Why is it apparently so difficult for parents to ask their children if they are gay?
Time and time again we read or watch accounts of young men and woman coming out and saying that their mother or father said that they had realised for a long time.
Realised, but had said nothing.
They had watched their child struggle to accept who they truly are and to find their place in a bigoted society full of negative messages of (at best) tolerance or (at worse) hate for homosexuality, yet still offered no helping hand – no reassurance of the acceptance or understanding they would have for them, which is of course exactly what the child needs to hear.
We help our children with everything as they grow, that is a parents job and our children need us for this. They need our maturity and experience to fill in the limitations of their intelligence or emotional state.
They need our guidance and they need our support or advice – often if only to reject it and throw it back in our face, but regardless of not embracing it they need to hear what we think and they need to know our understanding of what they are dealing with and working out – whatever it is.
It may well be completely unintentional, but the vast majority of parents will use language as a child grows up that suggests an expectation that they will be straight – ‘when you have a husband, ‘when you kiss your first girl’, ‘the boys will love you wearing that’, ‘your wife will never put up with that’ and on and on – even though for many children what is being said is quite simply wrong, so why not at least acknowledge the possibility of them being gay? It makes absolutely no difference to the child if they are not, but it can make the world of difference if they are.
Why is it so difficult to say ‘when you grow up and have a boyfriend or girlfriend?’
I know that more and more parents nowadays will voice and show acceptance of the gay world around their children and maybe even have gay family members or friends as part of their children’s lives – but maybe surprisingly that is not actually saying that they will accept it in their own child.
I know a number of gay children who have grown up in families like this – who still struggled with their own sexuality and in telling their parents.
Surely part of being a good parent is to not try to force our children into being what we expect them to be or want them to be, but I do fear that by not opening up the possibility of our children being gay to them from early on, many of us are inadvertently doing exactly that.
Even if we feel that we have created an accepting environment and that we are actively encouraging our children to be honest and true to themselves, to be truly sure of how their parents feel our children need to be TOLD, clearly and emphatically, just the way we tell them everything else.
They need to be completely sure that they have our full support and acceptance if they are gay. We need to be heard to be undoing the doubt we have probably sown, doubt which in fact our silence is probably confirming to them.
For some that may not be easy, the parent may not be fully comfortable with homosexuality, but that is OUR – the parents – problem, not the children’s and that is something that we have to deal with, while at the same time supporting them.
It is not our child’s place to hold our hands and to educate us through this, it is our duty to be the parent and to learn what we need to learn and to be there for them.
Life is always a bit tougher being gay (as it can be for most minorities) and sometimes it can be very tough, the very last thing a child needs is for it’s parents to be adding to the negativity they will inevitable be facing.
And maybe it’s a little tougher for adopted children than birth children, without being reassured otherwise a child that does not have our genes could well fear that being gay is something that has come from their birth family and because of that it could be even more unwelcome to their adoptive parents.
So to return to my opening question – Why do parents find it difficult to ask their children if they are gay?
Personally I think that it is mostly because we all wish for the very best for our children and socially being gay is sill seen as ‘other’ and understandably ‘other’ is something that is not wished for and regardless of us knowing that we can not determine our child’s sexuality – maybe deep down we think that by not mentioning it, just possibly there is more chance of it not being so.
