Natural Mentoring Relationships And Parent-Child Attachment Among Queer Emerging Adults

Abstract

Queer youth and young adults often experience challenges in their familial relationships, particularly with their parents, related to their queer identity. Combined with the minority stress they already face and the added weight of other external stressors, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, there is a dire need to examine methods of prevention and intervention to help them successfully transition to adulthood as their most authentic selves. Natural mentoring relationships are a type of nonparental adult support formed organically within the mentee’s existing social network (e.g., teachers or grandparents) that have been shown to be helpful despite risk status (Van Dam et al., 2018) and even posited to be a corrective attachment experience (Rhodes et al., 2006). The aims of the two studies in my dissertation were to a) examine the current state of natural mentoring among queer emerging adults using a new, original dataset focused on a contemporary sample representative of race and sexual and gender diversity (Study 1), and b) to determine if natural mentoring moderates the association between the parent-child relationship and suicidality, psychological distress, and the use of substances to cope during a particularly stressful time—the COVID-19 pandemic (Study 2). Participants were 413 emerging adults (ages 18-25, M = 21.53 years) in the United States. Approximately 35% (n = 146) were trans (i.e., participants who identify with a gender other than their sex-assigned-at-birth) and roughly 50% (n = 200) were emerging adults of color (non-exclusive categories). Data were collected at the height of the omicron variant outbreak during the COVID-19 pandemic. Participants were recruited on the Prolific research platform, and stratified sampling was used to recruit participants who identified as a gender other than their sex assigned-at-birth and racial and ethnic minorities. Using a descriptive design (Study 1), I examined the prevalence, characteristics, quality, and acceptance of natural mentoring relationships. Most study participants reported having natural mentors and these relationships were of relatively high quality. Additionally, most participants perceived that their mentor had at least a somewhat positive attitude toward their queer identity. Results also showed that natural mentoring relationships lasted longer when mentors and mentees shared the same race. Following the descriptive study, linear regression was used (Study 2) to explore whether the parent-child relationship predicted suicidality, psychological distress, and the use of substances to cope and then to determine if aspects of natural mentoring buffered those associations. Findings showed that parent-child attachment quality predicted psychological distress and suicidality but not the use of substances to cope. Furthermore, there were no significant moderating effects. Significantly, mentor acceptance of the mentee’s gender identity predicted lower psychological distress. Findings also showed that trans emerging adults experience higher psychological distress, a lesser likelihood of having a mentor, and lower parent-child attachment quality than their sexual minority cisgender peers. All in all, results of these two studies indicate that natural mentoring relationships are a relatively accessible resource for queer emerging adults and that these relationships tend to be high quality (i.e., emotionally close and that mentors were accepting of the mentee’s queer identity) but that there still needs to be considerable focus on the parent-child relationship, even if the youth are young adults. Natural mentoring can complement parenting, but it cannot supplant it. It is also crucial to connect queer emerging adults with mentors who share their identities and experiences, particularly for trans emerging adults and queer emerging adults of color. Future research should continue to examine natural mentoring in the context of other influential attachment relationships and attachment experiences. The implementation of longitudinal or mixed-methods designs is also needed. Importantly, there needs to be a higher emphasis on exploring natural mentoring relationships among trans emerging adults to connect them with mentors who can support them in a discriminatory sociopolitical landscape.