Literature Review Of The Issue Of Coming Out In A Family

Coming out during adolescence: Perceived parents’ reactions and internalized sexual stigma. Journal of Health Psychology

The main argument of this paper was that informing your parents of your sexual orientation is an extremely daunting and often life-changing task for lesbian and gay adolescents. The goal of this experiment was to investigate negative parental reactions to coming out. These reactions are related with high levels of self-doubt, self-questioning, and oftentimes psychological problems. The perceptions that the adolescents had to their parents’ reactions, the actual age of the adolescent when they came out, their gender, the political orientation and religiosity of the parents, and many other factors were investigated in 150 Italian homosexual adolescents. The findings of the experiment confirmed that, “…negative parental reactions are connected to poor family functioning and strong beliefs in traditional values.” These results acknowledged that negative reaction to coming out facilitates the effect between a more rigid family model and internalized sexual stigma.

This paper helped to point out that the way the family is set up can often lead to more conflicts. Highly religious families tend to lead to their homosexual child having higher internalized sexual stigma. This is noteworthy because Jewish Orthodox communities are highly organized and would completely fit the category of family that was investigated in this paper.

“Paths and Pitfalls: How Heterosexual Spouses Cope When Their Husbands or Wives Come Out.” Amity Pierce

This article guesses that in up to two million couples that married, there was one spouse that revealed that they were gay, lesbian, or bisexual. It goes on to say that an increasing number of spouses are coming out to their partners. A spouse that comes out to their partner generally will seek to find supporting organizations, while their heterosexual spouses find, either actively or passively, little support or understanding of their problem. The experiment found that, “…dealing with sexual rejection, the challenge to the marriage, and, if they have children, spouse/parent conflicts is followed by handling questions about their own identity, integrity, and belief system.” This experiment describes and investigates a few of the issues that the heterosexual spouses typically face, as well as the stages that they move from. These are described as survival to reworking their lives to whether or not they stay married. This article found that peer support helps this process, which often lasts many years or decades.

This article was interesting to me because it helps to explain the psychology of Dovid. What he was thinking, what stages he was in, what he was going to do, all now that his wife came out to him. At the end of the movie, Dovid agrees to let his wife go on without him. We don’t get to see any of the reconfiguring of his life. Unfortunately, we know this is going to happen, and that the road will be longer still for Dovid’s heart.

“Straight Husbands Whose Wives Come Out As Lesbian or Bisexual: Men’s Voices Challenge the ‘Masculinity Myth.’” Amity Pierce

Many wives disclose their homosexuality to their partners, causing trauma for their straight spouses. This experiment sought to understand the self-reports of 183 heterosexual men, married or previously married to lesbian or bisexual women, and to categorize their “…feelings, issues, coping strategies, and multidimensional personal growth.” The study used four different ways of categorizing the information. It was found that the straight husbands truly and deeply felt many shared emotions with each other, and that they cared for their wives. The study found unsurprisingly that they also worried about their children's well-being and tried to care for them to the best of their ability. The husbands coped with their feelings in many different ways; some found outside support, and many reported personal growth. A striking find was that their experience was similar in many aspects to previous research that was conducted with straight spouses. This suggests features of straight husbands that include behaviors that go against the societal stereotypical assumptions about men in crisis.

This paper is again quite interesting for the reasons that it seems to directly coincide with Disobedience. In the movie, Dovid fights initially, but eventually lets his wife go. We as viewers do not see many actions that would be characteristic of a “strong, masculine husband” like those we see in many mainstream Hollywood action movies, but instead see a much more gentler man who is just trying to do what he thinks is right and maintain his way of life.

“Perceived Parental Reactions to Coming out, Attachment, and Romantic Relationship Views.” Katherine Carnelley

This experiment came at the problem of coming out from the perspective of it being a challenging experience that may lead to either acceptance or rejection. Attachment theory was used to help predict the reactions of parents to their children coming out and investigated the consequences for romantic attachment. This cross-sectional study of 309 LGB individuals found that “…those who perceived their mother as accepting in childhood were more likely to have come out to her. Moreover, parents perceived as accepting and independence-encouraging in childhood were reported to react more positively to their child's sexual orientation.” There were correlations between parent-child relationship quality and the optimism and trust in romantic relationships. The results of the experiment supported the argument for the importance of prior parent-child relationships for predicting LGB individuals' experiences of coming out and romantic relationships.

I find this paper to be really interesting. In Disobedience, the wife of Dovid comes out to him. She had a homosexual relationship with her friend when the three were still in school together. She’d never come out to anyone else before, and I think a lot of that had to do with the community she was raised in, but also possibly expectations of a negative response from her parents.

“Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Youths Coming Out to Their Parents: Parental Reactions and Youths’ Outcomes.”

This study is about the role of parental reactions as their children develop and adjust to coming out as gay, lesbian, or bisexual (GLB). Interviews of reactions were given to 53 parents, as well as questions on identity being given to their 53 GLB children. Parental interviews were scored on a scale of 10 positive and negative levels of parental reactions. The study found that, “…there were no gender differences in levels of positive and negative parental reactions and in levels of GLB youths’ outcomes.” The study did find that the support of their child’s gender, the parents’ attempts to control their child’s gender preferences, and parents’ difficulties coping with their child’s sexual orientation were significantly associated with the levels of identity and adjustment that the children felt. The gender of the parents was also investigated with the strength of the associations between parental reactions and outcomes of the children.

This is a really useful source for providing actual data on an outcome that anyone could have guessed. The underlined portion really provides scientific backing to an argument that most anyone could have made. The reactions of those closest to you have a big impact on how you perceive yourself.