One of the best pieces I’ve read this week is by a man who explains “How homophobia turned me against my gay mother.” Spoiler alert: He turned back—and in doing so, offers some very useful advice for all of us LGBTQ parents.
Joshua Gunn writes at Vox about his mom’s coming out to him when he was 11, the homophobia in his community and how it impacted his relationship with her, and the “bigotry and stigma” that still affected him even after they made peace. He also writes about something I’ve tried to stress here before; the pressure that we may, consciously or not, place on our children to be perfect representatives of LGBTQ families. He says:
We feel immense pressure to be standard-bearers for an idealized family life that straight families are never asked to attain. In many cases, that pressure comes directly from our parents, who have internalized a longstanding “model minority” expectation.
Gunn explicitly addresses an article written in March by Heather Barwick, who grew up with two moms but believes that having a mother and father is best for kids. Barwick’s situation was somewhat different, however, since her mother had been married to her father, who simply stopped coming around after they divorced. As others have pointed out, Barwick was applying her own dissatisfaction with her specific family situation to children of same-sex parents as a whole. Gunn observes, however (and rightly so, I believe) that Barwick’s fear of expressing her pain may resonate with many other children of same-sex parents—which is not to say all of them will express that pain by opposing same-sex parents, as Barwick did.
It’s a thoughtful, nuanced article that should make us all reflect on what we can do to give our children the space to be imperfect (just like us!) and express all of their feelings about being part of an LGBTQ family.
