'Coming out tales': adult sons and daughters' feelings about their gay father's sexual identity
Tasker, Fiona and Barrett, H. and De Simone, F. (2010) 'Coming out tales': adult sons and daughters' feelings about their gay father's sexual identity. Australian & New Zealand Journal of Family Therapy 31 (4), pp. 326-337. ISSN 1467-8438.
Abstract
Coming out to their children is a dilemma that concerns many gay, bisexual, and lesbian parents with children from previous heterosexual relationships. How children found out about having a father who identified himself as gay, and their feelings about their father's sexual identity, were explored through qualitative analysis of semi-structured interviews with 36 sons and daughters (aged 19 to 36 years) whose gay fathers participated in the Gay & Bisexual Parenting Survey (Barrett and Tasker, 2001). Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis revealed that awareness of their father's sexual identity was often left unspoken for various reasons, and that acceptance came about through gradual understanding as well as direct discussion. Interview data indicated the complexity of the relationship between the young adult's personal acceptance of their father's gay identity and their consideration of social context when deciding how open to be to others about their father's sexual identity. This research has varied implications for therapeutic work with gay and bisexual fathers coming out to their children from previous heterosexual relationships.
Metadata
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Keyword(s) / Subject(s): | gay fathers, young adulthood, coming out, qualitative |
| School: | Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Science > School of Psychological Sciences |
| Research Centres and Institutes: | Children, Families and Social Issues, Institute for the Study of (Closed) |
| Depositing User: | Sarah Hall |
| Date Deposited: | 15 Dec 2015 14:05 |
| Last Modified: | 02 Aug 2023 17:20 |
| URI: | https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/13775 |
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