Ricerc@Sapienza

Parental involvement in sex education and the quality of parent-child communication about romantic feelings appear to have a protective effect on adolescent sexual behaviours. However, little research has been conducted on the role played by birth order in the level of parental involvement in sex education. This is the first study seeking to address if the quality of parent-child communication about sex and romantic sentiments differs according to whether respondents have—or do not have—older siblings in Italy.

Previous research has shown that the act of disclosing sexual orientation, known as coming out (CO), yields various benefits for gay and lesbian (GL) persons. Moreover, some researchers have found that CO is negatively related to internalized sexual stigma (ISS). However, most research has focused on CO to parents and a few studies have examined CO to siblings. The aim of this research is to deepen the understanding of the role of CO to siblings in protecting GL persons' wellbeing.

Objectives Siblings have been recognized as playing a major role in the coming out process, because they share the same family as the lesbian and gay individual and are often of the same generation. Despite this recognized role, however, research on coming out has mainly focused on parents, and only few studies have examined the coming out process with respect to siblings. Methods This study used a sample of 241 lesbians and 171 gay men to examine the frequency with which Italian sexual minorities come out to significant persons in their life.