Close scrutiny will show that most crisis situations are opportunities to either advance or stay where you are.
—MAXWELL MALTZ
ANYONE WHO HAS EVER BEEN CAUGHT IN A VIOLENT STORM knows what it is like to be pummeled by pounding rain and roaring wind as the skies crackle with lightning and explode with thunder. Fortunately, there always comes a point when the skies start to lighten, the thunder begins to sound a little more distant, and the downpour slows ever so slightly—the storm is not yet over, but soon it will pass.
Virtually all models of family crisis identify a stage in the process during which the family is just beginning to recover. As described earlier, a family crisis is an interaction between the distressing event, how the family defines the event, and the family’s coping ability. To pull through, families mobilize existing and new resources, restructure themselves, and redefine the meaning of the crisis event, making it less overwhelming and more manageable (Hill 1971; McCubbin and Patterson 1983). The family enters the recovery stage once parents begin to adjust to the news that a son is gay or a daughter is lesbian.
About half the parents described how their feelings about their children’s homosexuality improved with time. Parental self-blame and mourning seemed to decrease within six months from the time the child came out. By the end of the family discovery period, which lasted anywhere from one month to twelve months after the child came out, parents were less likely to be clinically depressed and anxious. Parents continued to worry about their children’s future, but, for the most part, their guilt and grief seemed to dissipate.
So what is it that led to this upturn in parental emotional states and subsequent improvements in parent-child interactions? Getting educated was one factor that helped, finding empathic and positive-thinking confidants was another. However, it is too simplistic to consider parental improvement as solely a function of educational activities such as reading books and visiting helpful Web sites. The interactions parents experienced both inside and outside the family were important contributors to family recovery. In particular, the child’s behavior, emotional state, and appearance along with parent-child interactions also played significant roles in parental (and therefore family) resolution.
As stated earlier, when a family is in crises, the boundary around the family system needs to loosen up, becoming more permeable to allow the family to get outside help (Carter and McGoldrick 1999; Hill 1971). Anyone who has ever had a difficult personal problem and found someone empathic to talk to knows the soothing relief that occurs when you get things off your chest—and therapists have long known the healing power of attentive listening (Nichols 1995a: Rogers 1951; Teyber 2000).
However, the majority of parents in this study did not enroll in professional psychotherapy. Instead, they turned to members of a support group, understanding friends, coworkers, their hairstylists, nonjudgmental relatives, and lesbian or gay people they already knew. These confidants normalized not only the parents’ feelings but offered them a sense of hope. A nonjudgmental listener or a support group served as a sounding board to which parents could vent their feelings of guilt and sadness. Through these relationships, parents learned that their children’s homosexuality was not their fault and that happy, productive futures for their sons and daughters were still entirely possible.
Suppose you are struggling with something so emotionally painful, you can barely stand it. You can’t sleep, you can’t eat, you are tearful and worried most of the time, and things are made worse by the feeling that you must hide your problem because, if others knew, you would be ostracized. You don’t know what to do with yourself. It seems as if you are the only one experiencing these problems—so you feel very, very alone. Then, to your relief, you find a group of people, some just like yourself, experiencing the same difficulties yet finding ways to cope.
In this study fifteen families were recruited from PFLAG chapters in New York City, Philadelphia, and throughout the state of New Jersey. Like most of the parent respondents, the mothers and fathers in these families recalled feeling distressed, isolated, and alone when they initially learned that their daughters and sons were gay. At PFLAG group meetings they found, to their enormous relief, that there were other parents who had been through the same experiences and who had survived to eventually adjust and even become proud of their lesbian and gay children.
Jay’s mother Adele described how, four years ago, she initially felt anxious and even panicky when her son told her he was gay. After several months of nervous worry, she went on the Internet to search for information and discovered PFLAG. She found a local chapter within driving distance from her home. At her first few meetings she experienced a great sense of relief as she discussed her grief, fears, and regrets with other people who had wrestled with the same feelings. In the depths of her despair she began to see a flicker of hope as she listened to the stories of others who had pulled through such difficult times. When asked what was so helpful about PFLAG, Adele remarked, “Just being able to share with people going through the same thing that you have gone through. And being able to hear that you come out on the other side of the tunnel, eventually, and that it takes time.”
Janet, the previously quoted psychiatrist who became very depressed upon learning that her son Robert was gay, described how the healing power of the passage of time, combined with participating in PFLAG meetings to share her feelings, contributed to her adjustment.
Well, first of all, it is nice to just have a place to spill whatever you want to say . . . the angry, horrible thoughts. I really felt relaxed about expressing them there. I really think time is, frankly, the most important thing. I think there is some process that happens with any emotional trauma. I don’t know what it is that the human being does, but I think we come to grips with things. But also for me it is helpful to talk . . . it is helpful just to be able to not feel like I have to hold things in. So it was important for me to talk about it to whomever I could. I do think PFLAG helps because it is an opportunity to talk with people who want to hear you. So you go there and you know that it is OK to talk about this.
Upon learning of her twenty-year-old daughter’s lesbianism, Rachel, a divorced museum curator living in a wealthy suburb feared that her daughter Beth was destined for a life of loneliness and depression. When she first learned Beth was gay, she struggled with self-blame and worry to the extent that she began a course of antidepressant medication. However, at the time of her interview, which was four years after learning of her daughter’s sexual orientation, Rachel observed:
Beth once said to me, “Are you disappointed, Mom?” And I remember I said, “I don’t feel disappointed . . .” What I felt was . . . how do I explain this? I felt disappointed because I thought maybe she wouldn’t have a home or children or a kind of life I imagined . . . initially because I was ignorant. And PFLAG helped me more with this than anything. Unless you want to live in a small town in a conservative state, gay people who are productive can have any life that they want. You might have to walk on eggshells here and there, but in general the world is open. At the beginning I was disappointed only in that I would have liked a son-in-law, because I never had a son. But I don’t think about that anymore. I love Beth’s girlfriend, and, in fact, we were just talking today. Yeah, I was disappointed that there wouldn’t be a son-in-law and I was disappointed because of the clichés in my head and the ignorance. Ignorance is a pervasive problem for parents of gay children.
PFLAG meetings had a normalizing influence that was comforting and reassuring for attendees. At PFLAG meetings Rachel met other parents who appeared to be “normal,” and this helped her a great deal. Rachel was quoted in the previous chapter as saying homophobia “has got to be burnt out of you” and her full response is found here:
Well, I walked into a room, and who did I meet? I met my friend Carol from Short Hills and my friend Lois from Montclair . . . and all these other middle- and upper-class people . . . and, this is going to sound horrible . . . I thought I would meet crazy people . . . that all the parents of gay children would be crazy people. Now, am I a crazy person? No. Instead I met all these educated people who are lovely . . . who have become my friends . . . who have lovely kids who are gay. And I met people who I can identify with who had the same questions, some of whom were far down the road . . . and they were laughing about us. . . . They told me, “You are not alone.” They make you realize it’s not a tragedy to have a gay child. It is just something you need to learn about. So it is an extraordinary tool . . . because I don’t think there are many of us out there who aren’t brought up in homophobia, including gay people, and it has got to be burnt out of you.
Scholars have recognized the healing power of group affiliation for stigmatized people (Corrigan and Watson 2002; Frable, Wortmen, and Joseph 1997). Persons who face censure, such as the mentally ill or lesbians and gays, can develop a positive self-identity by finding others who share their stigmatizing characteristic. From others they can learn the important skill of externalizing the cause of their emotional distress—that it is not that there is something wrong with them, but rather that those who persecute them are misinformed or ignorant. A positive group experience that helps them avoid the psychological ravages of stigmatization and the attendant self-loathing can serve as a vehicle through which persecuted people can bolster their self-esteem.
At PFLAG meetings parents learn two important lessons: that there is nothing wrong with being gay and that their children’s homosexuality isn’t their fault. Parents learn to recognize that society’s norms regarding sexuality and gender are overly narrow and restrictive; they also develop the ability to be critical of society—an essential skill for family members of gays and lesbians (and also bisexual and transgender persons) to survive in a world that marginalizes and oppresses them.
THE DOWNSIDE OF PFLAG. By now you’re probably thinking that PFLAG is the perfect referral for parents who are struggling with the news that their child is gay, and you’re ready to refer all parents of gay kids to the local chapter. This is understandable, considering the experiences of the previously quoted respondents along with countless others who have benefited from participating in these support groups. However, whether it be shoes or support groups, one size never fits all. Despite its many potential benefits, the PFLAG experience could be less than positive for some people.
Clara, a devout Catholic mother, whose daughter Daria was a graduate student, attended only two meetings because she felt that she could not talk about how her deep faith conflicted with her feelings about homosexuality lest she be judged by other group participants as small-minded. Joe, a previously quoted father, who had been active in the local PFLAG chapter, stopped attending meetings when political advocacy and lobbying eclipsed discussions of parental support. A third woman described the way in which her PFLAG experience overwhelmed her by “throwing too much at me at once.” She came to her first PFLAG meeting in an emotional crisis and was nonplussed by the information other parents were discussing, namely, same-sex marriage and gay adoption, things she was far from ready to think about in terms of her son.
Thus it is important to recognize that, despite its potential benefits, some parents might be intimidated by PFLAG’s unambiguously positive and, at times, activist approach. Members of PFLAG need to be mindful of this when new parents approach their chapters for help. Moreover, human service professionals ought to carefully assess parents to determine if they are prepared for (and will be able to benefit from) PFLAG’s uniformly gay-positive approach. Like most interventions, accurate assessment as well as good timing is essential.
When we decide to share our secrets, particularly those that carry shame, we need to find someone we can trust, not only to keep our confidences but also respect our feelings without condemning us. Most of the other parents recruited for this study did not attend PFLAG meetings, and many were unaware of its existence. As a matter of fact, several times during the study, the interviewers referred distressed parents to local chapters. There were other parents who were familiar with PFLAG but shied away from discussing such a distressing and personal matter with a group of strangers. Nevertheless, many of the parent respondents found it enormously helpful to share their painful secret with at least one nonjudgmental, tolerant, informed person. There was something about being able to talk openly to a friend or family member who would not judge them that helped allay their self-blame, grieve their dreams of heterosexuality for their children, and calm their fears.
This mother’s twenty-two-year-old son came out to her two years ago. She recalled feeling deeply sad upon learning that her son was gay, but she also remembered the helpful assistance she received from her friends:
I know I talked to Barbara, and I have another good friend, Ellen. Barbara is my age, Ellen is ten years younger. These are all generations that are very accepting. Ellen has a seven-year-old son, and I remember her saying to me, “It would be fine if my son was gay. That would be fine as long as everything else is good. He is healthy and all.” You know this deep down, but to have someone tell you this is good too.
What seemed to help most was that these confidants demonstrated acceptance, knowledge of gay and lesbian issues, and had open-minded attitudes. As stated by this mother of an eighteen year old who came out two years ago:
I have a real good friend who is ten years younger than me and she’s the one person I would talk to about it and I would be falling to pieces about how she’s going to face prejudice and all. And my friend said, “No, you don’t understand . . . maybe people your age feel that way, but at my age it’s very accepted.” She said it’s not a big deal. So, fortunately, that’s what I did, talk to a friend [who] just had a completely different perspective. That helped a lot.
Mothers weren’t the only ones who found relief in compassionate, positive-thinking friends or family members. This next father, Frank, the previously quoted butcher, talked about how upset he was when he first found out his daughter was a lesbian because he so wished for a “normal” life for her, complete with husband and children. At the time of the interview, which was a year after his daughter Wanda came out to him, he still became tearful thinking back on those difficult times. Frank said that his friend’s problems with his own daughter led him to reflect on his behavior:
I remember one incident . . . she had a friend over the house and I wasn’t very nice, I wasn’t very pleasant. I ruined her evening, let’s put it that way. And that made me feel like shit . . . And then my buddy was over and his daughter got pregnant at seventeen. We were downstairs talking, and I guess he’s a little stricter than me—not as open. I think he’s Puerto Rican [the baby’s father], and he [my buddy] didn’t even like her dating him. Now she’s pregnant, seventeen, in high school, senior year, and I’m giving him advice. “You can’t turn your back on your daughter, you gotta help your daughter.” And I knew it was going to bite me in the ass because here I am giving him advice and I’m turning my back on my daughter through denial. She didn’t kiss me and I didn’t kiss her for a year. I never even realized it, but the time does go. Then one thing led to another, and we did have it out, we had our peace. I told her I would not interfere with her life, and that was about after a year. And then everything seemed better.
When asked if anything else helped him with those difficult initial feelings, he described how telling his nephews, with whom he frequently went fishing, also helped him get over his feelings of sadness and anger:
RESPONDENT: Well, I first told my nephews. It was just like a big weight off your shoulders. And that helped.
INTERVIEWER: How did they react?
RESPONDENT: They had no problem with it.
INTERVIEWER: Why was that so important? Why was it so helpful?
RESPONDENT: Because I respect them and they had to know. I didn’t want them to hear it from someone else . . . I wanted them to hear it from me.
Some of these important people in whom parents confided warned them they risked losing their children if they didn’t accept them, and they gave these parents a kind of tough-love perspective. This next woman was grieving the heterosexual image of her daughter when she first found out, but found solace in speaking to a wise older woman with whom she enjoyed a close relationship:
I talked to her “grandmother” . . . I met this woman in Linden; her daughter started watching my daughter when she was little. I got very close to her and she adopted my daughter like a grandmother. We became very close, and my kids started calling her Grandmother. She has three daughters of her own, they are all hetero. But she is so open-minded—more so than I am. She is a grandmother and she still goes to these go-go bars and things. She said, “You can’t disown her.” I said, “I am not going to disown her, but I said this is wrong.” She would sit and tell me, “No, there is something inside of them—they know. You can’t tell them they are not that way and try to change them. It is not going to happen.” So she helped a lot.
For other parents, the confidant they chose was not necessarily a close friend or family member but a gay person they knew would offer helpful advice. When she first learned her son was gay, this Latina mother of a twenty-one year old was very worried that he would be facing a difficult life marked by discrimination and abuse. However, she recalled how useful it was to talk to someone else she knew was gay:
I did [tell it] to my hairdresser, and one of the things he said to me is the best thing I can do for him is be supportive and let him know I love him. He said to me that is the best thing, especially for teenagers. I remember him telling me it is really good the way I am accepting him and showing him love, because he knew of kids killing themselves. If the parents don’t accept it, that is the worst thing for the kids. So I figured that is what I had to focus myself to do. And then I started losing the fear about what people would say. I made myself just get stronger about it, if anybody would ask me, I would just tell them. I just figure that people would accept it better if they know that you accept it. This kid is still going to school and work; he is not a bad kid. I have friends they have teenagers who have more problems with accidents, driving, drugs, or things. So to me it is just what kind of person you are.
A small minority of parents sought therapy to help them with their feelings about their children’s sexual orientation. Rachel, the previously quoted museum curator who initially struggled with depression, said, “Absolutely I believe people need counseling. Counseling helps. PFLAG helps. . . . Also finding one friend who you have total trust in or your partner if you have one, where you can talk to someone who will be accepting.”
There are many myths we are taught about homosexuality and parents in this study needed to find a way to unlearn them. To that end, parents sought education through PFLAG meetings and talking to others, as described in the previous section. They also pursued information through Internet sources and television programs like the Oprah Winfrey Show. Like the previously quoted respondent who confided in her daughter’s “grandmother,” parents felt it was helpful to learn that sexual orientation was innate and unchangeable. This disabled, unemployed mother of a twenty-five-year-old lesbian experienced self-blame and suffered with symptoms of anxiety and insomnia when her daughter Chrissy came out to her five years ago. It should be noted that Glassy’s uncle molested her when she was a younger child:
I was thinking at the time that it was maybe because her father was never in her life. Or because of what my brother did to her that she turned on men. I was trying to blame it on that. But later I found out that wasn’t it. I used to watch the Rosie O’Donnell Show a lot then. I would see her with her significant other, and Ellen DeGeneres. I love Ellen. She’s great. But I also see that they have certain sides to them that remind me of Chrissy . . . I am like, “OK, this is not going to change, she is going to stay this way . . . they are not going to change, they are going to stick up for what they are, they are this way, and nobody is going to tell them any different.” Ellen came out, and she had this show, I don’t know if you’ve seen it . . . she called this girl a man’s name, and actually it was a girl. And the girl started crying, saying, “Because of you I came out, now I can be happy.” So I am like, OK, Chrissy is more calm, she is happy now. Everybody knows. She doesn’t care any more. She knows this is who she is. She is not going to change.
The son of this next mother came out two years ago. When she first learned her son was gay, she worried for his well-being and she was particularly worried about AIDS. However, through talking with her friends, she came to the realization that being gay was inborn: “I don’t think anybody has a choice about that. I think it’s something that’s innate in you; it’s not something you’re choosing to do. And I felt bad for him that he wasn’t going to have the opportunity to have a child, a biological child really, and he still says he wants to have children . . . because I think he would make a good parent, but I just know it’s going to be tough for him.”
As you may recall from previous chapters, Bob, a stockbroker, experienced profound sadness and grief when he learned his daughter Ellie was gay. He went online, read books, joined PFLAG, and came to the following conclusions, which were helpful to his adjustment:
There are two or three basic facts. Number one was that neither she nor I have any control over her sexual orientation . . . other than hiding it, maybe. And the second fact was if I didn’t continue to love her and care for her, notwithstanding this, that I would lose her. I think that something in her, maybe genetic isn’t the right word, but something in her physical being, whether it is a particular wire or chemical, says, “I am attracted to women as opposed to men.” . . . It was there at birth and had nothing to do with environment or upbringing or anything like that. It happens to be the way she was hardwired, and you either accept it that way or you lose a child.
IS IT REALLY INNATE? When something bad happens to us, in the midst of our pain and suffering there is something comforting in knowing that there was nothing we could have done to avert the misfortune and its consequences. What’s happened is beyond our control; we must accept our fate and move forward. Indeed, most adjusted parents in this study came to the conclusion that their child’s homosexuality was biologically based. Their child was simply born gay, and this could not be changed. This finding is consonant with available research, which suggests that people who believe homosexuality is biologically determined, rather than a choice, are more likely to be tolerant and accepting of gay people (Sheldon et al. 2007). This makes sense, because if people believe that it is impossible to change someone’s sexual orientation then intolerance toward homosexuality would be as illogical and as cruel as mistreatment of someone because of the color of their skin or their left-handedness. However, even though some research findings suggest biological or genetic determinants (Blanchard 2001; Brown et al. 2002; LeVay 1991), the available evidence is far from conclusive (Sheldon et al. 2007).
Conversely, some therapists, religious leaders, and academics believe homosexuality is a psychological or moral choice that can be altered and indeed should be. There are several conservative religious organizations like Exodus International (http://www.exodus-international.org/) and Homosexuals Anonymous (http://www.ha-fs.org/) who claim to have helped people change their sexual orientation through prayer, counseling, or a combination of both. Moreover, there are mental health professionals who practice what are called reparative or conversion therapies designed to make gay people straight. The best-known group of such clinicians is the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH), led by psychologist Joseph Nicolosi. He and his followers claim that gays and lesbians suffer from a damaging blend of childhood trauma, shaming in their families of origin, and chronic unmet needs for love and affection from their same-sex parents. Reparative therapy is designed to help gay clients become heterosexual by working with them to ameliorate the toxic feelings stemming from their damaged childhoods (http://www.narth.com/docs/niconew.html).
Spitzer (2003) has undertaken research with two hundred women and men who underwent reparative therapy and believed themselves to be “cured” of homosexuality, as evidenced by their ability to engage in sexual relations with the opposite sex, marry heterosexually, and conceive children. Many in the psychotherapy community argue vociferously that such “treatment” is unethical because homosexuality is not an illness—rather the “illness” is societal intolerance of sexual and gender behaviors falling outside restrictive societal norms (Jenkins and Johnson 2004; also see the debate in Drescher and Zucker 2006). It is also important to note that, despite reports like Spitzer’s of individuals undergoing reparative therapy and subsequently getting married and conceiving children (considered a “cure”), there is no evidence that this treatment permanently changes people’s attractions to their own sex. In fact, there are many reports of people undergoing this “treatment” or others offered by ex-gay ministries who not only return to homosexuality but have also been traumatized by this so-called therapy (Besen 2003; Jenkins and Johnston 2004).
Challenges to the notion that homosexuality is innate and immutable also come from a vastly different camp. Some progressive, free-thinking scholars are also questioning the assumption that homosexuality is a permanent, central part of an individual’s being. Taking a social constructionist view, they cast doubt on the idea that there is something such as a gay identity that is centered in a person’s sexuality (Chauncey 1994; Jagose 1996; Stone Fish and Harvey 2005). Labeling oneself as gay or having a gay identity is a modern phenomenon in Western society. It is only in the past one hundred years or so that people with sexual attractions toward members of their own sex were denned or denned themselves as lesbian or gay. This label has operated as a way for people to organize their self-concept, identities, and social behavior. Constructionist thinkers argue that without social pressure many of us would be much less rigid about our sexual identities and behaviors and more likely to be sexually active with both sexes (Chauncey 1994; Jagose 1996). We might find that our sexual attractions change over time, based on life experiences, environment, mood, and emotional and physical attractiveness of potential partners. It bears emphasizing that these writers do not argue that same-sex attractions should be altered because they are wrong or sinful; rather, social forces have pushed people to develop primary and static identities as homosexuals, which would not happen if society accepted the full array of sexual expression.
Research and clinical literature suggests that sexual attractions and preferences, at least for lesbians and bisexual women, may change over time (Diamond 1998, 2008; Stone Fish and Harvey 2005). There is also evidence that some adolescents and young adults with same-sex attractions are refusing to label themselves or identify as gay because they do not center their identities on their current sexual feelings and behavior (Savin-Williams 2005).
The issue whether sexual orientation is permanent is made murkier when we consider bisexuality. Generally, sexual orientation is seen as dichotomous: one is either gay or straight. Social pressures have led some people to deny their attractions to members of both sexes. Unfortunately, for a long time, many people, including gays and lesbians, did not believe such a thing as bisexuality existed. Bisexuals were thought to be 1. people whose sex drives were so excessive that it didn’t matter who they had sex with or 2. lesbian and gay people who were trying to avoid stigma by claiming to still be attracted to the opposite sex. Some also believed (and still believe) that bisexuality is a prelude to later announcing one’s true gay sexual orientation, as indicated by the expression “bi now, gay later.” Nevertheless, it is important to recognize that some people who later identify as gay identify themselves initially as bisexual. A small handful of the gay and lesbian youth in this study first told their parents they were bisexual in an effort to “test the waters” and see how parents would react before they told them the truth. However, it is inaccurate to believe that everyone who identifies as bisexual is really gay. Misrepresentations of true bisexual people have no doubt led to misunderstanding within and outside the lesbian and gay community and have perhaps contributed to keeping bisexual persons “in the closet.” Therefore, some are confused when Anne Heche and Julie Cypher, ex-partners of Ellen DeGeneres and Melissa Etheridge respectively, embark on relationships with men. How could sexual orientation not be a choice if these women can switch their sexual and romantic interests?
Furthermore, if it is possible to swap sexual attractions, it is not surprising that parents might wonder if it would be feasible for their lesbian daughters to “change” and settle down with husbands. Having sat through a PFLAG meeting in which a woman announced that her “gay” daughter had begun a relationship with a man, I can tell you this information is disturbing for parents, particularly those who have accepted their child’s sexual orientation based on the assumption that it is unchangeable. Sexual behavior and sexual orientation are complex topics, still shrouded in ambiguity and mystery, and current knowledge barely scratches the surface in terms of explaining sexuality and how it is influenced by social and biological factors.
Nevertheless, it is important to recognize that some (but not all) people who are in same-sex relationships—even some who identify as lesbian or gay—are sexually and at times emotionally attracted to members of both sexes (Diamond 2008). This could also explain why some who undergo reparative or conversion therapy are able to function heterosexually. Questions about the fluidity of sexual orientation are too complex to be settled in this book. However, it is important to be knowledgeable about what we know (and do not know) about bisexuality, social pressure, and ex-gay and reparative therapies in order to be prepared for parents’ questions.
DOES IT REALLY MATTER? If we truly believe that it is acceptable to have sexual and romantic relationships with the same sex, then it shouldn’t matter whether or not sexual orientation is changeable. If it is really OK, we should be as accepting of a person who has a relationship with a man and then a woman as we would of someone who usually eats vanilla ice cream and then decides to start eating pistachio. So what? Sex between two consenting adults, like eating ice cream, should be about pleasure, personal preferences, or expressions of love and affection, not about social rules and definitions.
However, in order to help our clients, we must (with understandable reluctance) leave Utopia and remember that the families who come to us for help live in a world that puts limitations and sanctions on people’s sexual inclinations and behavior and exacts a price for those who don’t follow the rules. Parents and their children need to find ways to cope with living in a world that stigmatizes same-sex attractions and relationships, and we need to understand this if we are to be helpful.
As stated in the preface, the traditional way of thinking of parental adjustment goes something like this: 1. the parents get upset or angry when they learn their kid is gay; 2. their frightened, helpless children, who are only looking for love and acceptance, are victims of their parents’ disapproval; 3. the parents get educated and become enlightened; 4. the parents feel better; 5. their attitudes toward their children improve; 6. the end. However, the findings of this study suggest that this story is too simple. Parental reaction and adjustment to the news that a child is gay or lesbian does not occur in isolation. The child’s personal characteristics and the relationship she maintains with the family play a significant role in parental recovery, suggesting that this is, indeed, a family process.
Many parents (n = 17) mentioned how the personal characteristics of their sons and daughters helped them adjust to the news of their children’s homosexuality. Parents reported that, if the child seemed mature, emotionally stable, happy, and confident, this helped them adjust. Parents who described their daughters and sons as “straight acting,” meaning they did not manifest cross-gendered mannerisms, and indicated that their children were not sexually promiscuous were also likely to report that their adjustment was relatively quick. It is noteworthy that parents whose children’s personal characteristics helped them adjust were the least likely to recall experiencing psychiatric symptoms when they first learned their children were gay.
As you might recall, Mike was the young man who attempted suicide after confessing to a priest in church. His father spoke of how his son’s positive personal characteristics helped him adjust: “Well he is a good kid. So you could not help but like him. . . . If he were a head-banging, acid-dropping criminal, you would have a tougher time with it. . . . He has always been decent, honest, kind. He has moral values and ethics.”
This next father, Allen, an engineer whose wife Janet was the psychiatrist quoted previously, claimed to have almost no problem adjusting to the news that his son Robert was gay. As you might recall, Allen has an older son from a previous marriage who is also gay. When asked why he had no trouble coping with Robert’s sexuality, he proudly described his son’s intelligence, creativity, and accomplishments.
I look forward to you meeting Robert . . . he is a lovely kid, and of all the kids I worry least about him . . . He has just blossomed and has gained this part of what has enabled him to just be who he is. He is just so comfortable in his own skin. He knows who he is and he has just got so much promise. He can do whatever he wants to do and he will do well. He is smart and he is creative. And he is so far ahead of me at that stage in terms of his self-knowledge—it is just incredible. . . . Yes, I am sure that I really wouldn’t have as easy of a time if either of my sons were flamboyantly effeminate. . . . My kids are anything but an embarrassment to me. They are really a source of pride.
Even parents who felt depressed or anxious when they learned their child was gay were helped to feel better by noticing and realizing the special qualities of their children. Frank became depressed and frequently tearful when he first learned that his daughter Wanda was a lesbian. However, he took comfort in the fact that she was honest and respectful: “She’s a good kid. I just couldn’t hold it against her. She never did anything to me. Always up-front. Yes, she didn’t change. [She was] always respectful, helpful, the perfect kid. I’m not saying that because she’s my daughter. If she was a bastard, I’d tell you.”
Clara, the previously quoted devout Catholic who felt alienated at PFLAG, was depressed and anxious upon learning of her twenty-two-year-old daughter Daria’s lesbianism because homosexuality went against her Church’s teachings. However, in the two years since her daughter came out to her, her feelings improved, largely because of her daughter’s qualities.
INTERVIEWER: How, if at all, have your feelings about your daughter’s homosexuality changed over time?
CLARA: Yes, they have lessened. And that has a lot to do with how she is. Not so much me changing my mind with things. It is more Daria. I mean I read all this stuff, and it helps me a little bit, but what helps me the most is to see how she is growing up and to see that she is not a wild child. All the good things she does reassure me. . . . She has demonstrated that she is quite a capable person. She has traveled all around the world by herself and managed that. She has chosen a friend who is the most lovely person I have ever met. All these things say to me that she is on her own path, she is OK, and the signs look good. You know, to choose a friend who is so wonderful . . . looks good to me. I feel better.
If a child, particularly a son, did not appear to have many sexual partners, this also seemed to help. This mother reported:
Well, let’s just say that my son has exhibited a very monogamous way of relating sexually. So he doesn’t have multiple partners; he is always looking to have a committed relationship. He has just started out, but he has indicated that he is a very discriminating person. . . . OK, so the fact that he and his current boyfriend are monogamous and my son seems to be very discriminating would lead me to believe that they are going to be very responsible sexual adults. . . . We are surrounded by this conversation that gays are promiscuous, and you can’t be in the world and hear it and not be influenced by it. But they [my son and his partner] have not exhibited that at all.
This is not to say that parents with well-adjusted, responsible “straight-acting” children did not still harbor concerns for them. This father, a construction worker, described his twenty-one-year-old daughter, who had come out three years ago:
Well, she seems to get along with just about anybody. She has her head on straight, and I think she is a mature individual. I listen to her when we do have conversations, and everything makes a lot of sense. She does talk to me about her relationships. She says she doesn’t want to get really serious right now. I think that is mature the way she does that. That makes me feel a little better as far as her interaction with other people. How it is going to be in the business world is another story. I just don’t know how that will be.
At the time of the interview, this next mother’s eyes still welled up when she talked about how she felt three years ago when she first learned that her daughter was gay. During that period, she became depressed and began a course of Prozac. Nevertheless, her affection for her daughter and her desire to assist her helped this mother adjust:
RESPONDENT: She’s adorable. It’s hard criticize her or not to love her. If I feel bad, she feels bad. And it’s hard to do that to her.
INTERVIEWER: OK. So, you try to feel better in some ways for her sake?
RESPONDENT: Perhaps. I don’t do it consciously. But now I’m seeing that that might be.
Herdt and Koff (2000) found that if children seemed contented and adjusted when they came out, parents felt reassured, and the same was found in this study. This makes sense, whereby if one’s gay or lesbian child seems happy, this contradicts the idea that lesbians and gays live sad, desperate, lonely lives in which they are constantly dodging persecution. This mother, who initially experienced pangs of sadness over the loss of a “normal” life for her son, reported: “I think his personality is very outgoing and he’s charming and he can schmooze well and he seems comfortable with himself most of the time. And so the fact that he wasn’t totally ripped apart by this made it easier for me. Had he been really sad about it, it would have made me, of course, sad.”
Thus, seeing their children as likeable, adjusted, and happy and not engaging in stereotypical behaviors seemed to help parents adjust. It must be kept in mind that these parents were learning of their children’s sexuality when they were becoming increasingly independent and autonomous. Therefore it is likely that if parents perceived their children as bright and confident and capable of handling the world, they were reassured that their children would be OK and, as a result, felt somewhat less troubled by their homosexuality.
It is possible that parents who felt guilt, grief, and worry but acknowledged their children were happy and healthy faced a kind of cognitive dissonance (Festinger 1962) in which they carried two contradictory perspectives: “Oh my God! Being gay is terrible—but my child seems happy.” As stated in chapter 3, when people behave or experience something that is at odds with what they know or believe, they will change their way of thinking to decrease the inconsistency or dissonance. Needing to find a way to resolve the contradiction of a happy gay child may have pushed parents forward in terms of coping and adjusting. A means of reconciling the dissonance might be thinking that “if my kid is happy, how bad can it be?”
This does not mean that resolving the contradiction between their feelings and what they observed was a smooth process, or that parents did not still harbor worries for their children’s futures. As a matter of fact, parental fears and worries seemed to persist no matter how adjusted and accepting parents eventually became. As we shall see later in this chapter, children’s high-risk or cross-gendered behavior could aggravate parents’ fears that their children would be targeted for mistreatment.
Another major factor contributing to the parents’ adjustment was that they perceived improvement in their relationships with their children following the family discovery phase. As described in the previous chapter, a small number of families experienced parent-child relationship improvements immediately after the parents found out. However, close to a third of the parents described how, after a period of strain and distance, parent-child relationships improved, and this improvement was the primary factor that helped them adjust to the news that their daughter or son was gay. Once again, these enhanced family relationships seemed to have contributed to a cognitive dissonance for the parents in this study (“I hate that my child is gay! How awful!—But . . . not only does my child seem happier—our relationship is better!”), and the effort to reconcile this contradiction seemed to help parents move toward adjustment.
To further clarify what contributed to the relationships improving, it is important to remember how, during the family sensitization and family discovery periods, many of the children distanced to protect themselves. Speaking in structural terms, family subsystem boundaries became thicker, more rigid, and impermeable as distressed children distanced from their families, resulting in strained parent-child relationships. Then, burdened by the stress of hiding, isolation, peer harassment, difficulties in relationships with romantic partners, or worries for the future, children felt enormous pressure—enough to risk breaching this assumed boundary to come out. Like pent-up steam escaping from a valve, the youth were relieved of the pressure of having to hide, and grateful not to be rejected and thrown out of their homes, even if parents were clearly not happy with the news.
Perhaps all of us know what it feels like when someone with whom we have been close suddenly, and without explanation, distances from us. We might feel confused, insecure, even a little paranoid, thinking, “What have I done?” “Does this person hate me now?” When we learn that the strain had nothing to do with us, we feel relieved.
Now imagine what it feels like when the person who previously distanced from us starts demonstrating his gratitude for having us in his life. Once they got used to the idea that their parents knew their secret, and also realized they weren’t going to be rejected, many of the children felt relieved, and this in turn led some to interact with their parents in more positive ways. For parents who were struggling, such interaction must have been like the spring sun melting a late winter snow. Even if they were feeling guilty and mournful and had distanced from their children right after the discovery, it must have been difficult to resist a newly appreciative child who had once been distant and irritable. Thus it makes sense that they began to interact more amicably with their children. Following the distancing and parental upset of the family discovery period, this parental warmth might have signaled acceptance—at least a little bit—of the child, who, in a circular pattern, responded with even more appreciation, which encouraged more positive parental response and so on.
Cynthia, an interior designer, initially felt depressed and struggled with self-blame when she learned her son Kenneth was gay several years ago. She recalled that, in the middle of his adolescence and before he came out, Kenneth grew distant and at times antagonistic. When asked what helped her adjust, Cynthia said talking to a gay friend allowed her to understand that her son’s sexual orientation was not her fault. She also spoke of how the improved parent-child interaction in the months following her son’s disclosure also helped her adjust to her son’s sexual orientation. “He went back to his old self . . . where he was funny again, and he would call me and we would laugh and cut up and act silly. And we would talk again . . . His help was that he was very understanding and would talk to me when I asked questions. That all helped.”
Kenneth, twenty-three years old, agreed that the relationship with his mother improved a couple of months after he came out, and, like many of the young respondents in this study, he perceived that his parents became more interested in his life:
I think I must have felt liberated. Just because, finally, our relationship was open again, I wasn’t really hiding anything else . . . I was returning to the relationship that I had before with my mother where we could talk about anything . . . I think things got better, our relationship was open. Like she wanted to know if my friend Jonathan and I were dating. . . . So now she could know things that she didn’t know before.
Susan, a previously quoted mother, was devastated when she learned a year prior to our interview that her nineteen-year-old son Mitch was gay. When asked what helped her adjust, she offered: “The few months leading up to before we found out he was gay he was not a nice person. He was not pleasant to be around. He had a nasty streak. Then, once he told us he was gay, he went back to being this wonderful person. PFLAG also helped. Also meeting you [the interviewer—who spoke at a recent PFLAG meeting] helped.”
Her son Mitch, it may be recalled, described his relationship with his mother as somewhat distant immediately after he came out. However, he would agree that his relationship with his mother became stronger once she got over the initial crisis of learning he was gay. He stated, “We are now pretty close . . . Well, yeah, because prior to coming out it was pretty strong. Coming out it was awful and also right after that. Where we are now is pretty good. So, yeah, it has fluctuated.”
Tara, the eighteen-year-old chemistry student whose father was also a chemist, recalled her relationship with her mother and father right after coming out to them two years earlier: “It was still bad mostly. We didn’t talk at all. Not until a couple of years, like two years ago, that I actually could sit down and have a conversation with my mother. . . . We would just get into fights.” Her mother Dora had a terrible time with grief and depression immediately after she found out about Tara; she “felt as if my daughter had died.” Now, two years after coming out, her daughter admitted, “Yes. My relationship with my mother is so wonderful. I can talk to her about anything and she’ll be understanding about it. And I think that was like the one big hurdle I needed to get over.” When asked what if anything helped her adjust, Dora stated, “Just time, that’s all. Time and the fact that we got closer. I think once that barrier was down . . . then she became a lot more open. We get along a lot better now.”
Her father Luke remembered how, immediately after his daughter came out, “I withdrew from her and I just did not want to even think about it. No discussion . . . I didn’t want to answer questions. I just wanted to pretend it wasn’t happening.” Tara remembered it the same way. “He withdrew. I probably withdrew even more and I’m sure he did as well.” And now, as she describes her relationship with her father, “It’s gotten much better. . . . Oh, God, yes. I mean, it’s much more comfortable to talk to him about almost anything now.” Luke would agree: “I’d have to say we’re closer. . . . We joke around more now than we ever did.”
This next mother, Rena, recalled feeling depressed and experiencing frequent crying jags after she found out her daughter Lily was a lesbian about eight months before their interview. She also described how tearful and afraid her daughter was to tell her she was gay. After a difficult initial few weeks, this mother could say that she and her daughter had grown closer because Lily seemed happier and this helped Rena adjust.
I got more involved with her. I’d seen her walking around the house and laughing a couple of times. She used to do that when she was little, like she would be thinking about something funny and she would laugh out loud. I hadn’t seen her giggle or laugh in a while . . . a long time, I will say a couple of years. But, by herself, she just seemed more at peace with herself. She even made a remark to me that we are paying the price for her having some peace of mind. That made me feel bad. I said, “I don’t feel like that.”
Rocky, Rena’s husband and Lily’s father, stated:
All I can tell you is, since she told us—at least initially—she was much happier. And she does look much better. She goes and gets her hair done in a nice butch cut, she looks a little gayer. And her face looks a little nicer, takes care of her skin better. She wears nicer outfits. I think initially it was also she felt good about it too, telling us. . . . Believe it or not, I think we are a little closer. I told you, she was hard to hug, I think I’ve hugged her, physically touched her more, since she told us. I think we are both relieved, and maybe Daddy is a little bit more thinking that she needs it. . . . [now] yes, she lets me do it [hug her]. It was obvious that she was an unhappy child.
Remember Jennifer, introduced in chapter 4, who was so appalled and embarrassed when her mother Martha found her diary and discovered she was gay, even though her mother expressed nothing but support and acceptance? A few months after Martha found out, Jennifer got used to the idea that her mother knew, and the relationship between them improved to the extent that Jennifer now said, “There is no hiding, no secrets. We can talk about anything. ‘Cause she knows my girlfriend and she knows a lot about me and my lifestyle. I don’t have to hide anything.”
An additional factor that may have contributed to this type of reciprocity in the family was that some children saw their parents working hard to understand their sexual orientations. Children were grateful to see parents making an effort, which in turn led them to feel and act positively toward their parents. Lily, whose mother and father were quoted earlier in this chapter, remarked that, even though there was still some strain, things were better since she had come out, and she attributed the improvement to her mother’s efforts, for which she was appreciative:
I still feel that there is a lot about me that she doesn’t get, she doesn’t know. But we are trying, she is trying, so I’ll give her that. She kind of has all these ideas that you need to get through. I mean she was always there for me, but my life was never really like the topic of conversation. Now my life is the topic of conversation, so it is extra attention. I feel like I am back in junior high again where the parents are over you, kind of, watching everything you do, asking questions. But it is a good thing, because they need to get to know me a little bit better.
Mitch recognized and was grateful for his mother’s attempts to become more informed:
Yes. At first, it made it harder to talk . . . both of us found it harder to talk to each other. I would say things were bad up until like three months ago when my mom finally started, like, reading up on homosexuality and educating herself by, like, going to the library and reading everything she possibly could while trying to go to work and being a mom. Then I started to realize, “Wow, she really is trying.” And things started to get better. . . . We had a little bit of fighting but overall we definitely strengthened our relationship if not exceeded the prior expectations.
This next mother felt as if her daughter had died when she told her she was gay two years ago, but described how the relationship improvement that followed helped her cope and become less distressed: “Because she’s more open to me. She talks to me more . . . Because I accepted her for what she was. I mean, she thought I wasn’t going to accept her, and I did, and she talks to me more about it, about herself and everything. She’s more open to me.” Her daughter agreed:
And I don’t know how to explain it, but that’s when my relationship with my mom started growing a little bit more. Things started, I guess, blossoming, in a sense. She just wanted to know what was going on, and I told her. She was like, “Well, you know, if you ever want to, like, go walking around in the city with me . . . go in that little gay area you guys call the Village, we can . . . “—she’s aware of this stuff. And I’m like, “Sure.” She’s like, “You know, you could always go with me into the city because I don’t know if you met any friends that are gay yet.” I’m like, “Oh, my God!”
Like dancers in a ballet, family members do not act in isolation; their behaviors are connected and coordinated. Based on these reports, it is possible to see how circular interactions created relationship improvements that, in turn, helped parents feel better. More specifically, children felt relief and some level of acceptance from their parents, even if it was a tiny bit, and their moods lightened. This was reflected in a new warmth and gratitude toward their fathers and mothers. Parents, even if they were distressed, were happy to see their children feeling better. They communicated their pleasure to their children, and this also improved their relationships, which again helped parents begin to feel a bit better about their children’s homosexuality.
This pattern was further enhanced when children saw that their parents were trying to learn and understand more about lesbian and gay people. This led children to have better attitudes toward their parents, which then must have resulted in positive responses from their parents and improved parent-child relationships, and so on. Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Family therapists, trained to think systemically, usually don’t care as long as the complementary patterns are understood and—when healthy and helpful—encouraged and amplified.
It is no mistake that few fathers were mentioned in the previous section. One reason for the disparity is that not many fathers participated in this study. Another was that fathers and their children were less likely than mothers and children to report that parental adjustment was enhanced by improved family relationships. I have emphasized that the main action in most of these families occurred between mothers and children, and this is in line with how, in our society, the emotional, interactive components of parenting are relegated to mothers. In a complementary pattern, children and their mothers interacted while fathers remained on the sidelines. An exception to this was when an emotional void left by disapproving mothers was filled by some fathers, as in the cases of Tony and Joe, also Bob and Ellie described in chapter 3. When asked what helped him adjust to the news that his son Tony was gay, Joe recalled feeling gratitude, which fueled a reciprocal pattern of positive feelings and interactions between him and his son. Bob also described how his improving relationship with his daughter Ellie helped him adjust. Although there was no such case in this research, I recently was consulted by a therapist about a family in which the father had been more accepting of his son’s sexual orientation than the mother, but, out of loyalty to his wife, the father communicated nothing but disapproval. This couple would refuse to talk to their son about his homosexuality and would not allow him to bring his partner home to join the family for holidays. Tragically, the mother died suddenly when the young man was in his early thirties. However, almost immediately following her death, the father began to reach out to the son’s partner, inviting him to family events including the family’s first Christmas after the mother’s death. Although this is only one case, it demonstrates yet another way fathers might respond to disapproval, distance, and tension between a mother and her child.
Another individual case is also revealing. During the course of this study, a woman called to talk about the research. She said that after her twenty-one-year-old daughter came out to her she threw her out of the house. She spoke of how difficult a child her daughter had been to raise, how bitterly the two fought during the daughter’s childhood. Her daughter experienced academic and behavioral problems through much of her school career. During adolescence her daughter used and sold cocaine, frequently ran away from home, and was arrested several times. This mother angrily explained that her daughter’s coming out to her as a lesbian was the last straw—she had had enough! She also stated that she might have been able to accept her daughter if she had been a well-behaved, well-adjusted child all along, but “This was just too much.”
Before ending the call, I expressed the hope that someday this woman and her daughter would reunite and enjoy the type of relationship experienced by many of the parents in this study. But, since this woman did not give me her contact information, I will never know if she and her daughter ever experienced or will experience such a reunion. Nevertheless, this unfortunately negative case example is further evidence that who the child is and the relationship she has with the parent can play a significant role, positive or negative, in the parent’s adjustment.
When it came to children’s influence on their parents’ adjustment, there was good news and not so good news. As the report of this last mother suggests, not only could children be helpful to their parent’s adjustment, they could also act in ways that might impede it.
The norms governing behavior and appearances in our society are so firmly entrenched that their violation can be deeply troubling. We are uncomfortable with short-haired women with deep voices who wear masculine clothing and work in construction. We are perhaps even more disturbed by males who sway their hips when they walk and wear cosmetics and feminine clothing. It is particularly upsetting for parents to see such behaviors in their children.
A few words are in order regarding the definition of cross-gendered behavior. First of all, it is common but incorrect to confound homosexuality and transgenderism. Even though many gays and lesbians manifest cross-gendered behavior and interests, transgender persons believe there is a mismatch between their physical sex and psychological gender. Transgender does not in any way indicate a person’s sexual orientation: trans people can be heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual. Thus it is important to recognize that transgenderism and homosexuality are separate and distinctly different phenomena.
Moreover, it is difficult to consistently define feminine and masculine behavior and define what constitutes effeminate mannerisms in a boy or what makes a girl a “tomboy.” Femininity and masculinity tend to be subjective and, like beauty, are in the eyes of the beholder. Different people’s eyes see different things, depending on their individual perspectives, which can be informed by their ethnicity and even the decades in which they were raised. Nevertheless, gender scholars agree that we expect men and women to act according to their prescribed roles and we become uncomfortable when people step outside them (Coltrane and Adams 2008; Kimmel 2004; Sandnabba and Ahlberg 1999).
Tomboy behavior in girls is generally considered acceptable, even charming, until puberty, and then such girls are pressured by parents and peers to abandon masculine pursuits such as climbing trees, rough contact sports, and dressing like a boy. Feminine or “sissy” behavior in boys is never acceptable, not even when boys are young (Bergling 2001). Such behavior invites stigma whereby it is perceived to be an indication of future homosexuality as well as a repudiation of maleness, which is seen as normal, healthy, and strong in contrast to what is perceived by many to be the dreaded alternative—homosexual—which signifies weakness, depravity, and shame.
It is important to recognize that there are indigenous cultures in which cross-gendered behaviors are respected or even revered as indications of intellectual and spiritual superiority (Carrier 1995; Gilley 2006; Herdt 1999). For certain Native American tribes, a man who acts like a woman or a woman with manly characteristics is seen as having “two spirits.” Such persons are believed to be blessed by God, imbued with mystical holy powers (Gilley 2006). This is clearly not the case in Western cultures.
Like most of us, the parents who participated in this study were raised to believe that there are clear distinctions between the ways men and women were meant to act, and this may have contributed to the discomfort they felt when they observed cross-gendered behavior in their daughters, sons, and friends. As mentioned earlier, if children did not act in ways that made them recognizable as gay or lesbian, this seemed to assist and enhance parental adjustment. However, the converse was also true: parental adjustment was hindered if children behaved or groomed themselves in ways that were cross-gendered and corresponded to the prevailing stereotypes. Understandably, many of the parents felt that their children who chose to appear identifiably gay were putting themselves in harm’s way. As a result, parents suffered a vicarious courtesy stigma, anticipating and feeling the suffering their children would experience at the hands of others.
When asked what, if anything, got in the way of her adjusting to the news that her daughter was a lesbian, this mother, who herself was a teacher, worried that her daughter would be assaulted or discriminated against because of her sexual orientation. “I fear for her financially. And I fear for the discrimination of others who look at her and her partner and go, ‘You two are so gross. We have to blot you off the face of the earth.’” She had difficulty with her daughter’s plain clothing, which she perceived to be unfeminine, and, like many parents of lesbians in this study, she was particularly disturbed by her daughter’s adopted hairstyle. “I hate her ugly clothes. The hair she has grown out a little, but when she shaves it off completely it’s hard.”
Like many parents, this next father, a successful attorney, had practical concerns regarding his daughter’s physical appearance: “The only thing that [my wife] and I both talked about was that, when Ally goes for a job, she is probably going to have to let her hair grow a little bit. She has a short haircut . . . and she’ll probably have to dress a little bit more feminine for the job interview.”
All the young people in this study were asked what, if anything, they did that impeded their parents’ adjustment. Like most of the youth, Ally did not report that her appearance was in any way an obstacle to her parents’ acceptance. Instead she believed that having her girlfriends sleep over was what made her parents uncomfortable.
For parents of gay men, if their sons acted feminine, this got in the way of their adjustment because they worried their boys would be targets of discrimination and harassment. They correctly understood that, among certain segments of our society, presenting oneself as a feminine man is like waving a red flag in front of an angry bull. In June 2006, Kevin Aviance, a gay performance artist who sported a feminine appearance, was brutally beaten on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, a neighborhood that is usually quite tolerant of LGBT persons.
Cynthia, the previously quoted widowed mother of Kenneth, described elsewhere in her interview that her adjustment to her son’s homosexuality was helped by the improved communication and closeness between them after he came out. However, when asked if there was anything that got in the way of her acceptance, she admitted that his mannerisms troubled her: “His flamboyancy is hindering because I do get concerned about that sometimes. It seems to me that he is saying out loud, ‘Somebody bother me!’ You know how heterosexuals are so mean—some of them are horrible—and when you act flamboyant, to me you are just saying, ‘Here I am.’ And that worries me.”
As in previous examples, her son, Kenneth had no idea that his appearance was an issue for his mother. It is curious that young gay respondents were not fully aware that their behavior and mannerisms could interfere with their parents’ acceptance. There are several possible explanations for this. First of all, it could be once again that parents were protecting their children from their own fears. Parents might be aware that calling attention to such behavior in their children might resemble the harassment lesbians and gays experience in general society, and they didn’t want to replicate it in their interactions with their children. A parent respondent in this study reported that she did not talk to her son about his effeminate behaviors: “I could have said something, but I knew it would hurt him.”
A second explanation is that the children were unaware or did not want to recognize that there might be things they did to contribute to their parents’ adjustment difficulties. This next mother threw her twenty-two-year-old daughter out of the house for a few days after she got what her mother perceived to be a particularly masculine haircut. Though the daughter currently lives back home, this mother is still very much disturbed by her clothing and hairstyle choices. It should be noted that, when I interviewed this mother, I sported obviously bleached-blond hair. This is not necessarily a gay hairstyle, but it is certainly considered untraditional and attention grabbing. Such a look could be a disturbing reminder to nervous parents of gay children (as it was to mine!) that their child was “out of the mainstream.”
Well, her hair right now is almost precisely like yours, with the bleaching, everything. And it’s, I mean I don’t like it at all. . . . But sometimes, she’s gotten it cut, like, really close. You know? Like really close haircuts that I really couldn’t handle. I made her wear a hat for a while, I mean—it’s just too in my face. And some clothing . . . she basically only wears male clothing.
Her daughter was aware that her mother was bothered by her hair and clothing, but did not report that this got in the way of either parent’s adjustment, despite the fact that she had been temporarily ejected from the home after she got a buzz cut.
Parents who did not perceive their children as presenting themselves in a cross-gendered manner might be disturbed by such behavior in their children’s friends. For example, even if a son was not particularly feminine, if he associated with effeminate males this could make a parent uncomfortable. Susan, the previously quoted mother of a gay man, Mitch, explained her discomfort around one of her son’s friends: “I found [one of his boyfriends] to be feminine. Mitchell said that he didn’t think he was, but I even said to him, ‘I think this young man is kind of feminine, Mitch. I don’t care if you are homosexual or not, I just like men who look like men and act like men.’”
Other parents felt grateful that their sons were not effeminate, perhaps because such behavior in their children would make the parents themselves targets of stigma. Allen, the previously quoted father with two gay sons, felt lucky that his sons did not act feminine, but he talked about how shameful it must be if parents had an effeminate son:
I am sure that I really wouldn’t have as easy of a time if either of my sons were flamboyantly effeminate. My kids are anything but an embarrassment to me. They are really a source of pride. I think it takes a remarkable parent to really be able to be so accepting when the kids do stuff [like]that . . . it is a call for attention I think on their part. It’s hard for me to imagine that a kid is not aware that there are ramifications for their family when they do this and to be indifferent about it. . . . They must realize the way their parents might be affected by their own behavior. . . . And the fact is that my kids made it incredibly easy for me because they never did present themselves that way.
Janet, his wife, and the mother of the younger gay son, laughingly stated, “Once you have accepted that your child is gay then you want them to be gay but act straight . . . have a partner . . . adopt children. . . . It is all right if he is gay—just don’t really act gay.”
For parents, a child who grows into a happy, independent, successful adult is proof of a job well-done. It might be bittersweet to watch adult children leave the nest, but few American parents wish for the alternative. A child whose anxiety and depression interferes with his ability to hold a job or stay in school is a source of deep worry for a parent. In this study, parents’ feelings about their children’s homosexuality hinged on how well their children were doing when they found out.
Just as parents were reassured that being gay might not be so bad if their children seemed happy and confident, if their daughters or sons abused drugs or alcohol or suffered from depression or anxiety that interfered with their ability to attend school, work, or establish an autonomous social life, the parents’ adjustment was impeded. They attributed such problems to their child’s struggle with their homosexuality, and, more often than not, they were correct. Young respondents who were experiencing developmental problems had suffered the effects of stigmatization, harassment, and abuse by peers. These cases demonstrate how such experiences can affect children emotionally to the extent that they could develop debilitating emotional problems as adults. Parents perceived these difficulties as directly related to their children’s homosexuality and, therefore, they interfered with their own ability to adjust as they continued to worry for their children.
Marie, the mother from Haiti, expressed a great deal of anxiety over her twenty-year-old son Chauncey’s deep depression. When she first found out her son was gay, her anxiety escalated to the point where her blood pressure became dangerously high. At the time of our interview, one year after her son came out to her, she was struggling with insomnia, weight loss, and chronic anxiety out of concern for her son as well as guilt. She fretted that her son was gay because she left his father and raised him as a single parent.
The family lived in a section of New York City that is heavily populated by West Indian people who Marie and Chauncey described as extremely homophobic, harassing Chauncey continually since childhood. The men in their community noticed Chauncey’s effeminate behavior and tight clothing, which contrasted with the oversized hip-hop styles usually worn in the neighborhood. They would yell “batty boy,” an antigay slur used by West Indians, and kick and punch Chauncey when he walked down the street. Chauncey attributed his depression to this ongoing harassment.
Since graduating from high school, Chauncey had dropped out of two college programs, failed to hold a job, and was periodically suicidal. During their interviews, he and his mother were given referrals for low-cost, gay-friendly mental health services, and I contacted him several times afterward to persuade him to follow through. His mother loved and supported her son and clearly would not reject him because he was gay:
He thought that I would disown him. But, when he told me, I said, “OK. Now I understand that you tell me the truth. Because I am your mother I will never hate you for that. This is your life, this is what you choose. . . . So instead of hating you, I have to support you.” But, for me, no matter what I try to do to help him out, it doesn’t work.
She attributed his problems to his struggles with his sexual orientation, for which she felt to blame and therefore, understandably, had a difficult time accepting.
Remember Adele’s son Jay, who developed school phobia and a serious case of colitis when he was harassed by his peers? At age nineteen he came out to his mother and then, two years later, dropped out of college because he was experiencing a debilitating depression. At the time of the interview he was unemployed and living at home, not doing much of anything. Even though Adele supported Jay and was an active member of the local PFLAG chapter, she saw his homosexuality as the primary cause for his problems. When asked what, if anything, about her son helped or hindered her adjustment to Jay’s homosexuality, Adele replied, “Well I think his medical issues contribute to my worry. Both the depression and the irritable bowl because they are so closely tied together.”
A third young man, Harry, who, at fifteen had been sneaking out of the home in the middle of the night to meet men, was twenty years old at the time of our interview. He recalled how he developed school phobia in the sixth grade as a result of being bullied by other kids who perceived him to be feminine. His parents watched helplessly as their intelligent, promising son dropped out of high school at seventeen and moved into the home of a fifty-year-old man, which was where he was living when I interviewed him.
Ironically, living with this older man seemed to help Harry settle down. With his encouragement and support, Harry had enrolled in a local community college, and, by the time of our interview, he had successfully completed his first year. Nevertheless, shortly before her interview, his mother found pornographic pictures of her son posted online, and her anguish became almost intolerable. Though she loved her son deeply and would never reject him, she believed his homosexuality was at the root of his problems.
When a troubled person is a member of an oppressed minority, it is not easy to untangle the extent to which her difficulties are the result of oppression or other causes such as childhood trauma, family background, and genetics. In this study, young respondents might still experience emotional and developmental problems whose causes would not necessarily be related to sexual orientation, but would incite parental worry that could, in turn, interfere with parental adjustment. This mother of a twenty-four-year-old lesbian college student was extremely concerned about her daughter’s excessive drinking:
RESPONDENT: She is not a happy person. She tells me she is completely happy, and she is relating this to her sexuality. “I am completely happy, Mom.” But to me she is not. She is depressed. She has gained a lot of weight. I told her, “You know I’ve always had a weight problem myself. I understand it. I feel I can talk to you because I’ve been there.” I don’t put her down, but anything I say she takes personally. She knows the alcohol puts weight on, but after she drinks she will go and eat junk. So this is another issue. . . . But she is busy telling me how happy she is, but yet she is not. She is eating the same way I do when I get depressed or anxious. She would like to think she has it all figured out and everything is perfect, but it is not. She doesn’t want to admit that . . .
INTERVIEWER: And this all gets in the way of you adjusting to the idea that she is lesbian?
RESPONDENT: Yeah, but I definitely have more fears about her drinking than anything. But my fears of her going out to these bars and people waiting for them—that is gay-related. That hasn’t changed since I found out. I like her friends, too, [so] I worry about all of them.
For other parents, it was less clear that their children’s problems were related to being gay or not. Yet they still worried for children who seemed to be struggling with becoming independent from their families. Charlotte, the mother of M. C., the previously quoted twenty-five-year-old gay man who, as a child, enjoyed playing Scrabble and watching political shows with her, worried about her son’s isolation and loneliness:
I’m very concerned about the loneliness. He has no friends, other than the one friend, who is not gay, and that is the young man we’ve spoken of. He works, he comes home, he lives with us [his parents] here. I guess this is his safe haven . . . his hideout. Initially, when he came back home, it was economics. But I could see now it’s serving other purposes and I don’t know whether that’s good for him or what.
I am very much concerned about the fact that he is not within a sphere where he’s out to people. I mean he’s out to his friend. He told one of his cousins. The one he thought would be accepting and is. He hasn’t told the others. He told my sister because he’s crazy about her and loves her dearly. He wanted her to know and so he came out to her. But he doesn’t have any gay friends. He doesn’t move in a circle where he’s ever going to meet anybody. And I’m very concerned about that.
I feel we’re getting older; we’re not always going to be here for him. He’s got to be out there making a life for himself. Those are my concerns. His future, his friendships, of course I would like him to find someone that will care for him about whom he could care for and set up a home.
He’s very family oriented. That’s what he wants, I’m sure. He would want children. I told you, the day he told me, he cried because he saw that was probably the one thing he never would have. But, to personalize it, I’m just concerned about him and I see him very lonely. And I just wish something would happen to help him change that.
Some parents described worries and concerns they had for their children that they did not perceive to be at all related to their homosexuality. As stated by this mother of a nineteen-year-old lesbian: “She does all these weird things. She pierced her tongue, pierced her nose. The tattoos that she has—they don’t bother me in the least. My husband doesn’t like them, but I don’t mind tattoos. It is the piercing . . . in the nose and the tongue. But it’s done. But that could have been anybody, that didn’t have anything to do with the fact that she is a lesbian.” However, other parents were not always clear which problems were gay-related and which weren’t. When asked what if anything about her son helped or impeded her adjustment, this mother of a nineteen-year-old gay man responded:
Impeded—yeah because he has had some crazy college behavior . . . staying out all night and drinking . . . he started smoking cigarettes. I am not happy about any of those things. But that, I’m thinking, well his health is going to overcome the cigarette smoking maybe. He did some crazy things. He took some diet pills because he just can’t be thin enough. And that impedes everything because I would think, “Is he just doing that because he is a crazy nineteen year old or is he doing that because he is a homosexual male?” And I would confuse the two. I don’t know. He was nineteen before he started smoking cigarettes. So then I am like, “Well, do all gay men smoke cigarettes?” I don’t know (laughing), but that could be stuff that would just piss me off no matter what . . . because of where he is in his developmental stage.
It is interesting to note that none of the children of these parents was aware that their own behaviors interfered with their parents’ ability to adjust to their homosexuality. Once again, it is possible that protective boundaries, discussed in chapter 4, were at work whereby parents shielded their children from worries about their behavior in an effort to protect them or at least not add to the burdens the children were coping with, and gay and lesbian respondents may have been self-protectively shielding themselves from fully acknowledging their parents’ feelings. Add to this mix the idea that, in general, adolescents and young adults who are coping with the many challenges and rewards of becoming their own persons and developing their own identities are notoriously self-involved. Putting all this together, it is perhaps easy to see how children were so preoccupied with their own lives and difficulties that they were not always aware of their parents’ distress over them.
Anyone who has lived through the beginning of the AIDS epidemic in the U.S. knows the terrifying damage it has wrought, especially in the gay male community. Right before our eyes, men in their prime began to waste away and die as the rest of the world watched helplessly. Artists, movie stars, authors, young men, married men, eventually even women and children—it seemed no group was spared. Thanks to developments in pharmacology, HIV is no longer an immediate death sentence. However, AIDS remains a serious and eventually fatal disease, and it is particularly disturbing that, despite years of ambitious education and prevention efforts, young men who have sex with men (MSM) are still getting HIV at alarming rates.
Among a large multicultural sample of young gay men followed from 2001–2004, it was found that HIV diagnosis rates were increasing 14 percent per year for the entire sample and 23.5 percent for African American youth (Hall et al. 2007). In another recent large-scale survey, over half a sample of 3,492 young MSM aged fifteen to twenty-two reported engaging in unprotected anal intercourse (Celentano et al. 2006). So it is no small wonder that almost all of the parents of the thirty gay men who were interviewed for this study were particularly worried that their sons might contract HIV, and this fear got in the way of adjusting to the news of their sons’ sexual orientation. These fears were heightened if they knew their sons engaged in sexual activity with multiple sexual partners.
When asked what, if anything, impeded her adjustment to her son’s homosexuality, this African American mother who worked as a clerk in an urban hospital responded: “In the hospital that I work at, most of our patients are HIV positive. So it is something I am very aware of and I worry about.” This next mother was a social worker, and she confessed:
AIDS scares me and I’ve talked to him many times about that and about being careful about what he’s doing, and not only just about AIDS, but any sexually transmitted disease. I know that he’s also twenty-three, and, whether you’re homosexual or heterosexual, you’re going to be more exposed to something than you would if you were older or married or whatever, so that is something that worried me.
This next Latina mother also expressed her fears:
I think he is promiscuous. . . . I am afraid of him getting AIDS. . . . He wants to have a close relationship but he doesn’t seem to mind having these casual relationships until that happens. I don’t think there is such a thing as safe sex unless you are having sex with someone who you know to be HIV negative. And there are a few other diseases floating around too. So I worry a lot about that.
Her son, like most of the boys in this study, was aware of his mother’s fear of AIDS and the role her anxiety played in her feelings about his sexual orientation. Unlike most of the young respondents, he understood his mother’s grief:
She was crying because she lost the image of what I was going to be like when I grew up . . . an image that she had been harboring for fourteen years . . . and that I might not have kids. Even though, of course, things are different now . . . but, you know . . . no grandkids, probably going to die of AIDS—that’s what she was thinking.
This next African American mother struggled with feelings of guilt and anxiety when she learned her son was gay. Like many parents of gay men, she was aware of the stereotype that they are sexually promiscuous. At the time her son came out to her, she was concerned that he was sexually active with too many men and was perhaps even prostituting himself. When her son began a serious relationship with one man, it helped to quell her fears:
When he told me he was gay, there were no disappointments, just worries. I was, very worried that he would be raped or would get a disease or he was selling his body, for all I knew. I was worried, because he was getting presents and money and that was the only thing that had me worried. . . . Now, he has one boyfriend instead often. And I am happy he is going back to school to get his GED.
Her son knew that his mother had concerns for his lifestyle and also recognized that having one stable boyfriend helped his mother feel better:
Well, yeah, I used to leave the house with different dudes and stuff. I guess it would get her to think being gay was a bad idea. That made her approve even less. I guess she is dealing with it. I don’t know for sure, but I am guessing she is dealing with it for the simple fact that now she approves of my boyfriend. I can see that she likes him.
In over half of the families in this study, children and parents agreed on the factors that contributed to parental adjustment. The beneficial effects of PFLAG meetings were apparent not only to parents but also their children, many of whom recommended PFLAG to their parents when they came out. Children also noted that their relationships had improved with their parents and tended to be in agreement with them that this was helpful to parental adjustment. They also knew that parents feared for their well-being and safety and were particularly concerned being gay meant they were destined to face discrimination and, particularly if they were males, HIV.
However, in twenty-seven (about 42 percent) of the families, the children and their parents did not agree at all as to what contributed to parental adjustment. In most of these families the children believed that their happiness and confidence facilitated their parents’ adjustment while their parents did not believe there was anything their children were doing that was helpful. Instead, these parents were more likely to attribute their own adjustment to PFLAG participation, talking to supportive confidants, reading books, the passage of time, or some combination of these factors. As stated by this next young man, who was nineteen at the time of the interview:
I was just very confident about it. . . . And she was really worried about me in school getting picked on by the other kids, and I was like, “No, I’m not. I’m fine.” And then it just all opened up. . . . I started the Gay/Straight Alliance in my school, and that just really took over, and she was learning more about how liberal my high school was and how supportive the teachers were. And then, you know, she felt confident.
This respondent’s mother stated that going to PFLAG and talking to an understanding friend is what helped her the most. She claimed that nothing her son did helped her adjustment. As a matter of fact, her son’s lying and becoming romantically involved with an adult while still in high school actually made it harder to get used to the idea her son was gay.
Several young lesbians and gays believed that the pressure they applied pushed their parents to face and adjust to their sexual orientation, especially if it seemed as if parents were having a particularly hard time. Remember the Latino graduate student whose parents suggested he have brain surgery to “remove” his homosexuality? When asked if anything he did helped or hindered his parents’ adjustment, he reported:
Yes, baptism by fire. I brought my boyfriend home. I argued with them about where he would sleep. I forced them into every situation. I said, “You know my boyfriend is sitting at the Christmas table.” So basically I brought it down to that. They had no options, I forced them into everything. I said, “This is me. You might as well start dealing with it now, because it’s not changing.”
His mother initially felt shocked, anxious, sad, and briefly suicidal as she struggled to reconcile her strong Catholic beliefs with her son’s sexual orientation. She recalled her son’s efforts to educate her, which she agreed were somewhat helpful:
Over a period of time now, maybe the first year or whatever, and still to this day he is still trying to educate me. He knows now I am much better, but even if I make a comment that I don’t even realize is wrong, he will correct me. He is a very cocky person anyway, nothing to do with his sexual orientation, so sometimes I just chalk it off and say, “OK, that’s Raul.” But then I do pay attention to what he says. I won’t admit it to him, but he is right on a lot of things when he corrects me. But I can’t give him that, because he is too cocky and his head will be really swollen, as we say.
However, like the parents quoted earlier, the main thing that helped her adjust was when she came to the conclusion that her son’s sexual orientation was innate and unchangeable.
This next young man pressured his parents by ceasing contact with them until they agreed to be more accepting:
What happened was . . . after I came out and had this awful relationship with them I proceeded to shut them out of my life. . . . I traveled all over the country when I was in college, singing in this Jewish a cappella group, and we recorded albums and . . . I remember my parents crying when they received this album with me on it, and they didn’t even know that I could sing. I had all these friends, and they didn’t know them at all. And I think it became so apparent to them that it was either shit or get off the pot—that if they really didn’t start to process this they were going to lose me. And the reason I can say that with some degree of certainty is because when my boyfriend was going through these issues with his parents they [my parents] said, “Ronnie just needs to start to ignore what his parents think and exclude them.” My mom said, “You know, that’s what happened to us. When we realized that your life was going on and we weren’t a part of it—that was when things started to change.”
His father did not find his son’s pushing the least bit beneficial: “James could have been much more patient and understanding, but that is not James’s nature. What it would have done is it would have brought harmony to the family instead of the anxiousness that everybody was going through.”
What is interesting is that parents whose children reported pressuring them either did not recall being pressured or did not report that being pushed assisted their adjustment. The mother of the previously quoted respondent described: “He was allowing me to control the way it happened. And the fact that we didn’t throw words at each other I think was a good thing. I think that helped the process.” This next nineteen year old recalled:
Well, I am really up-front, so I would constantly ask my mother why she didn’t want to know about what was going on in my life. I would ask her why she doesn’t want to know who I’m dating or where I am going or things like that. And I think that helped her become more comfortable, like, “Wow, this isn’t going to change, and I need to get it together.”
His mother struggled with anxiety and depression because she initially felt to blame for her son’s sexual orientation. She was previously quoted as becoming concerned over her son’s cigarette smoking and extreme dieting. When asked what, if anything about her son or his behavior helped her adjustment, she credited PFLAG as well as seeing her son become happier after he came out—not his pressure. His mother did not believe her son did anything to help her adjust.
One possible explanation of these discrepancies is that children might be overestimating the influence of their own behavior on their parents’ feelings. The reasons for this might be twofold. First, when we are anxious about something, we search for ways we can be in control of it, even if just a little bit. We all know about athletes or people in the entertainment industry who carry a charm or don lucky underwear before an important match or performance because they believe it helps, especially since there are so many factors out of their hands. If we feel a sense of control, it can help us calm down. For these kids it is probably too scary to look back on their coming out and think that they ran the risk of being rejected with nothing they could have done about it.
Another factor might have to do with the developmental stage of these families. Remember when you became old enough that, for the first time, you could do something to help your parents? For many of us, this moment was the first flush of feeling grown-up. As children grow into adults, they perhaps realize more and more that their relationships with their parents are more mutual than unidirectional, that interactions can be reciprocal, and therefore can be influenced by the youth themselves. Filled with the sense of power brought to the fore by this realization, the adolescents and young adults may be prone to overexaggerate.
Conversely, parents may be reluctant to recognize their children’s growing influence on them because to do so would acknowledge a shift in the power dynamics of the family—not so easy for parents who are accustomed to being the ones in charge, sources of help and support. It is easier and perhaps less anxiety provoking, particularly when children are at the threshold of adulthood, to think that the parent-child relationships are still all about what Mom or Dad does TO the child rather than a function of reciprocal interactions between parent and child. It might have been embarrassing for parents to acknowledge either to the interviewer or to themselves that they needed to be pushed by their children to accept their gay sexual orientation. Even if they did feel pushed, as did the previously quoted father, they did not necessarily see this pressure as catalyzing adjustment or acceptance. Understandably, parents want to preserve their self-image as good parents, an image that probably does not include being forced by their children to accept them. Though it is difficult to know for sure the reason for these discrepancies, the important takeaway message is that in some families there can be vastly different perceptions as to what helps and what hinders parental adjustment, and therapists need to keep this in mind when they assist such families.
Having nonjudgmental, optimistic people to talk to can help parents cope with and eventually resolve feelings of mourning and self-blame for their children’s homosexuality. In this study some parents found support through PFLAG meetings where it was soothing and reassuring to hear from parents like themselves who were experiencing (or had experienced) similar feelings. Parents who did not join PFLAG found it useful to talk to someone who was empathic, tolerant, and hopeful. Both situations demonstrate how nonjudgmental others can reassure parents they are not to blame, that their children can live happy and healthy lives as gay adults.
It is important to recognize that children can also play a significant role in family recovery. These parents reported that their adjustment was enhanced if their child was mature, confident, and did not show cross-gendered behavior. However, parental adjustment can be impeded if children appear “obviously” gay, are involved in risky behaviors, or are experiencing developmental problems. Perhaps, due to the nature of parent-child boundaries during family recovery, children might be unaware of how their behaviors can impede parental adjustment to acceptance. Nevertheless, child factors that enhance or impede family recovery should not be overlooked because they suggest significant implications for clinical work with these families.
The good news from these findings is that it is possible for parent-child relationships to improve once the child comes out, and this may be a primary contributor to parental adjustment. In this study, children experiencing relief that their parents did not reject them began to interact with their parents more positively once they came out. Parents were relieved to see their children’s moods improve and began to respond in ways that reassured children and strengthened parent-child relationships. These reciprocal, mutually reinforcing patterns of behavior can be further enhanced when children perceive that their parents are trying to educate themselves about lesbian and gay people. Ways for therapists to promote this positive interaction pattern are described later in this chapter.
These findings make an even more compelling case for the recommendation in the last chapter, namely, that therapists encourage parents to find supports outside the family to assist them in coping with their feelings. In addition, individual sessions can be a safe place for parents to express their array of feelings.
In this research, parents felt somehow reassured when they reached the conclusion that their child’s sexual orientation was indelible and immutable. However, on the road to this conclusion, parents might ask mental health professionals if it is possible for their children to change and become heterosexual, and they might want to find a therapist to help “convert” their gay child. As stated previously, the practitioner should be aware that some therapists believe it is possible to change one’s sexual orientation through individual psychotherapy, group psychotherapy, prayer, or a combination of all three. Internet-savvy parents might discover this information either before beginning treatment or sometime during the therapeutic process.
However, the therapist should inform parents that there is no consistent evidence that these methods are effective in permanently eradicating homosexual attractions. Further, since homosexuality is not a disease, many professional organizations to which mental health professionals belong, such as the National Association of Social Workers (2008), the American Psychological Association (2002) and the American Psychiatric Association (Commission on Psychotherapy by Psychiatrists 2006) consider such treatment unethical, and its practitioners risk censure as well as suspension or revocation of their licenses. I myself tell parents that I agree with conclusions of my own professional organization, the National Association of Social Workers. I also tell parents that there is good reason to believe that reparative and conversion therapies, besides being ineffective, are psychologically harmful to gays and lesbians, which is another reason I do not recommend them and will not assist families in procuring such treatment.
Parents might want to know from a practitioner what causes a child to be gay or lesbian. As stated earlier, there is still a great deal that needs to be learned about sexuality. Therapists need to feel comfortable sharing the incomplete available information with inquiring parents and, if relevant, should acknowledge that this ambiguity can be confusing and unsettling for parents trying to deal with the fact that their daughter or son is gay. The therapist and the parents should resist the temptation to get into a drawn out analysis of the causes of homosexuality, as this might derail the treatment and distract the parents from a discussion of their own feelings and, in turn, their adjustment. After a brief discussion of the issue, it is sufficient to conclude “We just don’t know” and then shift the focus to parental reactions and the maintenance and growth of family relationships through the adjustment process.
Parents need a lot of support during the entire family trajectory, especially during the family recovery period. However, youth will also need a place to continue to express their fears and frustrations with their parents. It is difficult to wait for parents to come around, and young lesbians and gays might need a place to talk about this. As described in the last chapter, the youth need help dealing with their frustrations and fears that their parents will not adjust, and they will also need reminders that their parents need time.
However, based on these findings, young gays and lesbians may also need assistance recognizing what they can do to facilitate parental adjustment. Are there ways the young people can demonstrate to their parents that they are competent and able to handle their lives? Can they find ways to communicate to their parents that they are contented? Nevertheless, children may not be able to accept their ability to influence their parents’ adjustment until they feel their anger and fear is understood. Thus the guidelines mentioned at the end of the last chapter also apply here.
As the findings of this study suggest, sometimes youth felt it was helpful to apply some kind of pressure to their parents, like distancing or pushing them to include their partners in family gatherings. However, in most of these families, pressuring parents did not occur, nor did it seem necessary. Young gays and lesbians who are angry and anxious might need some help deciding what, if any, kinds of pressure might be effective and when to apply it. Based on these findings and my clinical experience, gently forcing the issue may be useful for parents who are distressed but who do not seem like they are doing anything to help themselves adjust. As stated in the previous chapter, if parents are taking steps such as going to PFLAG, talking to supportive friends, or getting information, then “the rock is rolling down the mountain” and therapists are advised to encourage their young clients to hang in there, be patient, and avoid applying any additional pressure.
One of the most compelling factors that aided parental adjustment, in this study, was the improvement in the parent-child relationship following the child’s coming out. Parents described increased closeness between themselves and their offspring after the child’s coming out, and this closeness helped them feel better about their children’s sexual orientation. Enjoying this renewed intimacy, particularly when their children were on the threshold of adulthood, was perhaps a balm that soothed parents’ feelings of distress and even suggests that having a gay child can have beneficial aspects, which are described further in chapter 5. Thus family therapy might be a natural choice for parents and children in the family recovery phase. However, the caution described in the last chapter bears repeating; before bringing family members together, therapists should be reasonably certain that sessions can be productive.
Parental guilt, anger, and fear could inspire parents to say things to their children that are provocative and hurtful, leading to wounded feelings and destructive arguments. Communication is, of course, a good thing, but sometimes the “communication” sought by members of distressed families consists of dumping their hurt and anger onto other family members. That is why a clinician should always be prepared to interrupt fruitless, destructive squabbling to redirect the conversation.
Many parents and children in the family discovery phase had the wisdom to avoid discussing certain aspects of parental feelings in an effort to keep the peace, even if this created a temporary distance. Pushing them together to talk about their feelings before they are ready can be fruitless and potentially destructive. As recommended in the last chapter, before meeting with the family, individual assessment of parents and children might be a useful step to ascertain whether they are too hurt or angry to talk calmly in family therapy.
Sometimes it is not possible to know for sure if parents and children will be able to productively express their feelings until they are brought together for a session. As stated in chapter 3, if family members seem too angry or too reactive to carry on a (mostly) civil discussion, then family sessions might need to be postponed and replaced with additional individual sessions until family members are sufficiently calmed down. As far as I know, Kenny Rogers never did a lick of family therapy, but when it came to poker—and to life—he understood the importance of knowing “when to fold ‘em and when to hold ‘em.” In keeping with this wise insight, when it comes to family sessions, it is advised that the therapist be prepared and willing to advance—and know when it is necessary to back off.
CONFLICT AND HOPE. Families usually don’t seek family therapy if they are planning to reject their kids—they just go ahead and do it. As underscored throughout this book, families who seek treatment, like families who are willing to be interviewed, consist of parents who want to find ways to maintain and even improve their relationships with their gay children. Practitioners working with families of young lesbians and gays should keep this in mind and find ways to reinforce this momentum by shining a light on the positive motivations of family members. This can be done through complimentary strength-building statements such as “I really appreciate and respect that you want to find ways to deal with this difficult issue” or “By seeking help, I know, despite these tough times, that you are committed to staying connected to each other—which I respect and admire.” I recommend therapists include a generous helping of such statements as they assist family members to express and listen to each other’s fears and concerns.
When a caring, open-minded therapist encounters an angry parent spewing hateful, homophobic venom such as “How did you become a pervert?” “No son of mine is a faggot!” it is perfectly understandable for the clinician to want to rescue the child. However, as discussed in chapter 3, taking sides and defending children from “bigoted” parents is an example of “help” that’s just not helpful.
When working with family members in conflict, it is important to validate feelings as well as get people to talk to each other about the deeper, more vulnerable feelings that lurk behind their anger—it is a therapist’s job to create a safe place for this to happen. Once people feel understood, they may become ready to open up to new ideas and other points of view (Kegan 1982; Rogers 1951; Stone Fish and Harvey 2005). There are several useful techniques that can assist with this. Stone Fish and Harvey describe the importance of encouraging family members to engage in “difficult dialogues” whereby therapists create a “crucible of refuge” or a safe space in their sessions so that family members can discuss their most painful and frightening feelings. De Jong and Berg (2002) have modified an intervention from Carl Rogers in which they get each member of a conflicted dyad to take turns discussing his or her feelings on a topic on which they disagree, while the other, without attacking or defending, simply listens and summarizes. An essential component of each of these techniques is that people avoid the unhelpful patterns of attack-defend, attack-counterattack, or attack-withdrawal and replace them with the sharing of real feelings that lie below the surface of anger and defensiveness.
The harsh parents’ statements quoted earlier mask feelings of self-blame and worry for their children, and it is the therapist’s job to bring these feelings out into the open. Children, who can harbor different ideas from parents as to what helps or hinders parental adjustment, should be helped to hear their parents’ underlying concerns and understand that parents need information and time, just as they did when they themselves realized they were gay. Like some of the children in this study, sons and daughters who push their parents too hard toward acceptance (or who distance to protect themselves from rejection) can be encouraged to directly express to their mothers and fathers their fears of disapproval and rejection along with their sense of being overexposed—and parents can be coached to listen and hear them.
A combination of love, fear, guilt, and shame are at the heart of most of the conflicts at the family discovery and family recovery phases, and the clinician can help expose these issues through the use of careful refraining and the encouragement of dialogue that gets to the heart of people’s fears and wishes. Once people are heard, they might be ready for the education and type of renewed closeness that can be a benefit of the coming out process.
Considering the mutually reinforcing patterns of interaction found among many of these families, it is important to ask family members what, if anything, is better since the child has come out. Are there any improvements in the parent-child interactions, such as more honesty or increased closeness, that can be used as a foundation upon which the family members can build acceptance and stronger connections? If so, the therapist should frame these improvements as signs of caring and hope and use them as jumping off points for strengthening or, if necessary, rebuilding family relationships. If you have ever been in a dark room that opens to the outdoors, you know that it is sometimes possible to see sunlight through the small gap between the door and its frame, and it is the therapist’s job to point out this bit of light leaking into the darkness.
A statement such as “Junior, you tell me that even though you and your folks are arguing a lot, you are still glad to see they are reading information on the PFLAG Web site, and you, Mom and Dad, are hopeful that your son is finally speaking openly and honestly with you. What needs to happen to keep these positive changes going—while you guys are trying to sort out your feelings about (your parents’ disapproval, your son’s many boyfriends, your daughter’s butch hairstyle)?” Even in the most strained families, the therapist is advised to be on the lookout for positive signs, no matter how small, and build on them to help these families get through their rough times.
ASSISTING TROUBLED GAY YOUTH IN THE FAMILY CONTEXT. As can be seen in this study, lesbian and gay children can experience emotional problems or difficulties with school or work that can get in the way of parental adjustment. The therapist can encourage families to talk about these problems and organize or reorganize themselves to assist their children. In some ways therapists can reprise the same skills they use whenever they are helping a family that has a young adult child who is floundering. For example, they may need to assess the family relationships for complementary behavioral patterns and interactions that impede a child’s autonomy.
However, the issue of sexual orientation adds a unique twist to traditional, structural, and systemic family therapy. Young respondents in this study who struggled to establish physical and emotional autonomy in relation to their parents seemed to be traumatized by a history of verbal and physical abuse at the hands of their peers. Even accepting, nurturing parents could not erase the wounds of this past cruelty. Family therapy can help these families discuss these issues and get them to brainstorm ways to help their son or daughter cope. It should be kept in mind that family dynamics might not have caused this problem, so reshaping them might not be the solution. The young people may need assistance in pursuing sources outside the family to raise their self-esteem. Support groups for lesbian and gay youth—even a good group of gay friends—can go a long way in helping a young person feel better about being gay. Of course, drug and alcohol treatment as well as antidepressant medication should be considered as needed.
As the findings of this study suggest, parents may worry that their children are making themselves targets of stigma by appearing too effeminate or butch. Does this mean that therapists helping families in which the parents are disturbed by their children’s appearance should advise young people not to “look gay?” Should therapists coach children to act and dress in ways that are traditionally gender-congruent?
The answer is a resounding no. Therapists and other helping professionals must resist any urge to join either the conformity police or the gender patrol. I have known clinicians and educators who have said to scapegoated gay kids something along the lines of “Do you understand that when you dress like that, it calls negative attention to yourself and invites ridicule?” Even though it makes many people uncomfortable to see boys who act like girls and vice versa, it is not our job to reinforce what are arguably restrictive and nonsensical norms regarding gendered behavior.
However, it would be equally wrong to overlook the possibility that violating these norms could make one a target of discrimination—even violence. A way to deal with this dilemma is to simply share the information offered by this study: that parents might be uncomfortable if their children appear obviously gay, pointing out that choices about behavior and dress have implications in a world that (albeit wrongly) stigmatizes gay and lesbian people. Throughout their lives, gays and lesbians must continually decide how open to be about their sexuality and whether they are willing to face whatever consequences result from admitting they are members of a stigmatized group. In that vein, LGBT youth can be encouraged to evaluate the risks and benefits thoughtfully and make their own informed decisions about disclosure, dress, and behavior, knowing the potential effects of such decisions on people in their lives, including their parents.
Arguments between parents and adolescents about clothing are so common and predictable, we should probably consider them a part of normal family development. However, for families with a lesbian or gay child, the issue becomes more personal, as it could communicate intolerance or even rejection. Under these circumstances, the issue can be discussed, but the therapist should assist the parents in communicating their concerns at a deeper level. Indeed, an ongoing concern for parents throughout the family adjustment trajectory was fear for their children’s happiness and safety. Perhaps therapists could coach parents not to focus their discussion so much on their children’s appearances but rather on their fears for their well-being, encouraging dialogue between parents and children about safety, discrimination, and the ways in which the children will handle these issues. For example, here is how an interchange might go between a seventeen-year-old lesbian, her mother, and the family therapist:
MOTHER: Why do you have to dress like a man—with the short hair and men’s shirts and everything? That makes you look like a bull dyke!
DAUGHTER: Fuck you! I will dress anyway I want. You just can’t accept that I am a lesbian. You always wanted me to wear those stupid dresses, which I hated, and, now that I’m old enough, I don’t have to, so just deal with it!
THERAPIST: Whoa! Hold on, hold on! Let’s slow this down a bit. I can see there are a lot of strong feelings here that we need to look at. First, I will start with Mom. Tell me; what are your fears and concerns about the way your daughter dresses? Your daughter thinks you are rejecting her.
MOM: Well, of course I love my daughter and I am trying to learn to accept this part of her and it hasn’t been easy. But, with her clothes and hair, I worry that she is letting everyone know she is gay, and once people know that they will judge her and maybe try to hurt her.
THERAPIST: So your concerns for the way she dresses are about your fears for her.
DAUGHTER: Why can’t she let me make my own decisions?
THERAPIST: Hold on. I agree that you are almost an adult and you have a right to make your own choices, but did you hear what your mother just said? Can you tell me what she just said?
DAUGHTER: Yes, she is afraid people will pick on me and judge me because they will know I am a lesbian. But she doesn’t have to worry. I can take care of myself!
THERAPIST: Of course—also, I am guessing, you are learning how to how to deal with discrimination and other people’s reactions. Perhaps you can share some of what you have learned right now, right here, with your worried mother. She needs some help not to worry so much.
Rather than react to their parents in an emotional or rebellious manner, young gays and lesbians can be encouraged to discuss their thoughts on discrimination and visibility with their parents. How do they make decisions about how to appear and to whom to disclose their sexual orientation in light of these risks? Furthermore, can they talk to their parents about their plans to protect themselves (as much as it is possible) from discrimination, harassment, and violence? Parents can be coached to listen and understand their children’s sensitivity to rejection and parental control and, in a nonattacking way, provide feedback and, if appropriate, support for such plans. By enacting such conversations, therapists can create an atmosphere in which productive discussions replace painful, destructive arguments.
As stated repeatedly in this chapter, renewed or newfound closeness in family relationships helped parents adjust to the news that their child was gay. Meeting with family members conjointly to help them discuss what both parents and children can do to assist parental adjustment might not only clear the air and solve problems but could also have the metapurpose of fostering the type of closeness the parents in this study found so helpful. Hopefully, therapists can assist such families to go beyond simply getting used to the idea that their daughter is a lesbian or their son is gay and get to where they understand that accepting their children and loving them the way they are, not the way their parents want them to be, can be an enriching experience for the family. Not all families can get to this place, but there are great rewards waiting for those who do, as we shall see in the next chapter.