What Happens When Family is Forced Together: Conflict, Intimacy, and Distance in Queer and Trans Youth’s Family Relations During the Pandemic

Abstract

During the COVID-19 pandemic, many lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) youth lived with family members in forced togetherness. Using the Texas Queer Youth COVID Study, a longitudinal qualitative study of 26 LGBTQ youth in Texas, we argue that the social conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic impacted relationships between LGBTQ youth and their family in dynamic ways, including cultivating intimacy and magnifying new or existing conflicts. LGBTQ youth could not use their preferred strategies of avoidance to handle relatives’ conservative pandemic politics and conspiracy theories. For Latinx LGBTQ youth, the intensified familism required during the shelter-in-place of the pandemic cultivated more intimacy but also became a justification for distance for youth trying to avoid homophobic relatives. These findings contribute to the study of LGBTQ youth and family relations, along with the impact of social isolation on family life.