When Your Child Is Gay | Psychology Today

Contents:

• FOR GAY MEN, HAVG A BLOGIL CHILD N BE PLITED
• WHAT TO DO WHEN YOUR CHILD SAYS: "I'M GAY"
• PARENTS OF GAY CHILDREN AND THE ISSU THEY FACE
• 5 THGS I WISH I HAD KNOWN ABOUT RAISG A GAY CHILD
• HAVG A GAY KID ISN'T EASY
• GAY PARENTS RAISG KIDS: HOW WILL THEY FARE?
• MANY PARENTS STGGLE TO ADJT AFTER LEARNG CHILD IS GAY, STUDY FDS
• WHEN YOUR CHILD IS GAY
• IS YOUR CHILD GAY?
• PARENTG A GAY CHILD
• BY PHILIPPS REVEALS HER 12-YEAR-OLD CHILD IS GAY AND US THEY/THEM PRONOUNS

FOR GAY MEN, HAVG A BLOGIL CHILD N BE PLITED

“For gay male sgl/upl, we have particularly easier the matchg procs, as there is no other mom 'replacg' the child’s birth mother and often get chosen quicker.

The procs tak about two years and sts around $200, 000 per child - and prospective gay fathers don't meet eligibily creria for most health surance plans' fertily benefs, although this is begng to change. Brent Monsr, MD, recently helped lead a study to document tails of how gay men e assisted reproductive technology to build their fai, cludg qutns such as how many children they wish to have and how often their efforts succeed.

WHAT TO DO WHEN YOUR CHILD SAYS: "I'M GAY"

Cisgenr gay men are almost never clud this rearch, so as physicians we don't know anythg about their characteristics as reproductive health patients, even basic rmatn such as their mographics, clil cisn-makg patterns or out. It's important to keep md that our data reflect the experienc of dividuals who n afford reproductive medil re bee their employer-sponsored fertily benefs ver , and that is still an unual suatn for gay men. This data served as the foundatn for a grant applitn we've jt had approved to nduct a much larger populatn study that will give accs to rmatn on about 2, 000 embryo transfers annually gay men.

PARENTS OF GAY CHILDREN AND THE ISSU THEY FACE

A lot of people see a fertily doctor bee they have an unrlyg medil issue, whereas gay male upl ually have two possible sperm sourc, a young egg donor and a gtatnal rrier who has already had succsful pregnanci. We regnize that this may be bee a lot of gay men requt tws or may ultimately want two children, and fertily doctors may be transferrg two embryos to try to save their patients money so they only have to go through the fertily treatment procs once. But we need to ask: Are we puttg gtatnal rriers at unnecsary risk om tw pregnanci, and puttg gay upl at unnecsary risk of havg babi the NICU?

5 THGS I WISH I HAD KNOWN ABOUT RAISG A GAY CHILD

I'm currently a fellow, and I have patients g specifilly to see me, not bee I'm the most amazg doctor but bee I'm gay, and they want a gay doctor.

” For some anti-gay people, that seems to make the relatnships somehow wrong, as though any relatnship that n’t rult a child should somehow be forbidn. At tim, I’ve taken sperm om one gay man and matched wh the eggs of his partner’s sister to create a stronger geic bond between the uple and their child.

Relig and nservative lears around the world still vehemently oppose same sex marriage and homosexual acts, let alone a gay uple havg a child of their own. Well, my study of 65 fai of gay and lbian youth for the book, Comg Out, Comg Home: Helpg Fai Adjt to a Gay or Lbian Child, I found that some parents get to the pot where they believe that the experience of havg a gay child actually ma them a better person—more open-md and sensive to the needs of others, particularly those other mory groups.

HAVG A GAY KID ISN'T EASY

The tstworthy nfidants let them vent but also rrected some of the misperceptns they absorbed om society, such as that gay people are lonely, unhappy, promiscuo, not fay-oriented, unable to have children, or sted for an unhappy life.

Specifilly, many aspects of the velopment of homosexualy (both the male and female varieti) are not as well unrstood as they should be to make some of the claims that many people felt nfint exprsg.

There's a lot to discs regardg the rults of the paper (Skorska et al, 2016): The rearchers were examg the possibily that a maternal immune rponse might play a key role the velopment of a homosexual orientatn mal.

GAY PARENTS RAISG KIDS: HOW WILL THEY FARE?

Effectively, then, the mother's immune system would (sometim) treat certa male protes produced by the fet as a foreign pathogen and attempt to attack , rultg out that uld clu a homosexual orientatn, but also fetal loss if the reactn was strong enough (i. Already there is a lot to like about this hypothis on a theoretil level, as don't pos any hidn adaptive benefs for a homosexual orientatn (as such proposed benefs have not received sound empiril support historilly). The rearchers reced approximately 130 mothers and classified them on the basis of what kd of children they had: those who had at least 1 gay son (n = 54), and those who only had heterosexual sons (n = 72).

The mothers were then classified further to one of five groups: those wh gay male only-children (n = 8), those wh gay male offsprg that had no olr brothers (n = 23), those wh gay male offsprg wh olr brothers (n = 23), those wh heterosexual male only-children (n = 11), and those wh heterosexual male offsprg wh siblgs (n = 61). When nsired terms of the rat of misrriag to live to births, a siar picture emerged: mothers of gay male only-children reported more misrriag to live births (M = 1.

MANY PARENTS STGGLE TO ADJT AFTER LEARNG CHILD IS GAY, STUDY FDS

As birth weight tends to crease over succsive pregnanci, the parisons were limed to first live-born sons only (n = 63); this left 4 gay male only-children, 7 gay mal wh no olr brothers, 14 heterosexual mal wh gay younger brothers, 10 heterosexual male only-children, and 28 heterosexual mal wh siblgs. The rults mirrored those of the fetal-loss data: mothers of gay male only-children tend to give birth to fants that weighed signifintly ls (M = 2970 grams), than all other groups (d = 1.

In sum, then, mothers of gay male only-children tend to have a greater number of misrriag and give birth to signifintly lighter offsprg than mothers of other kds. While 's important to not get rried away wh this fdg given the relatively small sample size (I wouldn't put too much stock an N of 8), there is some suggtive evince here worth pursug further that somethg is atypil fetal velopment the se of gay male offsprg. Skorska et al (2016) pos that this might have somethg to do wh some mothers showg a greater immune rponse agast male offsprg, rultg more fetal loss, the rult beg that such mothers are both ls likely to have any children at all and more likely to have gay male children particular.

If mothers of gay men do not tend to have a greater rat of female-to-male offsprg, this would st some doubt on the explanatn (and, sce the only data I've heard reports that gay men tend to have more olr brothers, seems they would have noticed the sister pot by now if existed). On the other hand, if this is a more general immune reactn agast fetal bodi, regardls of their sex, we would not expect such a pattern ( might also predict that mothers takg immunosupprsants would be ls likely to have gay offsprg/misrry, but thgs are unlikely to be that simple owg to the fact that other effects would rult too).

WHEN YOUR CHILD IS GAY

As far as I'm aware, homosexual preferenc (not the ocsnal behavr) do not appear to be well documented nonhuman speci; the only exceptn I'm aware of is Rams. If is tly the se that maternal immune rpons are the drivers of homosexual velopment humans, would be very cur that siar out don't appear to obta across at least other mammalian speci. Mothers more-chronilly affected might have fewer children general and more gay male children particular, potentially explag the current pattern of rults.

As a byproduct of that fectn, if acquired durg a particular cril velopmental wdow, the child to velop a homosexual orientatn (or is misrried by the mother). Parents of gay children may be shocked when their kids e out of the closet, but once the dt settl, most parents realize that their child is the same one they have loved and red for all their liv, they jt happen to be gay. So, for example, boys that play wh dolls and have primarily girliends or girls who are tomboys and prefer to play wh guns may have an creased likelihood of growg up to be gay.

There also appears to be a relatnship where the more a child shows genr-nonnformg characteristics, the greater the chance that they may grow up to be gay. While knowg your child is gay may help you ease the transn to adulthood, 's cril to remember that a gay child is jt a child like any other and a parent of gay child is jt a parent, like any other. We did right by her; thank you, lnchg a kickstarter fundraisg mpaign for "Lovg Pearl, " a book I wrote about raisg my gay child, some have told me how “lucky” my dghter is that we accepted her.

IS YOUR CHILD GAY?

I’ve met several people who have thanked me for havg the urage to wre the book, cludg parents, a few teachers, a pastor and other gay youth who weren’t so “lucky. Many of the straight parents I terviewed for When Your Child Is Gay: What You Need To Know exprsed havg felt disappotment learng that their child was LGBT. Richard told me, "Perhaps if every parent toyed wh the possibily that any of their children uld be gay, would change the way they raise their children.

"It is rare to work wh parents of a gay child who have not stggled wh the feelg of loss at some pot the procs of acceptg their child as gay, " my -thor, Jonathan Tobk, M. " Yet Tobk has found that "gay people tell you they are happy wh who they are and feel that they have emerged on the other si of g out as strong, sensive, and rilient dividuals. However, she uldn't label that feelg until she was eighteen and realized she was a youth fellowship, she asked her lear why homosexualy was nsired sful.

PARENTG A GAY CHILD

The teacher, who seemed unfortable wh the qutn, uldn't answer Marilyn, but when Marilyn graduated om high school, the teacher gave her a book wh biblil passag about homosexualy. Another girl her high school was spected of beg a lbian, and mors foced on that girl--not Marilyn, who was relieved although she felt a tge of guilt for not sharg the bnt of the homophobic slurs.

However, n take time to digt new rmatn, and a child troducg her sexualy to fay and iends n expect the bt rults if she approach the topic as rpectfully as are some exampl of qutns or nversatn starters you n e wh your child to monstrate that you are terted this aspect of his life and are not ashamed of havg a gay child. A ntral, nonjudgmental way to iate this nversatn is to say somethg such as, "It's so great that, this day and age, gay people n have all of the thgs their liv that straight people n have, like legal marriage and fai of their own. The days, gay parents are no novelty: We see them strollg through our neighborhoods, participatg our PTA meetgs, and, perhaps most notably, appearg on our TV screens: Mchell and Cam, fathers to Lily, on the ratgs smash Morn Fay; Glee’s Sue Sylvter, expectant mom to a baby nceived wh an as-yet-unrevealed sperm donor, and Rachel’s dads, played wh humor and grace by Jeff Goldblum and Brian Stok.

BY PHILIPPS REVEALS HER 12-YEAR-OLD CHILD IS GAY AND US THEY/THEM PRONOUNS

The Hollywood exampl are important that they’ve helped prent gay parentg as not unlike straight parentg: challengg, joyful, plited, and most of all, entirely normal.

Though this media mastreamifitn of gay parentg is a relatively new phenomenon, for s, gay parents have had children all sorts of fay nfiguratns—whether through adoptn, prev heterosexual relatnships, or, creasgly, by choosg to have blogil offsprg g vro, surrogate, and other methods.