Aging and Mentorship in the Margins: Multigenerational Knowledge Transfer Among LGBTQ+ Chosen Families

Angela K Perone, Lindsay Toman, Beth Glover Reed, Tré Coldon, Ashlee Osborne and Justice Cook

The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, 2025, vol. 80, issue 6, 661-680

Abstract: ObjectivesFor LGBTQ+ communities, learning often happens among chosen families, including older adults. Building on Pierre Bourdieu’s theoretical concepts of capital (e.g., economic, social, cultural, symbolic) and queer theory of sexual capital, this article examines how LGBTQ+ chosen families share expertise to build knowledge and power across the life course.MethodsUsing a transformative sequential mixed-methods design from a larger project, this subproject includes data from 6 intracategorical focus groups with multigenerational and multiracial LGBTQ+ participants (n = 37), including older adults, in a Midwestern community to center their voices, understand their experiences within and outside LGBTQ+ communities, foreground experiences of LGBTQ+ aging, and explore challenges and supports.ResultsWe identified 3 ways in which LGBTQ+ chosen families shared knowledge about various forms of capital: latent mentorship, bi- or multi-directional mentorship, and transgressive mentorship. We call these 3 types of knowledge sharing “mentorship in the margins,” in which knowledge is shared within and among communities whose intersecting positionalities both limit and expand ways to imagine mentorship for navigating structural barriers and social, economic, and political inequities, especially regarding shared housing, family formation, and marriage equality.DiscussionThe breadth and depth of multigenerational transfers of knowledge across the life course demonstrate the centrality of multigenerational chosen families for LGBTQ+ communities as they age, especially among multiply-minoritized communities (e.g., transgender women, Black, Indigenous, and People of Color [BIPOC] same-gender-loving communities). Knowledge shared among chosen families also reflects how “mentorship in the margins” builds individual and collective power that helps LGBTQ+ communities survive and thrive as they age.

Keywords: Capital; Intergenerational; Power; Support (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/geronb/gbaf027 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:geronb:v:80:y:2025:i:6:p:661-680.

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

The Journals of Gerontology: Series B is currently edited by Psychological Sciences - S. Duke Han, PhD and Social Sciences - Jessica A Kelley, PhD, FGSA

More articles in The Journals of Gerontology: Series B from The Gerontological Society of America Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().