Does Sexual Orientation Affect Kinship Ties?

Intergenerational support is crucial for LGBT adults, as it is associated with positive outcomes like life satisfaction, well-being, self-esteem. In the last two decades, due to expansions of homosexual legal rights, social science scholars started to show an interest in homosexual family issues. In terms of intergenerational relations of homosexual individuals, the previous research is quite limited and most studies have qualitative research designs. In this study, we employ descriptive analyses to report how kinship ties of heterosexual and non-heterosexual individuals from 25-35 age group change across countries, utilizing data from KINMATRIX Survey 2023. The literature suggests that LGBT individuals face disadvantages in traditional kinship structures. Our findings confirm these disadvantages across all the countries studied. Moreover, in countries with lower levels of institutional and cultural acceptance of homosexual individuals, such as Italy and Poland, non-heterosexuals report experiencing higher levels of conflict with parents and less closeness with grandparents.