Product Description: Proud, happy, grateful―gay youth describe their lives in terms that would have seemed surprising only a generation ago. Yet many adults, including parents, seem skeptical about this sea change in perceptions and attitudes. Even in an age of growing tolerance, coming out as gay is supposed to involve a crisis or struggle...read more

Product Description: Gay, straight, bisexual: how much does sexual orientation matter to a teenager's mental health or sense of identity? In this down-to-earth book, filled with the voices of young people speaking for themselves, Ritch Savin-Williams argues that the standard image of gay youth presented by mental health researchers--as depressed, isolated, drug-dependent, even suicidal--may have been exaggerated even twenty years ago, and is far from accurate today...read more

Product Description: Drawing from over 150 original interviews with teens, psychologist Rit ch Savin-Williams separates fact from fiction in this survey of coming out experiences. Drawing from existing developmental research, he ill ustrates the wide range of family reactions and discusses the factors that determine how parents come to terms with the disclosure over time ...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

"...And Then I Became Gay is about the lives of young men who express the complications, adversities, and satisfactions of being a sexual outsider in North America during the 1980s and 1990s. Consisting of narratives which chronicle developmental progression from first memories of being attracted to other males to a subsequent integration of their sexual identity with a personal identity, this book is also unique in its cross-section of men from different ethnic backgrounds. Although each story in this volume has a personal meaning to the individual youth disclosing it, aspects of these narratives can express a normative experience growing up gay or bisexual during the past two decades. For many of the contributors and readers, these stories may prove to be not only ones of coming out, but coming of age. (view table of contents)

Product Description: First published in 1990. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.