Normal Queers: Straight Parents Respond to Their Children's “Coming Out” (original) (raw)
Related papers
What Makes a Queer Family Queer? A Response to Cristyn Davies and Kerry H. Robinson
Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, 2014
In this essay I respond to Cristyn Davies and Kerry Robinson's research on queer families by remarking on the distance GLBTQI people have travelled in the last half century. I raise critical questions about the potential gains and possible losses that may result from bringing heretofore subjugated knowledges into the school curriculum. Drawing on my own biography, I also interrogate the radical edge that our outsider status once allowed us, the rapid normalization of gay life, and the foreclosure of options which that normalization has brought. Finally, I pose a distinction between nontraditional and queer families as a prompt to further investigation of how vectors of identity such as class, race, ethnicity, and religion intersect with the choices people make about constructing families and raising children. GLBTQI lives are awash with children, as I was reminded on a recent trip to Provincetown, MA. Unawares, I arrived just as Family Pride Week-nestled in among Mates Leather Weekend, Roundup Recovery, Bear Weekend and the Gay Pilots Association Classic-moved into full swing. Proud parents, young children in tow, walked up and down Commercial Street and parked multiple strollers outside the many small restaurants and cafes that line the main drag. They were welcomed by an array of signs announcing clam bakes, targeted programming for their teens, parenting workshops for themselves, and all manner of affinity group meetings. At poolside early the next morning I was surrounded by attentive moms and dads encouraging their children to join them in the water, admonishing them not to splash others, and applauding their first swimming efforts. I overheard other conscientious parents offering advice about schools and schooling, exchanging compliments on their children's natatory skills, and sharing the kinds of easy confidences about their offspring so often proffered in city playgrounds, on nursery school steps, and in clinic waiting rooms. From outward appearances the adults were working hard and successfully at being engaged, concerned parents. In turn, the children were performing modern childhood to perfection, alternating demands for constant attention and acts of resistance to the close adult surveillance practiced by their caregivers. As I listened and watched that morning I could not help but reflect on what a different world this was from the one in which I had grown up, recognized myself as gay, and constructed a life based on the love of other men. In the decades immediately after World War II, our relationships with children were always suspect (Silin, 1997). Gay men and lesbians were characterized as predatory, seducing other people's children to satisfy their perverted desires and to fill their ranks in the absence of the ability to biologically reproduce with one another. We were feared as experts in recruitment. Today there continues to be confusion between paedophilia and homosexuality and the misreading of abuse as occurring from without rather than from within the family/circle of adults already known to the child. GLBTQI people function as the screen onto which others project their own unacceptable and unimaginable longings.
How Queer!-The Development of Gender Identity and Sexual Orientation in LGBTQ-Headed Families
Family Process, 2010
This paper focuses on the impact of heteronormativity on research and clinical theory, utilizing the case of a lesbian couple with a young gender dysphoric child as a backdrop to discuss the contextual unfolding of gender development within a lesbian parented family. The extant research on LGBTQ-headed families has minimized the complexity of children's developing gender identity and sexual orientation living in queer families, and has been guided by heteronormative assumptions that presume a less optimal outcome if the children of LGBTQ parents are gay or transgender themselves. This article challenges family therapists to recognize the enormous societal pressure on LGBTQ parents to produce heterosexual, gender-normative children, and the expectations on their children, especially those questioning their own sex or gender identities.
'Not a big deal'? exploring the accounts of adult children of lesbian, gay and trans parents
Most literature on lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans families has focused on the psychological and social well-being of school aged children with lesbian, gay and trans (LGT) parents. The aim of the present study was to explore how the adult children of LGT parents make sense of their families. The study focused both on recollections of childhood and on current feelings and experiences. Thirteen women and 1 man completed either an email interview or an online qualitative survey; the data were analysed using thematic analysis. The participants' accounts were protective of their parents and often drew on the normalizing discourses evident in pro-gay rhetoric about LGT parenting to minimize the significance of their parents' sexuality/gender identity and the 'taint of difference' associated with LGT families. At the same time, the participants strongly challenged heterosexist and homophobic/transphobic assumptions about LGT families and viewed the source of any difficulties they and their parents experienced as resulting from a hetero/cisnormative social context that prevented LGT people and their families from living openly and authentically without fear of discrimination. The results highlight the continuing micro impacts of hetero/cisnormativity in the lives of LGT people and their families.
Are the Kids All Right? A Qualitative Study of Adults with Gay and Lesbian Parents
Based on semi-structured, in-depth interviews, this article examines the experiences of twenty adults with gay and lesbian parents. Faced with ruptures in significant childhood attachments and strains in parent–child bonds, respondents developed coping strategies to deal with the disruptions to their bonds with others and the demands of forced autonomy that are the result of the creation of new identities. How and when they were told of their parents’ sexual orientation proved to be the fulcrum for how they were able to manage their identities as the children of gay and lesbian parents. The sexual orientation of their parents did not prove to be an issue for these respondents; instead the reactions of others proved to be a critical component for how they were able to create meanings in their lives—their identities were reinforced by positive interactions, and challenged by negative interactions. In the end, the influence of parental sexual orientation was less important, in relation to how respondents were able to construct meanings, and develop and maintain identities, than the qualities of familial relationships and interactions.
Accounting for 'disclosure' : lesbian parents' identity management in home and school contexts
2011
This qualitative research explores working-class (educated) lesbian parents' identity management strategies within home and school contexts. Following an evaluation of epistemological debates and social science approaches to theorizing 'self, I highlight the utility of a feminist social constructionist approach to research, and the centrality of language and discourse in the constitution of lesbian parents' subjectivities. This work is informed by poststructuralist, feminist and psychological theories of identity and subjectivity and I take a 'relational approach' to explore ways in which historically and culturally specific ideologies and discourses of sexuality, family and parenting shape lesbian parents' discursive practices and subjectivities. Seven working-class (educated) lesbian parents from the north-east of England took part in interviews about their lesbian parent families and their interactions with their children, friends, family and school staff ...
Stigma or Respect: Lesbian-parented families negotiating the school setting
This article explores the interface between lesbian-parented families and mainstream society through the example of schools. Lesbian-parented families are an increasingly visible family form; they are diverse and complex and raise challenges for heteronormative social institutions. Based on qualitative family interviews with lesbian-parented families in Melbourne, we discuss the dialectic between schools and families. In many heteronormative school contexts family members were stigmatized and burdened by secrecy and fear about their family configuration. However, there were also a significant minority of family members who felt respected, supported and safe within the school environment. These parents and children were out and proud about their families, and schools had responded with acceptance in both the schoolyard and the curriculum. We discuss the contextual factors (including social location and family formation), impacting on and constraining the interface between the families and schools, and point to opportunities for change.
Frontiers in Psychology
In the sixth wave of the U.S. National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study (NLLFS), when their offspring were 25 years old, the parents were asked to reflect on their most challenging and best experiences raising children in non-traditional families. The responses of 131 parents were interpreted through thematic analysis. The most challenging parenting experiences fell into five major categories: (1) distress about their children's experiences of exclusion, heterosexism, or homophobic stigmatization; (2) family of origin non-acceptance of their lesbian-parent family; (3) the never-ending process of "educating the world about queer parents"; (4) homophobia or hostility toward their non-traditional family; and (5) lack of legal protections for sexual minority parent (SMP) families. Their best parenting experiences included: (1) being role models, leading to a greater acceptance of LGBTQ people; (2) treasuring the LGBTQ parent and family community; (3) teaching their children to appreciate diversity of all types; and (4) witnessing their child's pride in their non-traditional family. Some of these challenges were anticipated by the parents more than a quarter century ago at the time that they were inseminating or pregnant with the index offspring.
Children and Youth Services Review, 2012
The purpose of the current qualitative study was to investigate whether adolescents in American planned lesbian families experienced negative reactions from their social environment associated with their mothers' sexual orientation, and if so, to explore the nature of these experiences. In addition, the focus was on the coping strategies as described by the adolescents themselves. Results revealed that half of the 78 participating 17-years-olds had experienced homophobic stigmatization. Such experiences usually took place within the school context and peers were most frequently mentioned as the source. The adolescents used adaptive strategies (such as optimism) more frequently than maladaptive strategies (such as avoidance) to cope with these negative experiences. Our results suggest that intervention programs focused on family diversity should be developed for school children of all ages since the stigmatization experienced by the studied adolescents typically happened in that context.