Minority stress is a family experience: A multiverse-based, meta-analytic systematic review on minority stress in LGBTQ+ parent families

Minority stress may be a family experience: Mounting evidence suggests that (a) LGBTQ+ parents experience marginalization based on their identities, relationships, and families (i.e., individual-, couple-, and family-level minority stress), (b) minority stress is associated with family-related outcomes (such as parenting stress and family functioning), and (c) children in LGBTQ+ parent families also experience minority stress. However, a formal synthesis of this evidence is currently lacking. Within this systematic review, we aim to elucidate whether minority stress is indeed a family experience by synthesizing associations between minority stress across all three levels of the family system and key outcomes for parents, children, and the family. We retrieved 43 publications (1982–2022) based on 30 samples (3,803 families, 332 effect sizes) from a systematic, multi-tiered literature search (including within PsycInfo, PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science). Multiverse-based meta-analyses (3,552 models) supported our hypotheses regarding meaningful associations between distal minority stress and child externalizing (mean r = .24), internalizing (.22), and total adjustment problems (.21), as well as parenting competence (-.17), parenting stress (.13), but not regarding the parent-child relationship (-.10), and family functioning (-.11) due to volatile specification patterns. These and further descriptive syntheses support the notion that parents and children in LGBTQ+ parent families experience minority stress, which is linked to key outcomes relating to the health and well-being of individual family members, as well as to the family system. Theoretical (i.e., a Family Minority Stress Model) and empirical advances (e.g., diverse sampling, intensive longitudinal designs) are needed to advance the field further.