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Lately I've been listening to LGBT people who are or want to become parents, or who have children in their lives through extended family, work, or other means. Questions that keep coming up are whether and why to come out to these children. The next questions are when and how they should do it.
The thoughtfulness of these conversations and reflections has struck me. So has the pain and anxiety embedded therein. And so has the need for community support on these issues.
I'm not a parent. While I'm "out" to many of the children in my life, I've left it to their parents to come out for me. I'm not advocating that; I'm just coming clean. Maybe it's part of why I want to support others; I would have liked such support myself several years ago.
I am a teacher, researcher, and writer who has studied parenting and parent-child relationships in LGBTQ communities. I'm conversant with current ideas about supporting healthy development and about heterosexism's impacts on our lives, our relationships with each other and our children, our parental self-images, and even whether we think we have a right to be parents.
As someone familiar with the relevant research and counseling literature, I hope to be able to offer some support and guidelines to folks in the form of these thoughts about whether, why, when, and how to come out to children.
Beyond that, I've noticed that some of our hesitations around coming out to children — and our reasons for not doing so — also reflect heterosexism. We're afraid of hurting our children by coming out to them; some of us even fear causing damage by simply being involved in children's lives as parents or caregivers. We know the larger heterosexual community and the courts are concerned about children raised by LGBT people; sometimes we share these concerns. Our society does not ask whether a parent's heterosexuality may negatively affect a child. Instead, we assume that heterosexual parents can negotiate their sexualities and sexual lives in a way that does not interfere with parenting or their children's development.
In contrast, the courts and the public too often doubt that LGBT people can do the same. Specifically, they show three major concerns for our children. The first is that sexual identity — including gender identity, gender-role behavior, and sexual orientation — will be negatively affected by LGBT parents; that is, that our children might turn out to be LGBT themselves. The second is negative effects on other aspects of our children's development.Specifically, they worry that our children may develop poor self-concepts, poor psychological health, and behavior problems. The final concern: while we might do an acceptable job raising our children, our stigmatized identities and collective oppression makes it more likely our children will be stigmatized, ostracized, and teased, by their peers — and their peers' parents. Thus, our children will have difficulties in social relationships.
A fourth public and legal concern often gets thrown into the mix — that our children are more likely to suffer sexual abuse at our hands than at heterosexual ones. I won't even dignify that one with a specific response. Instead, let me state clearly that there is no valid research evidence to support the legitimacy of this or the prior three concerns.
Despite this, and despite the various ways we feel and express pride in LGBT identities, too many of us believe or at least fear the impact of these concerns on our families' lives. We also fear — unfortunately, for too many, with good reason — that heterosexual ex-partners may successfully use our sexual identity against us in custody cases.
And so some of us learn to play it safe and not come out to children, to go back into the closet, or to stay put if already there.
But this decision itself can have negative consequences on us, our children, and our relationships. Not being out to our children means keeping a secret from them; that secret is more likely to damage relationships and development than our LGBT identities themselves. It also restricts our access to social and community parenting support; we're too busy looking over our shoulders. Indeed, the stress of being closeted is more clearly associated with poor parenting abilities and distant relationships with children than our sexuality itself.
On the other hand, if we are out to our children, extended families, neighbors, and communities, we challenge negative views of LGBTs. People need only to meet our children — who are as likely to be well-adjusted as the children of heterosexuals — to see the error in heterosexist beliefs about parenting. We also become more able to avail ourselves of parenting support groups and to form relationships with other parents, focusing on similar struggles as parents rather than different sexual and/or gender identities.
All that said, I think if at all possible, we should come out and be out to our children.
If you're bringing newborn infants into your life as an LGBT-identified person, I think it's best to be out from the very beginning. You can't have a conversation, of course, but you can be yourself. Children will pick up on your love for them; they will also pick up on your sexual and/or gender identity as part of you. When they're older, it probably makes sense to talk with them more directly. But if you are out from the beginning, their first impressions of LGBT identities will be shaped by you and your parental role rather than by societal images of LGBTs or by a single conversation.
For those whose children are older when they come into your lives, or when you come to your LGBT identity itself, it does seem that timing and approach may impact children's acceptance and comfort with this information. Again, your self- acceptance is key. So, too, is the way you share your sexual and/or gender identity. If you confess a secret rather than share information, children may connect your LGBT identity with shame rather than just another part of who you are.
It does seem better to inform children either in their childhood years or in late adolescence, rather than during early to middle adolescence. Children seem to cope better when the disclosure doesn't coincide with their own struggles with identity and relationships.
I lean toward disclosure during childhood. I know some fear the information may overwhelm or even scare children who are too young. But various sources indicate that it is never too early to disclose your LGBT identity. Children take in what they can understand. You should tailor your disclosure to their developmental level, both in word choice and detail shared. But there doesn't seem to be any minimum age.
My advice, then: tell children as soon as you are comfortable and able — and plan it. Planning and practicing allow you to create a safe environment for this conversation, anticipate the children's needs and prepare for their questions. Don't let the heat of the moment or someone else's timing push you into this important dialogue.
One thing I do want to emphasize about this process. It's likely taken you time to reach where you are with respect to your identity and to how you're feeling about telling children. You must be prepared to allow children themselves time to process your disclosure and their feelings.
It's also critical to caution them about the negative reactions they might get if and when they want to share this information — and to reassure them that you are not asking them to keep a secret. Just as you should have had the opportunity and the right to disclose on your own terms, you should provide that opportunity and right to children. More importantly, while there's no direct research on the consequences for children of keeping this particular secret, we do know that asking children to keep big family secrets may be dangerous for them and for family relationships.
So tell them you love them, you'll respect their process, and you're there to talk whether they want to tell others or not. But do tell them, if you can, who you are. You'll also be telling them there's no incompatibility between being a good parent and being LGBT.
Jacqueline S. Weinstock is an assistant professor in the Human Development and Family Studies Program at the University of Vermont. She can be reached at C-150 Living & Learning Center, Burlington, VT, 05405 or by e-mail.
