Coming Around: Parenting Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Kids (6 page)

BOOK: Coming Around: Parenting Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Kids
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GRIEF RESPONSE

Parental adjustment to a child’s coming out has been compared to the grief response. Esteemed psychiatrist and author Elisabeth Kubler-Ross determined that people pass through five stages when coping with a loss: denial, anger, bargaining, sadness and acceptance. Though generally thought to progress in a linear fashion, there may be some back and forth and bouncing among stages. It is not uncommon for people to circle through the stages over and over as they deal with different aspects of the loss. For instance, a parent’s first journey through grief might be sadness associated with the loss of the son’s heterosexual identity and the entitlements associated with that identity. Later, the parent might grieve the loss of never gaining (through marriage) the daughter the parent always wanted. In this way, grief passes through many layers, one at a time.

FORMS OF DENIAL AND ACCEPTANCE

Author Ann Muller identified four types of parental reactions to a child’s disclosure of being gay:
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•  
Loving denial
, the most common reaction, is when a parent offers words of acceptance but conceals the child’s sexual orientation from others, thus belying incomplete acceptance. Concealment may give the parent time to process this new information before sharing it with others. However, if the
parent doesn’t come around to mirroring the child’s level of disclosure, the child may interpret the parent’s concealment as a sign of shame.

       
•  
Resentful denial
is marked by a parent’s physical or emotional withdrawal from the parent-child relationship. This can be particularly painful to a child who may already be struggling with feeling unacceptable or even untouchable.

       
•  
Loving open
response is the ideal and involves both communication and behaviors that denote acceptance. Parents who respond in this manner maintain close connections with their children as they work through the adjustment to their children’s sexual orientations.

       
•  
Hostile recognition
is the most damaging to a child. This response usually includes demeaning and stereotypic accusations and the parent throwing the child out of the house. Reactions like this can result in permanent estrangement. Don’t force your child to leave home. Though parents who kick their children out often take them back in, it may prove to be too late: “Holding onto the belief that parents will eventually come around is not always within [gay children’s] developmental grasp, leaving these youngsters at high risk for depression, suicide, and running away.”
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If your first response to your child’s sexual orientation was rejection, I predict that you are about to shift to acceptance. Your willingness to read this book is a good first step. Apologizing would be a great second step.

 

Jeff’s Story

Jeff told his mother that he is gay a few years ago. He didn’t want to tell his father, because he knew his father would throw him out of the house. Jeff’s mother thought this prudent. Her husband was always making nasty comments about “homos” and “faggots.” When Jeff was sixteen, he began coming home late and then not coming home at all. Jeff’s mom asked him about his absences and he told her that he was in love. He explained to her that he and his boyfriend were going to drop out of high school and travel across the country together.

There is a litany of problems in Jeff’s life that complicates his coming out to his father. His parents have an unhealthy relationship that models fear and disconnection. Because of his father’s vitriol toward homosexuality, Jeff is exposed to a level of homophobia tantamount to emotional abuse. His mother’s passivity has created an untenable situation for her son. In order to be true to his sexual orientation, Jeff feels he must escape from his home.

Jeff may have naively—or as a pretext to pacify his mother—described this plan as a trip, but in reality Jeff is running away. According to the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, as many as 20 to 40 percent of homeless youths are gay, lesbian or bisexual.
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While less research is available on transgender youths, the number is probably higher. LGBTQ runaways are sometimes referred to as “throwaways.” If Jeff and his partner hit the streets, their chances are poor. Failing to complete his high school degree will create additional challenges. Runaways encounter many dangers and gay runaways fare worse than their straight peers. Jeff and his partner will be at risk for drug abuse, sexual exploitation and suicide.

I strongly advised Jeff’s mom that she insist he stay and finish high school. In exchange, she should promise him that she will give him a safe and open home where he and his partner are welcomed. In doing so, she should assure her son that any marital problems that arise from this action are not his fault nor his problem. The fault and problem lies with his father. Jeff’s mom should privately confront her husband about his homophobia and the way he expresses it. I suspect that homosexuality is not the only thing Jeff’s father rants about. People who have anger management problems typically spew anger toward other groups or people.

Jeff is still a child and deserves a safe and supportive home environment. If Jeff’s father cannot provide that home, his mother should consider living separately, at least until Jeff is mature enough to set out on his own. The safety of children, physically and emotionally, must take precedence over adult relationships, even marital ones. This is, in my opinion, the most basic parenting responsibility.

 

SOCIAL COPING METHODS

In one of the few studies that considered how a parent’s social life and social support was affected by a child’s coming out, Dr. Susan
Saltzburg, an associate professor in the College of Social Work at Ohio State University, interviewed parents who were in the acute stages of adjusting to their adolescents’ coming out. She observed two dimensions of experience: one that leads to social withdrawal and isolation and another that leads to social realignment and connection.
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SOCIAL WITHDRAWAL THEMES

       
•  
Creating Walls and Distance:
In this reaction, parents perceive having a gay child as a threat to their well-being and panic ensues. At the heart of this is fear of being rejected or treated harshly by those who hold a negative view of homosexuality. In response, parents isolate themselves. They refuse calls from friends, pull away from social contacts and may even avoid leaving the house.

       
•  
Grieving Without Understanding
: Parents feel that discovering their child is gay is equivalent to losing that child to death. The grief is so intense that they may cry for days or weeks. Homosexuality looms so large that, for the parents, it envelops all other aspects of the child’s personhood.

       
•  
Too Stigmatizing to Talk About
: Admitting that they grew up in a time when sexual orientation was taboo, parents with this reaction are unable to bring themselves to talk about homosexuality. Conservative religious upbringings usually play a role in shaping this belief. The parents feel that the stigma of homosexuality falls not only on the child, but on them as well.

       
•  
Fearing that Family Relationships Cannot Be Sustained
: These parents withdraw from one or more family members due to the assumption that the family member’s deeply entrenched views preclude any chance of acceptance. Sometimes this can happen between spouses, resulting in a diminished spousal relationship.

       
•  
Feeling Utterly Alone in Their Circumstances
: Having found no one who seems to understand the profundity of their experience, these parents doubt that anyone can. As a result, they isolate themselves, failing to lean on those who might be able to empathize.

       
•  
Living the Secret
: As a means of preserving social acceptance, these parents make demands on their child to play down being gay. They also ask siblings and other family members to keep the secret. They withdraw, lie and obfuscate in an attempt to pass as a straight family. Much like closeted gays, closeted families feel the psychological drain, the lack of authenticity in external relationships and the shame of hiding.

       
•  
Feeling Like an Outcast
: Feeling self-conscious and vulnerable to stigmatization, these parents align themselves at the social periphery. They see themselves as separated from the familiar flow of life and cut off from the support of mainstream parents.

All of the parents in Saltzburg’s study yearned to talk to someone who had personally experienced what they were going through. Here are some ways that parents reach out to connect with others.

SOCIAL REALIGNMENT AND CONNECTION THEMES

       
•  
Discovering Information
: These parents seek information, whether through people, books or television programs. Parents who use this style of coping feel less alone and gain new insights about homosexuality.

       
•  
Experiencing Mentorship from the Gay Community
: These parents seek LGB mentors. Mentors help normalize homosexuality and allow parents to see that their child can have a full and happy future. Ultimately, gay mentors can become extended family.

       
•  
Finding a Community of Like-Parent Peers
: Parents who utilize this coping style seek other parents who have gay children. Finding someone to talk to who is at the same stage of adjustment helps parents feel less alone. Without worrying about feeling judged, they are able to talk freely about sadness and disappointment and, by talking, they are able to move through the process of adjusting.

You can probably identify with one or more of these adjustment themes and coping styles. If so, you have a sense of what helps and
what doesn’t help you move toward acceptance. Isolation and withdrawal do not help and neither does committing your family or child to a life of secrecy. I strongly advise that you remain uncompromising in protecting your child’s right to be out and open at family and social functions. Failure to do so is colluding with the forces that seek to shame your child.

It may take courage, but you need to reach out and find support. If you anticipate a poor reaction from those in your current social circle, you may need to extend that circle. Some of the parents in Saltzburg’s study approached people whom they thought might be gay in an attempt to connect with someone who could help them understand coming out and homosexuality. Others attended PFLAG meetings or met parents of gay children at their children’s gay support groups. The best way to adjust to your child’s homosexuality is to get to know LGBTQs.

SUCCESSFUL ADJUSTMENTS

Much of the research on parental adjustment has focused on negative reactions or failed to move beyond the initial period of adjustment. But families can grow closer when they rally in support of an adolescent who is coming out. By demonstrating loyalty and love, family members can deepen connections. Coming out can promote serious conversations about relationships, values and beliefs—conversations that have the potential to benefit everyone in the family. The disclosure of sexual orientation can trigger other family disclosures, even ones that may be unrelated to sexuality. Disclosure communicates trust and trust can spread in a family.

Jeff Beeler, University of Chicago neurobiologist, and Vicky DiProva, former director of the Lesbian Community Cancer Project of Chicago, studied not only parents, but also families that successfully reintegrated after a child’s coming out. The research team found that a family’s experience can mirror the gay child’s experience.
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For instance, families have “finding out stories” that they need to share with others. They immerse themselves in gay culture, sometimes becoming quite sophisticated on gay issues. They go through a similar process of deciding who to come out to and when to come out based on the same factors that drive these decisions for gays. They see and hear things with a new vigilance for homophobia. Sometimes they become
advocates for change. They look back in time and “restory” gay family members’ pasts. For example, a history of poor self-esteem might be understood in retrospect as a symptom of internalized homophobia. A boy’s failure to find a girlfriend, previously attributed to being overly picky, is now correctly attributed to an absence of opposite-sex attraction.

Families that successfully adjust to a child’s coming out are also willing to remodel themselves, incorporating new rituals and traditions that draw the gay member and his or her partner into the fold. Inherent in the description of these families is an unyielding optimism. These families accept that things are different from what they expected, but difference isn’t equated with disappointment. Instead, life’s surprises are embraced as opportunities for growth.

PART II
HOMOPHOBIA
Chapter 8
Understanding Homophobia

S
ome people describe homophobia as a fear of homosexuals and anything associated with homosexuality. Others describe it as ignorance compounded by dislike, repulsion or hate. Taking both of these descriptions into account, homophobia is “a broad range of antigay tendencies including social avoidance, stereotypic beliefs, intolerance toward gay rights, [and] morality concerns.”
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Homophobia is even in the language we use when we talk about sexual orientation. Heterosexuals are “straight,” implying that homosexuals are bent or broken.

There are consistent findings regarding the general population and homophobic attitudes. Men are more homophobic than women, especially toward gay men.
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Those who attend weekly religious services are more homophobic than those who never participate in religious services.
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Those who identify as Catholic and Conservative Protestant are more homophobic than non-affiliated, moderate or liberal Christians and non-Christians. Dr. Bernie Sue Newman, associate professor at the School of Social Work at the University of Pittsburgh, found similar results regarding religion, with Conservative Protestants harboring the most negative views of gays and Atheists, Agnostics and Jews the least negative.
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BOOK: Coming Around: Parenting Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Kids
3.75Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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