Coming out to the FamilyComing out to the FamilyIntroductionAs the title indicates this paper is going to deal with coming out and the family. Specifically, the paper will concentrate on gay and lesbian children and how their coming out affects the family, mainly the parents.
According to estimates the percentage of gay, lesbian or other non-heterosexual identified persons range anywhere from 4-17% of the general population. At first glance this fact would make any look at non-heterosexual issues a study of a minority. However, “it has been estimated that approximately one in two to three families have a member or members who on some level is or are dealing with his or her own homosexuality.” This makes the issue of the coming-out and how it affects the family a major issue and therefore a valid topic of scholarly research.
Initially the paper is going to deal with the coming out process itself. Afterwards it will broach the subject of the family life cycle and how coming out has different impacts on the family depending on the phase of the family life cycle that the family is at that time ensconced in.
Finally the paper will discuss the coming out process in relation to the extended family and which role the parents play in relating to the extended family.
Coming Out to the FamilyThis part of the paper will taker a closer look at the coming-out process itself and why adolescents chose to or chose to not disclose their sexuality to their parents.
Coming-out is defined as “the developmental process through which gays and lesbians recognize their sexual orientation and chose to integrate this knowledge into their personal and social lives” . “An essential turning point in the coming-out process is the moment when disclosure is undertaken with at least one parent.”
An integral part of Monteflores’ and Schultz’ definition is the word “chose” – adolescents have the choice whether or not to disclose their sexuality to parents or other family members. Some chose to do so, some chose not to do so.
Reasons for adolescents not to disclose their sexuality to parents that have been identified in research are as follows: fear of parental rejection , abuse and, a desire to avoid hurting or disappointing parents .
There has been limited research on what contributes to adolescents coming out, however, in a study conducted by Waldner and Magruder it was hypothesized that coming-out is “predicted by perceptions of family relations, lesbian/gay identity expression, and perceived resources” . This makes it more likely for adolescents to come out if they perceive more resources on gay or lesbian identity, if they actively express themselves as gay or lesbian and if family relations are not as close as in other families.
They applied exchange theory to the coming-out process, viewing the decision to disclose one’s identity as negotiated with costs and rewards in mind. Thus the decision to come out would only occur if the perceived rewards surpass the costs.
Their point was that since most families are heterosexual, parents tend to automatically assume that their children are heterosexual as well. Thus, families often fail to provide accurate or at least positive information on homosexuality and the lesbian/gay community. “Family members are often inadvertently a source of negative attitudes and stereotypes long before a child has realized he/she might be gay or lesbian”.
Waldner and Magruder proposed that persons who have particularly close relationships with their family members value the information handed down by the family more; for gay youths this would mean that if negative information is provided they would not be as likely to seek out additional information. They also proposed that gay youth who are particularly close to their family are not as likely to express their sexual identity by seeking out the gay community or participate in same-sex dating, because the perceived costs are higher. The resources that adolescents perceive and the expression of their lesbian and gay identity were found to have a large impact on whether or not they chose to disclose their sexual identity.
The authors of the paper did not mention the study. Instead, they wrote in their paper “The Influence of Sexual Orientation on Adolescent and Family Information Processing.” The paper states that
the findings of a longitudinal study indicate that the relationship between educational factors and sexual behavior is strongest among boys of middle-age or older, but there is also an association between these characteristics and sexual orientation. In contrast to our earlier findings, the results of this cross-sectional study of children who reported gay, bisexual and transgender orientation and family history do not indicate a lack of involvement in homosexual, bisexual, cross-sectional life, with the main finding being that homosexual people are more likely to engage in homosexual sexual behavior with adults of similar age relative to heterosexuals, with this in contrast the largest increase between the age group of the children in whom the association has been observed.
In their paper [11] (emphasis added), they suggest a “sociological study” where adolescents’ perceived social expectations for “gender identities” of other children and adolescents could be questioned by the question, “Will my son or daughter support same-sex marriage?” These studies are supported by the 2008 report of a nationwide survey of US children, [12] which indicated that most (88 percent) adolescents aged 16 to 23 thought that gay, bisexual, cross-sectional relationships were less important in their lives than heterosexual marriage, and other studies on the same topic have indicated that some [13] [14] provided little or no encouragement for adolescents to do this.[15]
Their conclusion is based on a “reasons to be cautious” (emphasis added), “that the use of data for making policy judgments is unlikely to promote better social and social outcomes for adolescents. If adolescents know they are being judged, they will seek out more data so that they have more information on their sexual identity.[16] Such data would help students to determine if their relationship with family members is a more important predictor of their future sexual orientation and explore that relationship further in the years ahead.”
It would seem, based on this analysis, that homosexual/LGBT youth are significantly less likely than heterosexual youth or those who are not their closest friends to report this kind of sexual orientation, and that homosexual/LGBT youth may have a larger self-reported “sexual orientation” (e.g., lesbian, gay, bisexual/trans), which translates to a larger share of their self-reported sexual identity.
The question then becomes—do the research, test whether it is accurate, and whether the results of these studies really tell the truth?
The researchers do not intend to test whether the findings of gay, bisexual and cross-sectional studies are generally accepted as trustworthy. One might argue that it is impossible to predict sexual orientation in children whose parents are actually bisexual (even with heterosexual parents). Yet there is an important question to be asked here: “Do the researchers trust them on such very simple problems that
In this article Waldner and Magruder posed another hypothesis, they proposed that gay and lesbian youths weigh the costs and benefits of disclosing their sexuality to their families. According to their hypothesis, gay and lesbian youths who are really close to their family would be less likely to come out since the perceived costs of that disclosure would be too high. They wrote that though it can be expected that a family that has strong family ties can in fact foster the environment for disclosure; there is no way an adolescent can know if the family will continue to be as supportive as before a disclosure. Thus on one hand, strong familial bonds would theoretically