However, once the child comes out, it can be a seismic shock for the family. Parents have reported feelings of loss, guilt, anger, fear, religious confusion, and isolation, upon learning that their child is gay or lesbian. Youth fear the very real possibility they will lose their family’s financial and emotional support. Nevertheless, existing models of coming out tend to be individually focused, relying exclusively on either the perception of children. What do parents and children from the same family say about the coming out experience? What do parents think helps their adjustment? What do children believe is beneficial? How are parent and child impressions similar, different and why?

Furthermore the traditional thinking about parental adjustment goes something like this: 1) parents get upset or angry when they learn their children are gay, 2) their frightened, helpless children who are seeking love and acceptance are victims of their parents’ disapproval, 3) parents get educated about homosexuality, 4) they feel better and their attitudes toward their children improve. However, it is reasonable to wonder if the reality of parental adjustment is more complicated and whether there is a family adjustment process in which both parents and children are active players. Do child factors and/or parent-child interactions play a role in family adjustment?

The answers are yes and yes


To find these answers, I qualitatively interviewed a sample of 65 African American, Latino, and white gay and lesbian youth (aged 18-25) and 76 of their parents, and what emerged from this research was a tentative model that identified family adjustment in 4 stages, the first of which is called Family Sensitization. This is the stage introduced in the first entry of this blog and typifies the year or so before kids came out, when they were realizing their sexual orientation and as a result becoming distressed and distanced from their parents. Though most children believed their parents suspected their sexual orientation at this stage, many parents did not. Nevertheless, parents became confused and worried in response to their children’s distance.

Read more in the new book: "Coming Out, Coming Home: Helping Families Adjust to a Gay or Lesbian Child (http://www.comingoutcominghome.com/ )

Before Coming Out: Children's Fears, Parents' Suspicions

For some girls, it might begin with a crush on an older sister’s best friend or a strange physical sensation that occurs while watching Xena, the Warrior Princess on television. For a boy, it might be a fantasy to take a bath with a buddy or a strong urge to run his hand across his gym teacher’s bearded cheek. At first, these children might not pay much attention to these early stirrings—when they first appear boys and girls are usually too young to know what they mean. However, at some point as they get older they come realize to their horror that there is something wrong with these feelings—horribly wrong. These urges threatened to pull them away from everything and everyone they know, leaving them as lost and alone as an unmoored boat, bobbing and drifting on a cold, dark, dangerous sea.

Children with these feelings often want nothing more than to be like everyone else, to be accepted and well-liked by their peers. However, they soon realize that if they were found out they would be ridiculed as outcasts. They could lose everything: their friends, the respect of the teachers and classmates at school—and—perhaps the most frightening prospect of all, they could loose the love of their parents.

Now imagine you are a parent of one of these children. You noticed that your tomboy daughter does not seem to be developing interests in boys like her older sister did at her age and also seems to have a particularly intense friendship with the girl next door. Your sensitive son prefers to help his mom around the house rather than play ball outside with the other boys. Like a gentle summer breeze, the thought occurs to you. “Does this mean . . . could it mean . . . ?” but, before you could finish it, the notion, like that breeze, is gone. You push away any nagging worry the thought leaves behind and try to forget it.