that is not true. However, I have seen a fair number of kinship caregivers really struggle with the whole idea and the feeling that things are moving way too fast in this direction, and it feels very alien to them. So how do we balance the fact that we have a strong commitment to kinship care against the commitment to safety and affirmation of LGBTQ plus youth? That

Speaker 2  37:50  
balance is really critical. I think agencies have this new, recent commitment to placing more children and youth with kinship caregivers. We know that that's the right thing to do. The research show this, the outcomes are better for children, youth placed with Kin, they have better connections to their communities, customs, heritage, histories, families, undeniably, the right thing to do. It may be that there's a substantial number of these kinship caregivers who are grandmothers or aunties. Maybe have lived during a time when LGBTQ identities and experiences were more taboo. They were more stigmatized. Maybe kids were more likely to be bullied and ostracized and rejected. And so yes, there are some issues here as a tightrope walk that child welfare agencies need to walk. It's a tension that agencies need to attend to, but we would not recommend that they attend to this at the expense of a child or youth's interest in staying connected to their identities and their families. So what we heard from youth who talked about this issue is that they wanted to be consulted. They wanted to be included in these decisions, because typically, they had preferences one way or the other, and their preferences, of course, varied, but some said to us, actually, I don't mind it. If grandma misgenders me, she still loves me. I know she loves me. She'll keep me safe. I want to be placed with her, and maybe calling me by the right pronouns is something that is going to take her a little while, and I'm willing to be patient, and I'm willing to be in that placement situation. That's

Dawn Davenport  39:15  
a very enlightened youth.

Speaker 2  39:18  
You would be surprised how much grace youth are willing to extend in their lives. They are willing to extend an enormous amount of grace and generosity. We had one youth defending parents, foster parents and their right to be confused, to ask questions, to know that it's safe for them to learn about queer experiences. It was really a touching aspect of the conversations we had with youth. But yeah, I think agencies need to include youth in these discussions when they're making placement decisions, when they're figuring out how to walk this walk of a commitment to kinship care, while also making sure that there's a commitment to affirmation. Of queer experiences, because some will have preferences one way or another, and so it's going to need to be determined on a case by case basis. I do want to return to the question of faith. Holly, do you want to add a little bit more to that? I

Unknown Speaker  40:11  
want to add so much to what we just talked about.

Dawn Davenport  40:15  
You have permission to add to both. But the other

Speaker 1  40:17  
is important too. I mean, just absolutely to what Shelly just said about can caregiving and affirmation and just driving home that in the case of a youth saying it's okay if grandma is still struggling with my pronouns in a way that it's not okay that my teacher or some stranger off the street does, because there's intimacy, presumably there's intimacy, there's love, there's care there, and that is still at the heart of affirmation, right? And it shows that you can be and show and enact affirmation, even if you're not always naming it correctly. Naming is part of affirmation too. It's just not only the ways that is needed and absolutely to bringing youth in to determine what feels best for them and where they feel safest, and then in terms of religious foster care applicants and this idea that they are being discriminated against or so on because of the requirement to affirm queer youth, absolutely, to this policy expert that Shelley quoted, saying, you know, kids have a right to be affirmed. No one has a right to be a foster care parent if that's going to be in conflict with affirming all children. And then in terms of there's a lot of discourse around the fear that we will have even fewer foster parents to provide care for foster youth if we say they must be affirming, well, that's a bit of a false equivalence, because a lot of policy experts are saying, actually, if you require everyone to be affirming, you're making a lot more room for a lot of people who didn't know they could be foster parents, who maybe have interest but didn't know what to do with it. And you're basically redirecting your recruitment efforts and your resources to expanding your pool. And that education and outreach piece is so huge, and we heard that a lot from Child Welfare agents and recruitment roles that you know they would not only go to like pride events or things like that, where you wouldn't typically expect to see a booth for becoming a foster parent, but they were constantly just answering these sorts of fact FAQ questions of, can I be a foster parent if I'm single? Can I be a foster parent if I am polyamorous? Can I be a foster parent if I'm over a certain age? Can I be a foster parent if I'm 26 and the person 17? Yes for all of them, yes, you can, right? And so it's actually not true that if we say, hey, you've got to be affirming of all children in order to do this. It's not true that we're just going to have a shorter stock of those who are willing. We're just going to expand the pool by

Dawn Davenport  42:45  
expanding where you're looking for foster parents. If I hear what you're saying,

Speaker 1  42:49  
Yeah, and what it really means to be a foster parent, I think the media has a representation that's a bit stereotyped. And doesn't mean it's not reflective of what's out there, but it's not the only thing out there, and it's important to say, no, it could look all kinds of ways.

Speaker 2  43:04  
We have heard in our work in this space from families who are themselves, queer identifying, and don't feel like there's community for people like them, for queer foster parents. They feel like maybe the community around them is mostly religious and therefore disapproves of the fact that they're a queer family, and in one specific instance, we spoke to one such family that ended up closing their license. So I think there's a sense of possibility here that if we hold the bar high in terms of what we expect of foster parents, we're also sending a signal about the kind of culture for foster parents more broadly, that it's not just necessary, it's celebrated that you can also be a queer foster parent. And so I think there's an opportunity here that we could be taking advantage of.

Dawn Davenport  43:56  
Let me take a moment to thank children's connection. They have been a long time supporter of this podcast, as well as creating a family as a nonprofit. Children's connection is an adoption agency providing services for domestic infant adoption, placing babies throughout the US. They also do home studies and post adoption support for families in Texas. Thank you, children's connection for your ongoing support. I'd like to end by talking about resources that foster parents can look to for guidance on being an affirming home. We'll start with you Holly and then Shelly. We'll rotate between you if you'll just suggest resources, and we will include the links,

Speaker 1  44:38  
yeah, well, specifically for parents. So I'll just back up and say that one of the things that resulted with our work was what we call a maturity model, and although that was intended largely for child welfare agencies and staff, we have a whole section on there with resources for families to support affirmation and support rearing and. Rank for young, queer youth, so we can send that along as well. There's a really wonderful organization, some of it cheeky, like help my kid just came out. Then there's, of course, the tried and true p flag, the parents and friends of lesbian gays, although they really just go by P flag now, because that's reflective of how much language has changed over the time. She's

Dawn Davenport  45:19  
gonna say they got caught up every time I knew initial was added to the acronym, everybody at peace. Flag was going, Oh, great,

Speaker 1  45:25  
right, right, right, right. But yeah, because it's so huge to Shelley's point as well, that parents feel from well, especially for your families that Shelly mentioned. But of course, straight families as well feeling like they're in community. I mean, we're all people here. We all need to see each other reflected in the life outside of ourselves. We all need to connect over commonalities. You mentioned

Dawn Davenport  45:47  
Soji. Tell us what Soji stands for, and we'll include a link to their wonderful resource on how to talk with kids at different ages. Yes,

Speaker 1  45:54  
the National Soji center, I totally said Soji without explaining it. Yeah, thank you for catching that. So Soji is sexual orientation, gender, identity and expression. It's an acronym, and the National Sogi center is really a bevy of research, materials, training, educational supports. They work with professional organization. They have all kinds of content for people to just browse themselves, for their own learning on their own time. Can't say enough wonderful things about them? Yeah,

Dawn Davenport  46:23  
it's a wonderful resource.

Speaker 2  46:24  
So yeah, GLAAD and PFLAG have excellent glossaries for anybody who's starting out and meeting definitions. But I'd love to just make sure that everybody knows about the resources that are out there, both from PFLAG and also from HSC the Human Rights Campaign, so great resources from PFLAG and the Human Rights Campaign that have resources specific to families of faith, whether they're just Christian or of other faiths as well, who feel like there might be a gap in their own sense of their learning about synergies between being a person of faith and being a queer person, or being a person who loves someone who is queer. There are really excellent resources out there.

Dawn Davenport  47:06  
Are you specifically saying, HRC, are PFLAG for that? That's a really good resource. I was unaware of. Yeah,

Speaker 2  47:12  
both of them. PFLAG has resources specifically to Christians who are looking to love and care for queer children and youth and HRC, the Human Rights Campaign has really excellent resources for other faiths as well, including lots of kinds of Christians. And we know about organizations like queer Christian Fellowship. They have summits, conferences and support groups for families who are looking to connect with other people who are of Faith Christian and also caring for queer people or themselves coming out as queer or grappling with their sexual orientations and gender identities, there are really excellent resources out there for people like that.

Dawn Davenport  47:51  
Well, thank you so much, Holly Herrington and Dr Shelley runen for talking with us today about raising an LGBTQ plus child or youth, I truly appreciate your expertise. It's

Unknown Speaker  48:04  
been a pleasure. Thank

Unknown Speaker  48:05  
you so much for having us. You.