Family Values: Fictive Kinship, Identity Construction, and Conflict among LGBT Homeless Youth

This paper explores fictive-kinship relations among homeless LGBT youth in Chicago's Boystown neighborhood. The youth meet through a patchwork of social-service providers and organize their relationships around the concept of the "gay family." Relationships within the family create avenues to share and access various resources, from money and material goods to knowledge about social services. The family also creates a set of expectations, obligations, and responsibilities for each individual within it. Parents and other members of a family guide a child's sense of identity, teaching the child how to dress and act appropriately and how to conceptualize gender and sexuality. Conversely, through following the guidance of the parent, the child validates the parent's own conception of gender and sexuality. In this way, families serve not only to aid survival, but to create and reinforce ideas of self and propriety. This is complicated when set within the social context of the broader neighborhood—service providers and community residents carry alternate understandings of these kids' identities, challenging the self-conceptions developed within the family.