User:OsaRosa/6. LGBTQ Family Communication

Areas of LGBTQ+ Communication Studies
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LGBTQ+ Family Communication
Family communication is the interactions within a family that influence behaviors and relationships in a familial aspect. It is how family members share information, express feelings, and resolve conflicts; it shapes both personal and social development within the families for the individuals. LGBTQ+ parenting remains understudied in Communication Studies compared to other areas of LGBTQ+ Communication Studies. Within the context of LGBTQ+ family communication, research has found that family can be defined more expansively to include ties that are selected and marked by acceptance, love, and support rather than just biological or married criteria. According to a qualitative study that was captured in an interactive art project during a Pride festival, LGBTQ+ people and their allies typically view family through the prism of unconditional love and acceptance rather than traditional familial relationships.

LGBTQ+ Parent-Child Communication
LGBTQ+ family communication scholarship focuses on parent-child communication, which are the interactions within a family that shape children’s cognitive abilities and influence their academic life through different types of conversation and conformity orientations. Parent’s view of their child after they coming out as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender is important  to parent-child communication. Parents understanding of their child's communicated perspective-taking (CPT), which is the process of viewing someone’s situation from their perspective, while their child is in the process of coming out and viewing the themes from each story, helps to make connections; positive well-being is connected to themes like casual acceptance, offering help, and admitting difficulties.

In LGBTQ+ families, researchers found the steps to take for proper family communication are, evaluate family dynamics, bust myths, grieve the loss of a heterosexual family paradigm (the ideal that heterosexual families are the only “right” standard in society), and to build a welcoming family atmosphere. This work emphasizes the evolving social perspectives on queer identities and emphasizes the significance of establishing therapeutic environments that are affirming and supportive for LGBTQ+ adolescents and their families.

LGBTQ+ Coming Out Communication in Families
In family communication literature, "coming out" is often examined as an important act of communication that has the power to alter family dynamics, impacting an individual's identity as well as their interpersonal ties with their family. Parental rejection, after coming out, leads to the weakening of identity development in young men who identify as gay according to past research, which then heightens feelings of shame and detachment in young gay men. Romantic relationships may offer a reparative influence on their self-esteem and identity acceptance​​ in replacement of that loss of family acceptance. On the opposite spectrum, we see the dynamic shift when it is the parent coming out to their child, and everything that comes with it.

Lesbian parents identified crucial dialogues for family identity with their children, coming out, dealing with society’s opinions, and hosting commitment ceremonies. This open dialogue helps to foster and reinforce a sense of 'normalcy' and belonging despite societal opinions or discrimination and bring open communication for the family early on.

Children's reactions to their parents' coming out as lesbian or gay can be both negative and positive initially, and research found that parents’ coming out communication process leads to better understanding and emotional support in families. To create open dialogue, they found that emphasizing the intricacy and varying nature of children's emotional and verbal responses​​ built a better overall family communication style between parent and child.

LGBTQ+ Adoption and Communication
Researchers in family communication analyzes how same sex adoptive parents are faced with the heteronormative attitudes towards sexuality(that heterosexuality is the only normal way to parent) like communicating with adoption agencies that prioritize heterosexual and traditional family structures. In LGBTQ+ adoption and communication research, same sex parents are subject to more judgements and social pressures from society. For instance, when starting school, children of LGBTQ+ faces higher feelings of exclusion than their peers. Similarly, LGBTQ+ adoptive parents must negotiate misconceptions about the LGBTQ+ community from heteronormative assumptions.

Communication research has found that LGBTQ+ adoptive parents and families can be deemed as a “bad parent” due to historical views on family. They face publics misinformation that LGBTQ+ parents raise adopted children to be gay child as well. These assumptions come from the heteronormative notions of reproduction and what the heterosexual world views on what makes a family according to scholarship. Scholars have argued that communicating new meanings of family is important for LGBTQ+ families to feel included in society.

Little is known on how same sex couples approach communication with youth about puberty because past studies show that in heterosexual relationships, the mother normally handles sexual health communication. Furthermore, adoptive children reported having questioned their family history during teenage years, and a lot of times adoptive parents don't have access to that information, which impacted children’s identities.

Communicating LGBTQ+ Chosen Families
In LGBTQ+ communities, chosen families are common and serve as a crucial support system that has prompted researchers to look into how these families are created and communicated. “Chosen family” is a term used to describe families that are created voluntarily rather than being connected biologically. LGBTQ+ family and organizational communication research has examined how chosen families are communicated. Due to isolation transgender and nonbinary people face from their birth families, research has investigated how nonprofit organizations can create chosen families with trans community members to create connections and a sense of belonging in new communities. In LGBTQ+ communities, having a “chosen family” is common among individuals who are frequently disapproved of by their blood relatives.