The Gift of the Gay/Lesbian Child
Crises refine life. In them you discover what you are.
—ALLAN K. CHALMERS
A WISE COLLEAGUE OF MINE, WHOSE JOB IT WAS TO COUNSEL people in crisis, would tell her clients the following story. When Mount St. Helens erupted in 1980 it left a path of destruction. Rivers of molten rock incinerated the once lush forests that grew on the mountain, leaving it covered in ashes and barren of any life. However, after a few weeks, something surprising began to happen on the bleak mountainside. Small green plants began to sprout, nourished by the fertile new soil. Within a few months the mountain was covered with lush new plant life that would eventually become trees and forests. After telling this brief story, my colleague would then ask her clients how it might relate to them—in the midst of their panic and despair could they see anything positive, any sign of growth that might result from their crisis situation?
There is evidence that some people who experience trauma or hardship, such as child abuse, addiction, or serious illness are able to identify some way they benefited from these most difficult times (McMillen 1999; McMillen et al. 2001). In their samples, McMillen and his colleagues found that a frequently mentioned benefit was that people developed more closeness in their personal relationships. Close to half of the parents and children in this study were able to recognize new personal growth and family closeness in the year or so that passed from the time the child came out, and most of the remaining respondents reported that their relationships recovered to the positive state they were in before the child came out. While the coming out period could be seen as a volcanic eruption, obliterating old expectations and shaking family relationships to their core, for some fortunate families the period that followed was a reforestation—a time of new openness as family members renewed and revised their relationships.
Hansen and Johnson (1979), scholars in the field of education, have described how in some families a crisis can stimulate a regenesis, whereby “members accept disruptions of habit and tradition not so much as unwelcome problems, but more as opportunities to renegotiate their relationships” (584). In their thoughtful and sensitive account of parents struggling to adjust to their children’s homosexuality, Herdt and Koff (2000) discuss how family relationships can be renewed and strengthened as parents integrate new understandings of their children and themselves into their lives and move forward. In the study described in this book, it was also found that some families were able to get to a place where parents and children saw the youth’s coming out as something positive. Borrowing from Herdt and Koff and also Hanson and Johnson, I call the final stage of adjustment family renewal, and it marks the period when families can identify the benefits of having and adjusting to an out gay child.
Of course, not all families make it to this point, and the fact that many of the parent respondents could identify the benefits of having a lesbian or gay child could have been an artifact of the sample. Remember, families who have ongoing difficulty coping with the fact that their child is lesbian or gay are unlikely to participate in a study such as this. Shame, stigma, and religious conflicts probably obstruct their adjustment and, in turn, make them unlikely to want to talk to a stranger, particularly a gay or a gay-positive interviewer, about their feelings. Therefore, voices of the most troubled families are notably absent from this research.
Nevertheless, the reports of these successful families can help therapists understand the rich rewards of new or renewing family closeness that potentially await those who seek their help. It was possible for some parents to adjust to their gay children’s sexual orientation to the extent that they went beyond tolerance and were actually grateful for having a gay child.
As you will recall, some family members described a new or renewed closeness during the family discovery period, and more families experienced this closeness during the recovery phase. In these families there may have been a reciprocal effect whereby children felt relieved and acted warmly toward their parents and parents, noticing that their children felt better and were less distant, responded to them positively. As described in chapter 4, these improved family relationships played a significant role in parents’ adjustment to their children’s sexual orientation. However, this renewed closeness was viewed by parents to be a significant “gift” of having and adjusting to a gay child and seen by the children as the most beneficial aspect of coming out.
Throughout the research process, Bethann Albert, who was one of my research assistants and the mother of a lesbian, often reminded me that parents want two things for their children: to be healthy and happy. Based on my experience as a family therapist, family researcher, and family member, I would add that parents also want their children’s ongoing affection and love, and they want to be proud of them. Moreover, children of all ages want to bask in the warm glow of their parents’ pride.
When asked what, if anything, was positive about having a gay son or a lesbian daughter, many of these parents talked about how pleased they were to know their children were happy and relieved, and it made them proud to see how their kids were integrating their sexual orientation into their lives. In chapter 4 I noted the ways in which parents seeing their children happy and flourishing contributed to their adjustment to the news that their child was gay. However, in the family renewal phase some parents recognized and took pride in how their children were successfully integrating their homosexuality into their young adult lives.
Remember Joelle, the young African American lesbian who, among other things, provided the first quote in chapter 1 of this book? Her mother Nancy, who initially struggled with a strong, painful sense of self-blame, eventually reached the point where she became proud of her daughter: “I guess, in some small way, I contributed to her being spiritual enough to accept people at the soul level, regardless of the physical form, and that I raised a child who is confident enough to be comfortable with who she is in her own skin. I think that is good.”
Some parents saw that their children’s homosexuality played a role in their social, academic, and professional achievements. As this father stated:
RESPONDENT: Well, I think it’s helped his career as an artist. It has given him something unique to write about that I think people are interested in reading. That’s one thing. It makes him special in a certain way, not like everybody else.
INTERVIEWER: It makes you feel proud?
RESPONDENT: To the extent that Larry can be successful and self-supporting, it’s positive for me. It’s good to be successful. I feel proud about his commercial success. That’s not directly because he is gay, although his homosexuality enabled him to be that way.
A year prior to her interview, when this next mother found out her daughter was a lesbian, she grew so depressed that she began a course of antidepressant medication. However, as time passed, this mother began to take pride in the leadership skills her daughter had acquired through her involvement in a gay organization in her high school: “Lately she has been getting a whole lot of recognition. Lots of really good things have been happening for her. God, even my father can’t even help but be proud of the things she has done and accomplished.”
Like almost all the youth in families that reached the renewal phase, her daughter felt closer to her mother since she came out because she felt that she could be more open with her. As a matter of fact, forty-one of the young lesbian and gay respondents discussed how their relationships with their mothers improved from the time they came out. When asked how, if at all, her relationship with her mother changed from the time she came out, the daughter of the last respondent explained how being able to be herself around her mother contributed to the improvement in their relationship: “Yeah, It took away my burden of hiding and trying to be someone I am not so . . . umm . . . yeah. I am a lot more confident now. And it is helpful that I can be interested in something or I can check out a girl with my mom. She doesn’t care anymore. Yeah, we are a lot closer, and she really knows me now.”
This African American mother of a lesbian reported that when she first learned her seventeen-year-old daughter was gay four years ago, she cried uncontrollably and, in the weeks following her daughter’s disclosure, she became deeply depressed. Now she carries a sense of pride as she watches her daughter negotiate life as a young lesbian woman:
She is always happy and joking—I think that is her way of dealing with it. Everything rolls off of her shoulder, nothing bothers her. And she is very outspoken and very proud of her gayness. I appreciate that. I think I had something to do with that. I raised this kid to be strong. Any adversity, she is willing to take on.
Her daughter described her mother’s gradual process of acceptance. Along the way there was a period of distance, which began to dissipate when she showed her mother she understood her feelings of loss. This young woman, demonstrating a maturity beyond her years, was able to really understand the grief with which her mother was coping. She said:
It was a building process. Like first we went through this thing where we didn’t speak at all. Just, “Hi, how you doing, bye.” Then, each night, “Goodnight, bye.” It was cut and dry. I think as I got older, I saw her point of view, which was she is a mom . . . and all parents have little fantasies when their kids are born: they are going to walk down the aisle, if it is a girl, with a guy and if a guy with a girl. And I saw her point of view, and she took time to see mine. She started to realize, “This is her life—and that she is going to do what she wants.” And eventually my mother was like, “Hey, if you want to date a dog, I don’t give a darn, as long as you walk across that stage at high school graduation and go to college.” Now that I am about to graduate high school and have gotten into college, we can talk about anything.
This young woman’s sensitivity to her mother’s feelings and awareness of her mother’s pride may have fueled the positive interactions between this mother and daughter, leading to their current closeness.
Imagine the feelings of relief, liberation, and gratitude felt by daughters and sons who initially distanced from their parents in anticipation of their disapproval and rejection but now found themselves bathed in the warm sunshine of their parents’ growing pride. Parental pride can inspire young gays and lesbians to want to be closer to their parents, as evidenced by the more honest and intimate relationships in families that reached the renewal stage. Seeing that their children wanted a closer relationship with them after a period of distance led some of these parents to, in turn, respond warmly. For lucky families, such positive reciprocity can push parents, beyond tolerance, to the point where they realize the special advantages of accepting a gay child.
Currently, gay rights activists seek tolerance and social justice for gay and lesbian people. Lesbians and gay men are fighting for legislation that, among other things, gives them legal protection from discrimination, grants them the right to legally marry and adopt children, and enables them to pursue hate crime prosecution against those who commit crimes against them because of their sexual orientation. These important objectives must be vigorously pursued until lesbians and gays have the same rights as all citizens in this country. But what would it be like if, as a society, we went beyond tolerance and fairness and actually recognized and prized the presence and contributions of gays and lesbians?
At a recent talk I gave for staff at a youth residential treatment facility, an audience member asked me what the likelihood would be that if one twin were gay the other one would be as well. I summarized the available knowledge in this area (Bailey, Dunne, and Martin 2000; Kendler et al. 2000; Hyde 2005) by saying: “If the twins are monozygotic or identical, and one is gay, the other is more likely to be gay than a sibling who isn’t a twin or is a fraternal twin. However, one gay twin does not guarantee that the other will be gay also. Only the luckiest families get TWO gay or lesbian kids.” The nervous surprised laughter that followed indicated how foreign-sounding it was to suggest that gay and lesbian children might actually be desirable.
Greenberg and Bailey (2001) wrote a controversial article arguing, if the technology were available to determine that a child was gay before she was born, that it would be morally defensible for parents to abort the fetus. If we really appreciated lesbian and gay people and their contributions, I would argue, such a notion would be irrelevant, preposterous, and such an article unpublishable. If such technology had been historically available, and parents were able and willing to use it, the world would never have benefited from the contributions of famous gay men and lesbians, including (but certainly not limited to) Leonardo Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Virginia Woolf, Oscar Wilde, Willa Cather, Gertrude Stein, Alan Turing, Jane Adams, and Truman Capote. Moreover we would have lost out on the more current contributions of Congressman Barney Frank’s political leadership, Martina Navratilova’s superb athletic ability, along with the contributions of Ellen DeGeneres and k. d. Lang to entertainment (again, this incomplete list just scratches the surface). We also would have missed out on the smaller but nonetheless important contributions of less famous lesbians and gays. If, like several tribes of Native Americans, we truly revered the presence and perspectives of lesbians and gays (Gilley 2006, Lang 1997; Williams 1986), the idea that parents might wish for two or more gay children might not seem so surprising.
Some of the parents in this study grew to believe that there were special qualities they attributed to their sons and daughters being gay or lesbian that enriched their lives and relationships. Often these reports reflected common, albeit positive stereotypes such as mechanically inclined lesbians and sensitive, creative gay men. Positive stereotypes can be harmful and limiting when we believe people can do no more than what we expect them to be good at. For example, if we assume all gay men are artistic and all lesbians are athletic, we might have trouble understanding that a gay man can be professional basketball player (John Amaechi) and that a lesbian can be a talented, highly successful photographer (Annie Leibovitz). Nevertheless, there sometimes seems to be a grain of truth in these stereotypes. For example, gay men are certainly well represented in the field of fashion. Thus, perhaps parents invoking such stereotypes might be forgivable, particularly if they contribute to positive parent-child interactions.
When asked what, if anything, was positive about having a gay son, this mother spoke of how she enjoyed her son’s attention to her appearance, which she perceived as a sign of caring:
We can talk about product for our faces. He’s more into my face and my wrinkles than I certainly could ever have time for. He’s very, very caring. He’s planning a little vacation for me now and he’s just genuine. He tells me, “You know, you’ve got to lose some weight, Mom. This is what you’ve got to do.” But I have good conversations with him, you know, so that’s a real plus.
Fathers could also recognize a positive aspect to their children’s sexual orientation. This father of a gay man who initially had a painful reaction to his son’s sexuality, worrying about HIV and his son having a rough life, stated: “What’s positive? Gay people . . . they’re art! I think they have certain skills that the regular population doesn’t have, I know that. And it’s not limited just to cutting hair. Architects, engineers, designers. There are football players, basketball players, so it’s everything and maybe more.”
This next mother attributed her daughter’s “boyish” protectiveness to her lesbianism:
RESPONDENT: She’s very protective of me.
INTERVIEWER: Is she? And you think that’s due to her being a lesbian?
RESPONDENT: I guess, yeah, because, whether you believe it or not, boys have a tendency to protect their mothers.
INTERVIEWER: And the fact that she’s boyish makes her protective of you?
RESPONDENT: Yeah. With girls and their mothers, you always have that rebellion against each other, you know? And with my lesbian daughter I don’t have that.
When children were asked what, if anything, was better since they came out, they almost always described increased honesty and closeness in their relationships with their parents. The twenty-three-year-old lesbian daughter of the last mother quoted, who recently moved into her own apartment, also perceived the enhanced closeness between her and her mother as a decided benefit:
Our relationship is very, very open. We talk about things. It’s like, at this point, we’re friends. So, it’s weird when I see other people because it just seems like it’s just business with other people and their families. I say to some of my friends, “Well, don’t you talk to your mother about this?” “No, I could never talk to my mother about that.” And it just seems awkward, it seems wrong. I know it just wouldn’t feel natural if it [the relationship between my mother and I] were any other way. How do I know that we’re closer? ’Cause for a while there we didn’t talk about personal things like my relationships and, now that I’m out and older, we do. Even though she hasn’t been in a lesbian relationship, there are universal themes. So she can understand, and I ask her advice. Whether or not I take it, it’s always good to have it there. We’ve become much closer.
Susan, the previously quoted mother of a gay son, Mitch, initially felt terribly guilty when she first found out her son was gay. Mitch had been out to his mother for about twelve months, and, at the time of her interview, Susan still felt a bit guilty and worried for his well-being. Nevertheless, she enjoyed aspects of her son that seem to fit the prevailing stereotypes of gay males.
He has great taste (laughing). And always did! You know what? Looking back, I should have known that. He has always been a clotheshorse. That is kind of cool. And he is sensitive. He has always been a sensitive man. He likes the kind of music I like. Some of those things we share. He likes the kind of movies I like . . . he likes a good love story . . . we can sit and cry together. That is good stuff.
In chapter 4 Mitch was quoted as describing how the relationship with his mother was good before he came out, was distant during the beginning of the family discovery stage, then improved significantly as his mother learned more about gay people.
Cynthia, who initially felt terribly guilty and mournful when she first learned her son Kenneth was gay, six years ago, mused:
You know what? Gay people are nice people! They are very caring about everybody, the human race. I really like that. I like the fact that he is very understanding in most situations, and I think it has to do with that [being gay]. He is nondiscriminatory—he just isn’t at all. And I think it has to do with that also, and that is very pleasing to me.
Kenneth believed that coming out improved his relationship with his mother. When asked how his relationship changed, if at all, since he came out, he stated:
RESPONDENT: It is really good. We talk a couple times a week. I see her once or twice a year. And we talk about everything.
INTERVIEWER: Has the relationship changed at all since you came out to her?
RESPONDENT: Yes, it has improved. We talk more. I got over my teenage angst.
Joe, one of the fathers who grew closer to his gay son, was a recovering alcoholic and began to attend both PFLAG and Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) meetings at the local gay community center after his child came out. He observed:
Well, I think he [Tony] is special because he is gay. One of the things I have really come to understand about the gay people I’ve met at the center in the last ten years is really how creative and special many of them are. In many ways I went to those twelve-step meetings because I felt like I was dealing with people who were much more in touch with their feelings than many of the people at straight meetings I would go to. Gay people could talk about their feelings more easily than straight people could at twelve-step meetings. That is an issue I’ve always had trouble with. I think my son is very good about that. He has much less difficulty than I had at his age, being in touch with his feelings.
Tony described how coming out to his accepting father helped him feel better about his own decision to come out. “My Dad’s acceptance reinforced my feeling that coming out was a really good thing. That figuring this out about yourself and starting early was a good thing. One of my father’s friends in his AA meeting is a gay man in his fifties who didn’t come out until he was fifty-one or fifty-two. That makes me sad—very sad.” Gloria, an actress and previously quoted mother who initially struggled with self-blame when she learned her son was gay, noted:
Because gay people are gay! That is why gay people are called “Gay!” There is a wonderful spirit . . . And this is not a broad generalization . . . a lot of them are theater kids too. They are sharp and sometimes because of the hard times they have had they are very kind and understanding. Noah is very kind and very understanding and so is his partner Rick.
For some young people, like Tony and Noah, their parents knowing and being so accepting helped respondents feel more certain of their sexual orientation. Noah described: “I guess fundamentally, like at a really base level, it just, like, cemented myself—not just the image, but like who I am. Like it cemented the sureness of who I am.”
Once again, it is possible that parents’ recognition of the special qualities of gay people played a role in how they interacted with their children, and children, relieved over not being rejected, and also feeling more confident, sought more interaction with their parents leading to reciprocal patterns of positive communication and improved relationships. One mother, a teacher who was very involved with the Catholic Church, cried hysterically when she first found out her daughter Crystal, aged eighteen, was a lesbian. Now, two years later, when asked what, if anything, was positive about having a gay child, she answered:
What’s positive about it? Oh, my God. She doesn’t worry about guys. She’s very self-confident. I see that difference between her and her sisters. . . . She just doesn’t care what people think about her because I think at sixteen she had to stand up for herself, “This is what I am,” and she accepts herself for what she is. She’s very confident. That’s the positive part. And the other thing is—this is a stupid little anecdote. One day her girlfriend Jackie was over, and this was when they were in high school still. Jackie was waiting for Crystal to finish her homework, and I had a pile of towels downstairs. Jackie comes upstairs and says, “I was waiting, so I folded them for you. I said, “A boy would never have done that, Jackie.”
Her daughter sees a clear improvement in the relationship since coming out. “Yes. My relationship with my mother is so wonderful. I can talk to her about anything and she’ll be understanding about it. And my mom is really a strong woman, and she was determined to have a good relationship with me, no matter what it took.”
Here we see an indication of reciprocity whereby the mother recognized the special qualities in lesbians and Crystal saw her mother as extremely committed to their relationship. Perhaps as a result, Crystal felt willing and able to share more of her life with her mother. As mentioned before, it is tempting to ask what came first, the mother recognizing and appreciating her daughter’s special “lesbianlike” qualities or the daughter being more open—and, once again, it is impossible to know for sure. What is important is to recognize that both factors work together in tandem to stimulate ongoing positive parent-child interaction.
If a person chooses too . . . having a gay child and really working with it can be the biggest growth experience of your own life because it forces you to stretch yourself . . . to stretch your understanding of people . . . of what love is . . . it is an opportunity to do some political activist work, whether it is marching in a parade or whatever you do. I just think if you really go with the flow it is a lesson in compassion and courage. And you watch a child come out and blossom into a wonderful person with a relationship, and all that stuff, that is normal, and this is a privilege.
This is from Rachel, a previously quoted museum curator who was devastated when she found out her twenty-year-old daughter Beth was gay. Rachel’s statement represents the best possible outcome to be expected after a child comes out—an outcome we would wish for all parents of lesbians and gays.
According to McMillen (1999), some people search for meaning in misfortune, which, when found, can profoundly alter their view on life. As stated in the beginning of chapter 3, the definition the family makes of the event plays a role in how they will cope with it (Hill 1971), so if parents come to believe that learning and adjusting to their children’s coming out has enriched their lives, they are obviously going to have an easier time than parents who see this event as a painful disappointment.
Parents in nine of the families discussed how having a gay child eventually opened up a new world to them, both socially and politically. Not only did these parents broaden their social circles by meeting other gay people and parents, as some did in PFLAG, but they also developed increased sensitivity to the burdens of others. Such newly found empathy can be a positive outcome for people who have been through a traumatic event (McMillan 1999), and some of the parents in this study were fortunate enough to find this silver lining.
Remember Ann, the mother of Mike, the young man who tried to commit suicide in the presence of the family priest right before he came out to his parents? When asked what, if anything, was positive about having a gay son, she explained:
It has opened up the world to me. I have met some of the nicest people [parents] I’ve ever known, in PFLAG. And I have also met some very interesting gay people . . . It has just really expanded my universe, and I think it has made me a better person. And I mean I always considered myself an extremely tolerant person . . . my parents set that example, but . . . because Mike was gay and I got involved in PFLAG and I started to speak at high schools and stuff . . . this brought it out.
Children of parents who mentioned these broadened worldviews saw their relationships with their parents grow closer during the family adjustment trajectory—for them this was a great benefit of coming out. When asked to describe changes in his relationship with his parents since coming out, Ann’s son Mike described an enhanced openness: “Awesome. We are buddies. We talk. . . . It was always pretty good, but now there is no wall, no area we couldn’t get into. You know, we just chat, talk, even about guys.” Mike’s parents, Ann and Fred, were members of the PFLAG speaker’s bureau. Fred was visibly moved when he described the profound emotional impact of the warmth and gratitude from gays and lesbians he met during his first speech as well as when he marched as a member of PFLAG in the annual gay pride parade. He also reflected on the eye-opening experience of encountering aspects of what can best be described as gay and lesbian culture:
FRED: I am not much of a speaker and I was nervous during our first talk. Then it was surprising to have somebody gay come up to us from the audience afterwards and thank us for being there. It was like, wow, we are just parents! And then that first gay pride parade . . . Wow! We are assembling on 56th Street and we got the woman in the clown outfit on a tricycle in front of us—Dyke on Bikes—and the guys in the leather were across the way in chains and stuff. We were like, are we in the right place? Are we sure we want to be here?
INTERVIEWER: What was that like for you to see?
FRED: Strange. We were walking down Fifth Avenue, and there was a float, and there were all these guys—they were in very skimpy bathing suits and they had their music playing and they were hosing one another down. And they were dancing and they had this disco-type music going and they had feathers. And I was like, “Wow! Over the top! Talk about rainbow . . .” It was like, “Am I in the right place? Do I belong here? Am I out of place? I don’t seem to fit into this.”
And then you get to the next block . . . to the first viewing stand, and they say, “And here comes the North Jersey PFLAG.” And then people in the crowd start making eye contact and saying, “I love you, Dad.” And then you start saying it back and by the time you get to the Village you’ve got people coming out of the crowd, crying and hugging. And then you are talking to people. It is overwhelming. It is like, “Wow, I am glad I did this.”
If you have never been to a gay pride parade, I would urge you to find one and watch what happens between the lesbians and gays on the sidelines and the PFLAG parents as they march by. Don’t be surprised to see lots of enthusiastic and tearfully appreciative LGBT people shouting, “I love you, Mom! I love you, Dad!” and PFLAG parents smiling back, some warmly and some in stunned surprise. Many gays and lesbians have either been rejected by their parents, worry about future rejection (if they are not out), or, if they came out and were not rejected, recall dreading this possibility. Those of us who are gay react viscerally when we watch PFLAG march by because almost all of us have feared rejection, yet, at the same time, yearned for parents like these PFLAG marchers who not only accept us but are willing to proudly and publicly proclaim their love and acceptance. When lesbians and gays whose parents are unaware or who have been less than positive encounter PFLAG parents, they project onto them their wishes to be fully loved by their own mothers and fathers for who they really are. In return, PFLAG parents, like Fred, are humbled by the magnitude and power of the reactions of lesbians and gays who are strangers and also surprised by their newfound heroic roles in the community.
Some parents gained a new sensitivity not only to the trials and tribulations of gay people but also to other oppressed minorities. As Janet, the previously quoted mother of Robert, an eighteen-year-old gay man, described:
JANET: You meet a whole new group of people that you might not have met otherwise. I can appreciate that. I mean even getting involved with PFLAG has been an interesting experience. And I have become more sympathetic to outsiders in general. It is very easy to be smug in life. You do develop a little more generosity.
INTERVIEWER: What kind of outsiders?
JANET: Oh, any kind of racial or oppressed group. There are so many in our society . . . I mean we got involved through the parent and faculty gay/ straight alliance. Then we got involved in the diversity group at our kid’s school and stuff . . . and got involved with all sorts of issues which have to do with race and class. It was kind of very interesting stuff that probably would not have been so interesting to me had I not had a gay son. So I sort of recognize that is the positive thing that has come out of it.
It is no accident that all of the respondents quoted in this section are white. As a matter of fact, all but one of the parents who described how having a gay or lesbian child changed their worldview and made them more tolerant of other oppressed groups were white. A possible reason for this could be that white parents, once their children identified as gay, realized that not only their children but they themselves were now part of a stigmatized group—for the first time in their lives.
Unlike African Americans or Latinos, many white people, particularly if they are from the middle or upper socioeconomic classes, may not fully understand oppression and marginalization in our society, because, for the most part, they have never been its targets. Mclntosh (1998) goes a step further and suggests that white people are taught not to recognize the unfair benefits they receive as a result of being a member of their race, such as having the opportunity to receive a better education, live in better neighborhoods, and work in higher paying jobs than their nonwhite counterparts.
Once the white parents in this study learned their children were gay, they began to understand oppression on a very personal level and what it was like to live as a stigmatized person. Perhaps the African American and Latino respondents did not mention increased understanding of intolerance as a result of their children coming out because, presumably, they had a better understanding of what it was like to be among its sufferers and having a lesbian or gay child might simply have added to what they already understood and experienced. More information on how race and ethnicity might affect families of lesbian and gay youth coming out will be presented in chapter 6.
It would be great to be able to say that all the parents in this study reached a point where they had not only adjusted to but also realized the benefits of having a gay son or lesbian daughter. However, in this research, as in real life, this was not the case. In particular, father-child relationships that were distant or otherwise troubled before the child came out stayed the same or worsened afterward, according to the young respondents’ reports. Second, parents of gay children had ongoing worries and fears that may have abated somewhat but never completely dissipated.
American family life is suffering from a famine of fatherhood. When it comes to paternal attention, love, and affection, many, or perhaps most of us, straight or gay, are badly malnourished. Though it may be satisfying to bash individual fathers, they are not completely to blame. What my experience as a family therapist and researcher has taught me is that despite some shifting in sex roles in the past fifty years or so, fathers are still judged by how they materially provide for their families—not how they emotionally nurture their children. Furthermore, as the findings herein suggest, the way families structure themselves may leave little opportunity for fathers to provide this type of nourishing sustenance.
In many of the families of this study, fathers existed on the emotional periphery of their children’s lives, and, in most cases, the child’s coming out did nothing to change this. Sometimes it even made things worse. As stated previously, close to two-thirds of the youth described how coming out to their mothers improved their relationships with them. An additional ten said their relationships were always good and, with the exception of a few rough patches during the precoming-out and discovery phases, these relationships remained strong. In comparison, when asked how, if at all, coming out changed their relationship with their fathers, only eleven young people reported that their relationships with their dads improved. The other young respondents said their paternal relationships stayed the same, meaning they remained distant or grew more so in the months and years following the child’s coming out.
Remember M. C., the previously quoted young man who enjoyed a continuously close relationship with his mother, with whom he frequently played Scrabble and watched political shows? He had been out to his parents for five years and told of how his postdiscovery relationship with his father was just as distant as his relationship with him prior to coming out:
Basically, it is the same as it was before, in the sense that we are not really ones to speak that much or that often. We are sort of distant. That remains the same. He probably wants a closer relationship with me, but I don’t know why. I think part of it is that I don’t have any interests in common with him. He likes golf, watching TV, but we watch different things. He likes seeing cars go running around and around and around, five hundred times. I don’t . . . I find football quite annoying.
The coming-out process could aggravate already tense or distant father-child relationships, and eight of the youth talked about how their relationships with their fathers got worse during the coming out trajectory. As described in chapter 4, fathers of sons faced special obstacles in their adjustment. Mitch’s father did not agree to participate in this study, but according to Mitch’s report, his father expressed a combination of homophobic disgust and dread that is particularly common among anxious heterosexual men. As mentioned previously, when his father found out he was gay, he kept asking him in horror if he knew what two men did in bed. When asked how his current relationship with his father was and how it compared before and after he came out to him, Mitch summarized things succinctly: “It was OK before I came out. When I came out absolutely horrid. And as of now borderline horrid.”
Fathers of lesbians could also have a very difficult time adjusting. Jennifer was the previously quoted twenty-year-old girl who was embarrassed and ashamed when her mother, Martha, read her diary six years ago and found out she was gay. When asked whether coming out changed her relationship with her father, from whom her mother had been divorced for most of her life, she replied:
No, it stayed distant. And I didn’t tell him until I was a senior in high school so that was three years after I had been out to almost everyone. He definitely was not OK with it. He didn’t express it with me. He didn’t tell me that it’s not OK, but he is like, “I need time with this.” I don’t even know how he is now with it. He won’t let me come over with a girlfriend for dinner or anything. He said he is not comfortable with it. After I told him I was gay, he didn’t get back to me for a long time. He wouldn’t respond to my phone calls or e-mails, and he likes to e-mail a lot. He wouldn’t respond, and finally I was like, “Dad, why aren’t you responding?” And he is like, “Well, I don’t know how comfortable I am with your friend.”
In contrast to the positive reciprocity that led to parental adjustment in some families, there might have been a negative interaction effect between distant, disapproving fathers and their children. As stated previously, detachment in father-child relationships might be a function of men’s socially scripted tendency to be less engaged in the emotional lives of their children. Due to an already distant relationship, some children might not speak directly to their fathers about their sexual orientations, leaving it up to their mothers. When a father, who already shares a distant relationship with his child, learns the child is gay, his guilt, grief, or discomfort might lead him to further disengage. In a reciprocal fashion, the child, feeling uncomfortable and anxious about the father’s increased disengagement, might also increase the distance. Thus coming out and its ensuing dynamics could perpetuate and aggravate the detachment already present in these relationships.
However, in other instances, we saw, in chapters 3 and 4, how fathers became closer to their children in circumstances when struggling mothers pulled away. This suggests that father-child distancing might be, at least partially, systemically related to mother-child closeness whereby maternal relationships may in some ways inhibit the connection between fathers and their children; or alternatively, mothers and children become close to compensate for paternal distancing—perhaps both dynamics occur simultaneously. So, while distant relationships between fathers and children might be in part a function of sex-role expectations, it is important not to overlook systemic factors such as how mother-child interactions either foster or make up for unsatisfying father-child relationships.
As described elsewhere in this book, father and child perceptions of the paternal relationship before coming out can differ, and in some families there were also discrepancies between the fathers’ and children’s perceptions of the relationship several months after the child came out. Three fathers whose children said the relationship remained distant or became more so once they came out perceived the relationship as having improved. Wanda, a previously quoted college student, described her current relationship with her father Frank, a butcher, who participated in this research and was previously quoted:
We don’t really have a relationship. It’s horrible to say. We don’t talk about anything. The only way I can bond with my father is at the bar or if we’re drinking together, and even then nothing serious is discussed. It’s just shooting the shit, as they say. Sorry. That’s it. That’s all I’ve ever known from him, unless I’m going to go fishing with him or I go drinking with him.
However, Frank believed the relationship got better. He reported: “I’d have to say we’re closer . . . we joke around more now than we ever did.” This next father did not say whether or not his relationship with his son improved, but at the time of his interview he saw it as pretty normal and positive: “I’d say we have a good relationship—as close as you can be to a college age kid. He doesn’t tell us everything.” His son described: “Oddly enough, it has kind of come full circle. We don’t talk that much. When I was a kid or in high school, driving to school we would talk about superficial stuff like school, the weather, politics, sports, whatever . . . and it is just kind of the same way now.” As stated earlier, fathers tend to have relationships with their children in which they provide them with material and physical assistance rather than emotional support, and it seems in at least a few of these families this did not change once the child came out. In chapter 4 Lily’s father Rocky described how, after she came out, he believed that he and Lily got closer, with Lily more available for Rocky’s hugs. When lily was asked how coming out changed her relationship with her father, she replied, “We don’t discuss much and we’ve kind of gone into our own corners . . . I trust him. I care about him. We may not talk about things, but when I got in a car accident the first person I called was him. He is always there and he always will be.”
Possible explanations for these discrepancies are similar to what has been described before. Fathers might not want to admit to an outsider how their relationships were less than ideal, particularly to an interviewer who is gay or a parent of a lesbian. A second factor might also be at play, whereby children and fathers have different standards as to what constitutes a good father-child relationship. Whatever the reason, it is hard to read these interviews and not feel sad over the inability of these fathers and their children to fully, emotionally connect.
It is worth noting that in each of the families previously quoted the child’s relationship with the mother improved after coming out. Only three children reported that relationships with their mothers suffered since they came out. This next African American girl, aged sixteen, lived with her mother in a blighted urban neighborhood: “We are not as close as we used to be. She works a lot and we don’t spend much time together. And, when we do spend time together, all we do is complain.” Her mother, a security guard at an office complex, recognized the current problems and attributed them to her own stresses:
It could be better. I am very tense because I don’t like living here. I am not happy with my job. So I am very tense. That affects us because, well, Linda tends to repeat the same things. It might seem like little mistakes, but they are consistent. Like putting empty containers back in the refrigerator, not putting tops back on anything, leaving lights on. I have an eating disorder, and she knows I have issues with food. So don’t eat certain things when you know that is going to create a problem. And she will anyway.
Another respondent felt mostly satisfied with her relationship with her mother but was disturbed by her mother’s new tendency to talk about her own sex life. It was almost as if the daughter telling her mother she was a lesbian left her mother feeling she now had the freedom to talk in detail about her own sexual interests. The third respondent felt frustrated because he wished he could spend more quality time with his mother but was unsure whether her unavailability had to do with her feelings about his sexual orientation.
Let’s face it, most parents worry about their children, whether they are gay, lesbian, or straight, and will continue to do so as long as they live. To nurture and protect a child from infancy and then to watch her go out into the world beyond their protective reach is a difficult transition for many parents, who, understandably, never loose the desire to keep their children safe. This tendency is particularly strong for parents of gay and lesbian children. If it is true that parents’ primary wish for their children is that they be happy and healthy, then it follows that they would be deeply troubled by the thought that their gay and lesbian children would encounter threats to their well-being—particularly those related to being gay such as such as harassment, discrimination, and HIV infection.
Most of the parents in this study, even those who recognized and could articulate the benefits of adjusting to and accepting a gay child, continued to worry about the well-being of their children, and this anxiety persisted no matter how long it had been since their children had come out to their them. The African American woman who lives in the inner city and whose daughter came out four years ago was quoted earlier in this chapter on how her pride in her daughter’s academic accomplishments helped her adjust to her sexual orientation. However, the recent murder of an openly lesbian young woman in her neighborhood filled her with worry. She remembered: “She said they are going to this new gay club, tomorrow or Friday, in Newark. I think it’s called the Globe or something—she’ll tell you about it. It scares me to death, so I keep telling her to be careful.” Her daughter, who knew the murdered young woman, was well aware of her mother’s concerns for her safety.
Mac, a retired gay firefighter, was previously quoted as fearing for the safety of his fourteen-year-old, newly out lesbian daughter, Julian, who understood his worries: “Yeah, he said to be careful in school and stuff—that not a lot of people are OK with it, and I realized that too. I told him that I have seen what goes on in school. I realized that it was not really the safest thing to go and parade around in school, with teenagers who aren’t exactly mature.”
A child’s appearance could play a role in parents’ ongoing fears. This next mother, whose daughter Emma had been out three years, described:
I think it is, for me, a worry because of her presentation. Because a lot of her friends—you don’t know that they are gay unless they want you to know that they are gay. But Emma is not like that: she is out . . . Yes, that is the thing I worry about, that it will put her in danger. I know there are people in this world who are crazy. And who, for whatever reason, don’t like gays and want to hurt them. So I do worry about that.
Her daughter described:
When I cut my hair, she was really worried that something might happen. She still doesn’t want me to put a rainbow flag on my car, just because she doesn’t know what would be done to my car. She worries that, because I am very open and out, that I’ll get hurt or that somebody will do something to harm me. She told me that, probably right after I cut my hair. And then in January of freshman year in college is when I got my car, and I wanted to put a rainbow sticker on it. She was like, “I don’t really want you to.”
Parents could be worried about discrimination in their children’s future careers, particularly if the family was middle class. When asked what, if anything, was difficult about having a lesbian child, this father, an architect whose daughter had been out for three years, offered: “The only difficulty I can see, it would be, again, how other people, other than family, would construe her, especially people in the business world.”
In the U.S. and other Western countries, adolescents and young adults, particularly males, are notorious risk takers (Johnson and Malow-Iroff 2008). Considering this youthful propensity, along with parents’ natural lifelong tendency to worry for their children, it must be very frightening for parents to launch a gay young son into the world knowing he is exploring sexual relationships among a population of people in which a sizable proportion are believed to carry a dangerous, sexually transmitted virus.
In chapter 4 we saw how parents’ angst about their sons contracting HIV could get in the way of their adjustment. Even among parents who adjusted to the news their son was gay, the fear of HIV remained an ongoing concern. Parents worried about their sons’ well-being, particularly if they in any way seemed to be jeopardizing their health through their sexual activities.
This Latina mother described her current feelings about her son’s homosexuality, one year after finding out: “Honestly, it is not about the sexuality itself. It is about being promiscuous with strangers, dating people he didn’t know, doing drugs, drinking—drinking a lot. And it is just a main concern about him being at the wrong place at the wrong time.” Her worries were at least partially allayed by her son’s current involvement with a steady boyfriend. Nevertheless, her son knew his mother feared he would contract HIV For parents of gay sons, HIV-risk was a large, looming fear that did not dissipate as time passed from the initial discovery.
This next mother described: “He has told me that he has no problem jumping into bed with whomever because he thinks is cute (laughing). That is when the condom conversation starts.” Her son, when asked if he thought his mother worried about him getting HIV, responded, “I’m sure she does . . . She has tried to give me the talk, and I always shut her up. Because I’m like, ‘You are my mother! We are just not going to have this conversation!’ . . . I don’t want to hear about them, so why do [they] want to hear about me?” This next mother described: “Like any kid, he doesn’t want to talk to me about sex, so since my current thing is fear about his sexual activity . . . I wouldn’t be sort of in [his] face about it. But I am with him about this. So he gets mad at me. You know, ‘Leave me alone. I know all that.’”
Ann, mother of Mike, who tried to commit suicide right before he told his mother he was gay, spoke of how she tried to talk to her son about his sex life:
Well, I realize it is totally up to him but I have been very blunt with him and said; “I hope that you are practicing safe sex.” And he said, “Oh, Ma!” And I said, “I have to say it.” We always joked when they were kids, if they didn’t like something I did, I would say, “I am required by law; it is on my mother’s license. I have to do this. And if I don’t they will revoke my license.”
Imagine being a frightened parent who sees a child facing a risk to his health and life but who feels helpless to do anything about it. As these quotes indicate, the parents in this study tried to discuss HIV risk with their children, but their kids, clearly embarrassed by their parents’ wish to talk specifically about sex—especially sex that is considered taboo—resisted their efforts. Thus the parents’ fears must have been compounded by their feelings of helplessness. Clearly, as indicated by the reactions of these young men, it is quite difficult to deal with this issue by talking about it directly.
Nevertheless, there is some good news—family relationships can have an impact on a son’s sexual behaviors. As I explain elsewhere in more detail (LaSala 2007), a little over half the gay male youth in this study revealed that their parents had in fact influenced them to engage only in safer sex. However, the influence they cited was not their parents’ efforts at educating or monitoring them, which felt like intrusive nagging. (Does that ever really work?) Instead, it was the young men’s feelings of obligation to their parents to stay healthy that inspired them to either avoid anal sex altogether or consistently use condoms when they engaged in it. The young gay respondents knew that if they contracted HIV their families would be devastated.
After reading my article on this topic, a respected colleague of mine who does research on HIV prevention asked, with stunned incredulity, “Are you saying that a child’s guilt is a good thing?” After a pause—during which I briefly felt . . . well . . . guilty for thinking guilt can be a good thing—I responded, “Yes, if it keeps the child safe.” Guilt can be beneficial if it reminds children that their behavior has implications for those who love them, but can be a problem if parents use it excessively to control their behavior.
As stated previously, when parents learned they had a gay child, they very quickly realized they were now living in a world that stigmatized not only their children but also themselves. Suddenly, these parents were involuntarily drafted into a club whose members were disparaged by others. For some parents, particularly those who were white, this was their first bitter taste of the injustice of stigma, and it was eye-opening in ways that were painful and frightening.
As described throughout earlier chapters, there are two types of courtesy stigma: vicarious stigma, or the suffering parents feel empathically because their loved one is suffering, and public stigma, which is the stigma family members experience because they are thought to be to blame for their loved one’s stigmatizing condition (Corrigan and Miller 2004). These two types of stigma were clearly issues for parents in this study. When asked, “What was the most difficult thing about having a gay or lesbian child?” most parents (close to two-thirds of the parent sample) gave replies that described coping with stigma. In response to this question, this mother of a twenty-three-year-old gay son described:
What other people say. Like I can’t stand, I mean I don’t care about gay jokes, I am Italian—I can rattle off one thousand Italian jokes, whatever, but outright nastiness. If I am somewhere and someone says something derogatory about gay or lesbian people—that bothers me. My friends know, so they would never ever say anything that would hurt me or my son in front of me ever, and I would assume they wouldn’t do it behind me either. I am talking about being at a restaurant or something and strangers saying something, particularly about gay marriage. That is hard, because I just want to turn around to them and say, “Is it hurting you? My son is gay, and you don’t know him. How is that bothering you?” I don’t, but I would like to.
Fred, the father of Mike, observed:
It’s hard with people you meet socially. Professionally, most educators are very positive . . . We’ve talked at two different high school health classes. For the most part, teachers have been supportive. However, this last time around, after we had done our presentation, a mother talked about her son, and I talked about my son. And then we turned it over to the class for questions, and there weren’t many questions, so the teacher got involved and asked questions, and he was pretty ignorant. I was kind of surprised.
Sometimes parents were sensitive to the possibility of being judged negatively for having a gay or lesbian child, like Rocky, a previously quoted father of a lesbian: “Yes, there is a social stigma. Yes, I am hiding it. I only tell people I want to tell [who] I know are gay or people that are important in her life that she wants me to tell. Will I tell my boss or the people I work with? No. I never will . . . yes, there is still a stigma about being gay, and I can’t tell general society.” Sometimes people worried that others would judge or blame them for their child’s homosexuality. In these circumstances, parents feared being the direct target of stigma. This Latina mother of a gay male described:
RESPONDENT: I think the hardest part is people finding out . . . because you have to deal with people who want to find fault with you. They pretend to be your friend, and I don’t feel that they are friends enough for me to tell them my son is gay. I don’t think they care enough for me to say this is what is going on with my son. So I think the hard part is if people found out, how they would react. To me it wouldn’t make a difference, because I wouldn’t speak to them anymore anyway, but with members of the church, I don’t know how they would react to that.
INTERVIEWER: You don’t tell them so they don’t think badly about your son or so they don’t feel bad about you?
RESPONDENT: Yes, so that they don’t feel bad about me. I still realize there is a stigma to having a gay child. Somehow I might have done something wrong. I am not saying I don’t feel good about Carlos being gay, I feel good about telling the people he wants me to tell and the people I am comfortable talking to—my good friends. But have I told anybody I work with, any of my employees or my clients? No, other than the gay ones, no. It is my choice, but I am not ready to go there. I still think it is a problem; I am not ready to shout it to the world. I am not going on any PFLAG march, because I still have those feelings that somebody important to me might be turned off. I still feel that way, I have to admit it.
Other parents reported experiencing the stigma vicariously. Like all good parents, they wanted to protect their children. When they heard antigay hostility from others, they were reminded of the stigma their children would encounter. As remarked by Rachel, who was quoted earlier in this chapter:
I learned who to talk to. I would become more aware of people’s comments about gay people and then decide who I might not want to reveal her identity to. Or I . . . would just be quiet in a situation. It is hard. And you worry about them. You know, when they are young . . . you worry about them anyway, and when you have got a gay teenager you worry about them.
Also, as stated by Susan, the mother of Mitch:
I have a new friend at work, and I just want to tell her. I just kind of want to try it out on her. But I haven’t yet. I don’t think the moment has been there yet. I was at lunch with a girlfriend last week, and it is a girl I have known for a number of years, and she said something about a mutual acquaintance of ours, a single woman, and she says, “You know, did you ever think she was gay?” And I said, “Yeah, I did.” And she said, “I don’t care.” And I said, “Well I certainly don’t care.” And I thought that was the opportunity to say, “I certainly don’t care because my son is gay.” And I thought I missed that opportunity. I could have tried that out on her and saw what happened.
I still feel like I might lose some friends over this. I would be a little more upset if I would lose some family. But I also think that I underestimate people. People that love me should love me and love my son. But I am still afraid. I am not ready to take that risk yet. And I don’t know. I hope I wake up and someday think I am ready. It would be hard for me to be ready before my husband because if I told close friends he would be uncomfortable. I don’t want to do that to him.
This next mother of a lesbian claimed never to have had a problem with her daughter’s sexuality. When asked what, if anything, was currently difficult about having a lesbian child, she replied:
I think the difficult thing is the reactions of others. I know I shouldn’t let that bother me, but I worry are they going to change the way they treat her or not talk to her because they don’t know what to say or are uncomfortable? That is the thing I find difficult, worrying about how certain people are going to be towards her.
If you are a gay, lesbian, transgender, or a bisexual person, or someone with a concealable disability, the thoughts and feelings of these parents must seem familiar; LGBT people, along with others whose stigmatizing conditions are hidden from public view, have to make decisions on an almost daily basis as to whom to disclose their distinguishing characteristic—having to scan their environments and find ways to determine who will be accepting and who won’t are frequent exercises for LGBT people as well as many others. Once parents of lesbian and gay people are aware of their children’s sexual orientations, they learn that they too must find ways to manage stigma.
The children of parents who worried what other people would think were not aware of their parents’ struggles to manage stigma. They knew that their parents worried they could be hurt by others but were ignorant as to the specific ways parents wrestled with their reactions to other people’s real or anticipated feelings and opinions. This is a shame, considering that the young gay and lesbian people themselves are going to have to, or already have, found ways to cope with ongoing discrimination, oppression, and persecution in their lives. Based on these findings, ways of dealing with stigma would be a good topic for family discussion, and this will be further explicated in the clinical implications section of this chapter.
There’s good news for families of lesbian and gay children and that is that parents can reach the point where they are proud of their children and value them for their uniqueness. They can use the experience of adjusting to a lesbian or gay child to broaden their perspectives on life. They can also develop sensitivity to other marginalized groups—no doubt because parents of coming-out children abruptly find themselves potentially stigmatized. As a result, or perhaps as a function of these benefits, parent-child relationships can improve, and families can become stronger than ever following a son or daughter’s coming out. Now the million dollar question is, what is the alchemy that transforms troubled parents and children into families that can reap such rewards?
Seasoned therapists are familiar with the difficulty, even impossibility, of getting families to see the gold nuggets between the silt and stones of trouble and misfortune. We are rightly suspicious and cynical when experts offer easy-sounding solutions to this challenge—because we know none exist.
Nevertheless, the stories of the respondents in this book offer important clues that may suggest some relevant guidelines. As indicated in the last chapter, parents can be guided to get emotional relief and reassurance from nonjudgmental confidants outside their immediate families. Clinicians can point out to children the role played by their own interactions and behavior in their relationships with their parents. Furthermore, reports of parents who believed their lives improved suggest that practitioners need to be actively vigilant for this possibility among client-families of coming-out children. We will never know whether there is gold in the hills unless we look for it.
However, in our search for positives, we must be careful not to impart the message to our clients that we are uninterested or incapable of listening to their suffering—or that there is something wrong with them if they don’t find something good in their pain. In previous chapters I talk about how clients must feel that their suffering is heard before they are ready to accept referrals, education, or, if in conflict, their opposing family member’s point of view. I would add that clients must feel their guilt, shame, loss, and fear are understood before they can even think about how having and adjusting to a gay or lesbian child can be in any way positive.
McMillen (1999) suggests some gentle, sensitive questions clinicians can ask their clients about possible benefits and wisely cautions that this should be done in a way that does not invalidate people’s grief, anger, and anxiety. In keeping with his advice, well-timed questions are proposed, such as “I see how painful and difficult this is for you right now, but I am wondering what, if anything, you are learning from the experience of having a gay child? What is it teaching you about yourself, your child, your family, life in general?” or “I can really hear the (pain, grief, disgust, shame, anxiety, fear) that this is causing you. What, if anything, might be positive about having a gay or lesbian child?”
In addition, it would be advisable for the therapist to have the previously described catcher’s mitt ready so that she can hear and, perhaps, gently reinforce anything the client recognizes as positive. In so doing, therapists can give families who are struggling some hope that there is not only a possible end in sight to their suffering but also that something constructive might eventually come out of the coming out crisis.
The finding that many strained or disengaged father-child relationships did not change or improve in the months or years after the child came out further suggests that therapists must work to engage detached fathers. It bears repeating that family therapists must be careful not to collude with a societal tendency to exclude fathers from the emotional lives of their children. Instead, they need to find ways to engage them and draw them out. Like swimming upstream, this is not easy, but, in my experience, I have seen too many family therapists demonize fathers for acting in the ways in which they have been socialized—if we really want to help families, we need to stop doing this.
Many men tend to clam up when asked directly about emotionally charged issues, especially if they don’t really know the person doing the asking. They are not trained to recognize their emotional needs, never mind discuss them. Thus, when the conversation turns to feelings, particularly painful feelings, they might feel as if the therapist and the female family members are speaking a foreign language. That is why, early in therapy, direct questions such as “how does that make you feel?” are often ineffective. Both my personal and my professional experiences have taught me that, sometimes, the task of getting a man to talk about his sadness, fear, and anger is like coaxing a squirrel into a cage—sudden, dramatic movements are best avoided.
Instead, to engage reluctant fathers, it is better to start slowly by discussing issues with a low emotional charge, such as their work or hobbies, until they seem to feel at ease. Then, as they get more comfortable and the relationship with the therapist becomes established, the therapist can ask family-oriented questions that do not necessarily leave the client emotionally vulnerable, such as what makes them most proud of their sons and daughters. Once fathers seem more relaxed, as evidenced by the free flow of conversation, therapists can gently probe such topics as how they feel about their daughter’s or son’s sexual orientation.
De Jong and Berg (2008) point out that, quite often, in marriage or family therapy, men are involuntary clients—even though there might be no legal mandate, they are in therapy because someone else, namely, their wives, thinks they should be. Thus, as is advisable with most involuntary clients, it is a good idea for therapists to initially take their time to get to know them, making them as comfortable as possible before slowly drawing them out. It is important, specifically in families with lesbian and gay children and distant, distressed fathers, that we are sure to engage and then gently pressure them to add their voices to family issues.
We must also be mindful that family dynamics might function in a way that both keeps fathers peripheral and mothers overburdened with the emotional needs of their children. So, as clinicians invite fathers to be more engaged, they might at the same time need to get the family to make room for his participation. Coaching certain enactments like “Mom, do you have any idea how Dad feels about this? He seems like the strong silent type—but can you get him to talk to you about this right now?” or asking Father directly, “Dad, you are an important part of this family and a big part of Jason’s life. Let’s give Mom a little rest and hear what you thought about when your son told you he was gay.” Then clinicians may need to patiently wait for Dad’s response, and help other family members do the same, while at the same time standing ready to interrupt any interruptions. Such interventions can push fathers to talk and also give therapists an opportunity to show other family members how they might be letting Dad off the hook by not asking him such questions or blocking his participation by interrupting him when he attempts to speak. Whatever clinicians do, they must be sure they don’t leave fathers out and avoid getting induced by the family into doing so.
Once Dad is talking, there are new challenges, particularly if his views are angry or harshly critical. Remember, fathers are raised in a world where homosexuality is too often about dominance and humiliation. As stated earlier, go anywhere heterosexual males are together in a group and accusations of homosexuality can be heard as a taunt or a put down. Thus some of fathers’ reactions may have to do with their own special shame and anguish, which must be recognized. As stated throughout this book, gays, lesbians, and parents need to become social critics, and fathers need to recognize the myths they have been taught about homosexuality so they can begin to unlearn them.
When we are confronted with danger and feel we cannot protect ourselves or those we love, of course we are going to feel anxious. Parents who are launching their children must learn to give up trying to feel in control (Garcia-Preto 1999). They must find a way to reconcile themselves to the helplessness they feel when they realize they cannot fully prevent their children from engaging in risky behaviors, nor shield them from the consequences of such behaviors. However, customary parental fear is perhaps much worse for parents who must launch a gay son into a world in which a moment of simple carelessness could leave him with a potentially fatal illness. The natural tendency when we become anxious is to try, as much as possible, to be in control. Nevertheless, nervous parents who seek control of their children risk choosing methods that not only don’t work but instead push their children away. In this study, parents urging their sons to talk about their sexual experiences or hounding them to use condoms was ineffective. Sons found this behavior intrusive, embarrassing, and irritating—not exactly the result parents were trying for.
What seemed to have some sway in the young gay males’ behavior, however, was not necessarily what parents did but the relationship parents maintained with their children. The young men knew that if they were sexually careless and got sick they would not only hurt themselves but also those who loved them. In keeping with this, therapists helping families cope with the fear of HIV might find that parents and children are engaging in ineffective interchanges like this:
MOM: You’d better be using a condom, young man. There are a lot of diseases out there!
DAD: Yes, would you like me to buy you some condoms? I can if you are embarrassed.
SON: Eeewwww! Gross! Get off my back! I am not talking to you about my sex life—do I ask you about yours? Why the hell are you asking me about mine then?!
In families in which this type of interchange is occurring, it is the therapist’s job to try to coach family members to replace such conversations with dialogues that include personal reflections of feelings, including, love, caring, and fear.
THERAPIST: I see this is a difficult topic to discuss. Mom and Dad, as good, concerned parents, you are worried for your child’s well-being, and you, Junior, are understandably embarrassed to discuss your sex life with them. I am wondering if it would be helpful to dig a bit deeper. Mom, Dad, can you tell your son about your fears and what you would like from him? And, for now, Junior—as yucky as this seems—would you just sit back, not say anything, and just listen?
MOM: I know you are a young man and you make your own choices, but I love you and I would be devastated if anything bad happened to you.
DAD : It’s a dangerous world out there. I remember Rock Hudson dying of AIDS and I don’t want the same thing to happen to you. I just want to make sure you are safe, son.
Clinicians can also coach gay sons to reassure their parents.
THERAPIST: Of course you don’t want to talk about your sex life with your parents. That’s normal. But is there something—anything—you can tell them that can calm their worries, without getting into the details of your sex life?
SON: “Mom, Dad, I know I understand how to keep myself safe—they have been teaching us in school since eighth-grade health class. I’m not stupid—I don’t want to die! I don’t do anything that will make me sick. I promise.”
This hypothetical excerpt is not meant to insinuate that this conversation will go as smoothly in real life, but instead is offered to demonstrate one way to coach family members to have more authentic, and therefore more productive, discussions about this especially anxiety-arousing subject. In reality, family members will probably need repeated prompts from the therapist before they are able to talk meaningfully and effectively about this stressful issue.
Like a slap in the face, when parents discovered their newly stigmatized status, it was sudden and jarring, particularly for white parents who were unaccustomed to dealing with stigma. Based on the findings of this study, it is likely that therapists working with families of lesbian and gay youth are going to confront parents who have ongoing concerns about how to handle their somewhat newly stigmatized status as parents of gay children.
For members of minority groups to be mentally healthy and strong, they must develop the ability to be critical of the society in which they live. They must be able to question the prevailing views on sexuality and gender and eventually understand that they are excessively narrow. Parents of gays and lesbians, like their children, must be able to withstand the slings and arrows that come with living in a world that persecutes those who challenge its restrictive norms governing sexuality and gender. In order to develop and maintain good self-esteem, gays, lesbians, and those who love them must grow to learn that some of the established ideas are just plain wrong.
In my own practice, my most troubled gay clients are the ones who cling to the notion that being gay is shameful, perverted, and indicative of weakness. In their minds, the treatment lesbians and gays receive is justified and proof of how wrong they are for having same-sex attractions. Until lesbians and gays and their parents develop the ability to be critical of society, I find they are unable to attain or preserve their self-esteem.
Since stigma is something the entire family must face, it is good grist for the family therapy mill. Although siblings were not interviewed for this study, during this research and in my clinical practice I have been made aware of incidents when brothers and sisters faced jeering taunts from peers who accused them of being gay or lesbian because they had a gay sibling. Lesbians and gays and their parents must find ways to handle the effects of discrimination and prejudice, so a discussion of these topics that includes the entire family could prove useful. The therapist can stimulate dialogues or enactments whereby family members conjointly discuss and strategize ways to handle stigma. For example, the clinician can introduce topics for family discussion and problem solving such as, who gets told about the child’s sexual orientation? How do children make the decision as to whom to disclose? How do parents? How will family members handle the challenges of discrimination? Or, more specifically, what does one do when overhearing or being told an antigay joke?
It must be remembered that our young clients knew they were gay or lesbian a lot longer than their mothers and fathers knew they were parents of gay children. Based on the experiences of families discussed in chapter 1, many youth have had to find ways to survive the verbal and physical harassment of peers. Therefore, it is likely that they will have developed some coping tools forged in the fire of these painful challenges. Thus, by the time they come out, they can potentially share their expertise with their parents. In my own practice I have coached children to talk to their parents about their experiences with discrimination, whether from employers, teachers, school administrators, or peers. I have found that it can be quite effective when children share with their parents the strategies they have found useful.
Furthermore, it is important to consider that most of the families who are struggling with these issues do so at a time when the child must become more autonomous and adultlike. I have written of how satisfying it can be for children to know they have reached the level where they can be helpful to their parents. Thus it is no doubt gratifying for youth to be able to help their parents cope with something with which they have developed some proficiency. A simple directive that the young people talk about their experiences and make suggestions to other family members could be enough to spur a fruitful discussion in this area. Such an intervention can have the beneficial side effect of helping young clients and their families recognize and appreciate the child’s competence—a good thing, considering the developmental stages of these families.
As mentioned earlier, it might be especially difficult for white parents to understand and cope with being newly stigmatized. That is not to say that things were easy for African American, Latino, or other minority families. Though many of the issues faced by families of color were the same as those encountered by whites, some unique cultural factors emerged that impacted the family trajectory and will be discussed in the next chapter.