Human Growth and Development / Unit 10 HGD 1382 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Sexual-Minority Milestones
The idea
Early stage models, such as Cass's, which ran from identity confusion to identity synthesis, have given way to milestones. A meta-analysis by Hall and colleagues gives average ages: first same-sex attraction at about twelve point seven, self-identification at about seventeen point eight, first same-sex contact at about eighteen, starting to come out at about nineteen and a half, and a first same-sex romantic relationship at about twenty-one.
In practice
A teen who recognized attraction at thirteen, named it privately at seventeen, and told her family at twenty.
Where people slip
Recent cohorts reach milestones earlier and faster. Bisexual people and women tend to reach them later, and men recognize attraction earlier but disclose later. Milestones are averages; individual paths vary, and culture and religion shape when and whether a person discloses.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
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