Intergenerational stress proliferation in sexual and gender minority families: A stress accumulation model.

Abstract

Sexual and gender minority families navigate complex stress exposures that span developmental periods and social contexts, including early-life adversity, ongoing discrimination, and minority stress. This study tested competing models of stress accumulation and stress sensitization in a diverse, United States national sample of sexual and gender minority parents (N = 568) with children under the age of 18. Using multivariate distance matrix regression, we examined how parent-reported adverse childhood experiences, everyday discrimination, and internalizing symptoms were associated with multivariate profiles of parent and child mental health. Parent adverse childhood experiences, discrimination, anxiety, and depression were each independently associated with variation in child mental health outcomes, consistent with a stress accumulation model. No interaction effects consistent with stress sensitization emerged. These findings underscore the cumulative impacts of trauma-related stressors in sexual and gender minority families and highlight the utility of person-centered, multivariate methods for capturing co-occurring symptom patterns in intergenerational trauma research. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).