Abstract:
The purpose of this research was to examine factors related to the coming out to their families of young-adult lesbian women. Participants were 291 lesbian women aged 22 to 40. Independent variables examined were parenting styles, personality types, coping styles, expectations of the families reactions toward their disclosure, peers norms and participates attitude to coming-out age. Dependent variables was the self-disclosure status of the participants to their families: whether the participants disclose or hide their sexual orientation. Participants responded to a set of questionnaires which were separated into 2 parts: a general data questionnaire and the questionnaires measuring the above independent variables. Data were analyzed using the Stepwise Logistic Regression Analysis technique. Findings indicated that authoritative parenting style (p<.01), uninvolved parenting style (p<.05) openness to experience (p<01) and expectation regarding the consequence of their homosexuality disclosure (p<.001) were related to the participants coming out process to their families. Participants who had high scores of predicted factors trended to come out with their families, percentage of correction was 37.09%. While participants who had low scores trended to hide the homosexuality to their families, percentage of correction was 89.11%