Negative Family Treatment of Sexual Minority Women and Transmen in Vietnam: Latent Classes and Their Predictors

Quantitative research on parental/family disapproval and rejection of sexual/gender minority persons has often measured family rejection as one binary/continuous variable, or using several variables representing specific behaviors or dimensions of behaviors. Absent from this literature is analysis using a person-oriented approach, examining heterogeneity across individuals in the types of family treatment experience. Using data from 2,664 adult sexual minority women and transmen in Vietnam, latent class analysis was conducted on 19 items representing negative family behaviors. The six-class solution best fit the data, including one non-negative class (peace, 36.7% of the sample) and five negative classes (pressure, 34.0%; aggressive to respondent and girlfriend, 10.3%; aggressive to respondent, 8.1%; severe, 6.0%; and extreme, 4.7%). Class membership was regressed on individual, family, and contextual variables. Overall, younger age, transman identity, religious affiliation, and parent awareness predicted being in worse family treatment classes. Further research is needed to separate cohort and age effects and to examine developmental trajectories of family behavior. Findings suggested that it may be general conservativeness rather than a specific religious doctrine that predicts negative family treatment and revealed that nonparent family members’ role in family response to sexual/gender nonconformity may be significant.