This is a collaboration with Diederik Boertien (CED) as part of the ERC-funded MINEQ (ERC-2020-STG-
948557-MINEQ PI: Diederik Boertien). We examine family and gender dynamics over the life course of LGBs in the UK.

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Sexuality and Demographic Change: Documenting Family Formation Trajectories and Cohort Change in the LGB Population 

Ariane Ophir; Diederik Boertien; Sergi Vidal

Published in Demography (Open Access): https://doi.org/10.1215/00703370-10968468

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Narratives of demographic shifts overlook how societal changes shape the family trajectories of sexual minorities. Using sequence analysis, we describe how partnering and parenthood evolve over the life course of lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) women and men in the United Kingdom (N = 455) and how the types of these family trajectories changed across two birth cohorts (born before 1965 and in 1965–1979). We find five distinct trajectories between ages 18 and 40, wherein two thirds of the sample belonged to a family trajectory that did not involve living with children. Partnership-centered trajectories became more common across cohorts, and this increase came at the expense of trajectories characterized by singlehood among gay men and lesbian women. However, parenthood trajectories became less common among all LGB groups. Furthermore, family trajectories became more complex across cohorts, including more transitions, which coincides with trends in the general population. Yet we also find that family trajectories became less diverse among lesbian women and bisexual men, in contrast to the trend among gay men and the general population. The results demonstrate the dynamic, complex, and diverse nature of LGB individuals' family lives and why existing narratives of family-related demographic change should explicitly consider sexual minorities in demographic narratives.

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Re-considering Re-partnering: New Insights about Gender and Sexuality in the Study of Second Union Formation

Ariane Ophir; Diederik Boertien

Published in Social Forces: https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/soae031

(pre-print on SocArXiv)

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Past studies have established the existence of a persistent gender gap in re-partnering, wherein women are less likely to re-partner than men in the general population. Existing theories and explanations focus on women’s and men’s socio-demographic characteristics as mechanisms determining their opportunities, needs, and attractiveness in the re-partnering process. However, this work assumes people are heterosexual and overlooks sexual minorities despite growing scholarly interest in union formation and dissolution among lesbian, gay, and bisexual people. We investigate whether and how the gender gap in re-partnering intersects with sexual identity to highlight the role of gender relations as a social force that shapes union formation outcomes among the heterosexual and LGB population. We use retrospective data on cohabitation and marriage histories from the British Understanding Society survey (UKHLS) to estimate event history models. We confirm the existence of a gender gap favoring men among heterosexuals but find that lesbian women are more likely to re-partner than gay men. We do not observe a gender gap among bisexuals. Results are robust to accounting for compositional differences between groups using exact matching techniques. These findings suggest that the persistent gender gap found in past studies is not as universal as previously presumed and that sexual identity plays a vital role in re-partnering outcomes. Therefore, sociologists should explicitly incorporate the gender relational context into models and theories that explain gender differences in union formation outcomes.