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News and commentary about the anti-gay lobby“Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife…”
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobbyJune 9th, 2006
Aveline, David. “‘Did I have blinders on or what?’: Restrospective sense making by parents of gay sons recalling their son’s earlier years.” Journal of Family Issues 27, no. 6 (June 2006): 777-802. Abstract available online at http://jfi.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/27/6/777.
We live in a society that operates under what’s called a “heterosexual presumption” — in other words, we tend to assume that someone is straight unless we notice something to suggest otherwise (or unless that person comes right out and tells us). But since many gay people don’t exhibit traits that are stereotypically “gay” — and many others try to pass as straight — learning that someone in fact is actually gay can be quite a shock. Only then do we try to remember clues that we might have missed in the past to try to understand how we might have missed it. David Aveline examines this phenomenon in the June 2006 issue of the Journal of Family Issues.
Dr. Aveline interviewed eighty parents of gay sons. He approached PFLAG, a gay-affirming group of parents, as well as groups that were not gay-affirming such as PFOX (Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays) and other organizations associated with Exodus International. He did this because he wanted to gather information from a wider range of parents since most previous research relied too heavily on gay-affirming parents. Unfortunately, he was only able to get two parents from the “disaffirming” groups. (One facilitator of an ex-gay ministry said that parents in his group were typically ashamed and reluctant to talk to a stranger.) PFLAG parents, on the other hand, were so supportive he had to turn some away. For this reason, this study cannot be generalized to the overall population of parents of gay sons.
Out of this sample, 27.5% said they never suspected their sons were gay, although they were able to remember events which, in retrospect, “should have” clued them in. 62.5% said they not only suspected their sons were gay, but were able to give the child’s age when their suspicions first occurred. The remaining 10% had suspicions, but couldn’t pinpoint a time when they first suspected.
Parents’ stories fell into three broad categories:
Some parents didn’t recall a particular event, saying only that their children were “different” from other boys. Only a few said they associated this “difference” with homosexuality at the time. Most said that they now took this “difference” to be a clue only in hindsight. Some parents noticed when their sons weren’t interested in sports (although this wasn’t true for all sons). Some noticed when their sons chose girls as playmates instead of other boys, while a couple of parents noticed when their sons expressed particular interests in other boys:
“But he just talked about this boy as a girl would talk about a boyfriend or something. And that’s when I just knew. There was just such excitement, you know. He was kind of giddy with this friend person, you know.”
“And I didn’t tell you this. He did tell me when he was in the fifth or sixth grade. He said to me, “Why do I think guys are cute and not girls?” And I said, “Well, I guess if they’re cute, they’re cute. You’re cute, so maybe you think they’re cute.” And I just… It just kind of went right over my head.”
Dr. Aveline however noted that very little of the reported “evidence” actually involved early homosexual expression. These two stories are notable exceptions.
Some parents thought their boys developed “too close” a relationship with girls, while others felt that their relationships with girls weren’t “close enough.” When their boys later reached their teenage years, some dated girls while others didn’t. Parents whose boys dated took it as confirmation that their sons weren’t gay after all. But parents whose boys didn’t date either suspected their sons were gay, or explained it away by citing a lack of time or money, being a late bloomer, or shyness.
Dr. Aveline concluded that although parents reported noticing atypical gender behavior, they often didn’t interpret it in terms of homosexuality. As mentioned at the start, we tend to assume someone is heterosexual unless we have very specific proof otherwise. One parents echoed this, saying “No one of my generation ever imagined that their child would be gay.” But when parents are confronted with proof that their sons are gay, they are then are left with the task of making sense of this new information. That’s when they turn to past events and begin a process of “second-level interpretation,” where they replace the original interpretation with a new one.
Gender roles continue to play an important part of how we interpret homosexuality, despite the blurring of gender roles in society. As women continue to take on a greater range of gender roles, behaviors that were previously considered “masculine” are now accepted for men and women. The same is true for behaviors that are traditionally “feminine.” Parents are increasingly open to these less rigid gender roles, which explains how parents can discount atypical gender behavior in their sons before learning of theirs sons’ homosexuality.
But when parents are confronted with the newly discovered fact that their sons are gay, they tend to revert to more rigid ideas of “typical” gender behavior and seek out past clues based on those ideas. Whether these confirmations are legitimate or not is another matter. Ironically, most of these parents were perfectly able to accept their sons’ atypical gender roles before learning that they were gay. Only afterwards are these evidences taken as clues that their sons were somehow different.
But in fact, their sons are no different than before. What has changed is how parents look at their sons’ childhood activities and behaviors. Unfortunately, Dr. Aveline doesn’t explore whether this change in interpretation affects how these parents see their sons today. This would be an interesting avenue for future research.
Because these participants, by and large, were accepting of their sons’ homosexuality, it’s a shame Dr. Aveline couldn’t get better participation from Exodus or PFOX parents. It would be interesting to understand how parents who don’t approve or accept their sons’ homosexuality interpret past events.
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