Science Says: Gay Dads are Close to their Adult Children
Given that rainbow families are a newer phenomenon, there are not many studies that look at adult children and their relationship with queer parents, especially gay fathers.
In this journal club, I wanted to review a novel scientific study that examined the relationship quality between gay fathers and their adult children, as well as the effect this relationship has on the children’s mental health.
The article is titled, Adult Children of Gay Fathers: Parent-Child Relationship Quality and Mental Health (1).
I don’t have queer parents (I wish!) However, I do have estranged parents. Even though it is ultimately healthier for me not to have a relationship with my parents, I can say without a doubt that the lack of relationship has had a significant impact on my mental health.
I was curious to see how the parent-child relationship with gay fathers impacts their children, not only because of my own experience, but also because the majority of studies around gay fatherhood focuses on the health of younger children (By the way, gay fathers are also doing great parenting with their young kids, which I discuss in a previous article: https://www.babymoonfamily.com/original-articles/gay-fathers-better-than-straight-parents).
Study Design and Objectives
This study recruited 84 adult children of gay fathers, with the inclusion criteria stating that the participants resided in the United States and their fathers self-identified as gay.
The study had three major aims:
Describe the characteristics of adult children of gay fathers.
Learn about the relationship of adult children with their gay fathers.
Study associations of the relationship around the timing of disclosure of the gay father’s sexual orientation to their child.
For this last objective, it’s important to highlight that 93.8% of the participants (n = 79) were born in the context of their father’s current or previous relationship with a female partner. Very few adult children joined their families through adoption (5.0%; n = 4), and only two within the context of a same-sex relationship.
This makes sense, given that the average age of the participants was 27 years old. Thirty years ago, gay relationships were much less open, gay marriage was not legalized anywhere in the world, and having a child as a gay man or couple through surrogacy was much less common than it is today. Therefore, the vast majority of ‘gay dads’ started out as just ‘dads’ with a female partner, and they had to then come out to their female partners and children.
I discuss the change in the LGBTQ+ family formation trends and how queer men today approach fatherhood in a previous BabyMoon Family article (https://www.babymoonfamily.com/original-articles/rainbow-family-planning).
Despite this limitation of the study, I believe the results about parent-adult child relationships for gay fathers is still extremely interesting and applicable for intended and current queer fathers through IVF and surrogacy, and we will revisit this topic at the end of the article.
Results
Descriptive demographics for the participants showed that the majority were cisgender female (73.8%), White/European American (89.3%), and employed full-time (59.8%; 30+ hours per week in paid employment). 54.8% reported having earned a bachelor’s degree or higher, and about half described themselves as being involved in a romantic relationship at the time of the study (50.1%).
Interestingly, 22.4% (n = 19) identified themselves as members of sexual minorities. Of these, 14 identified as bisexual, four as gay or lesbian, and one as queer. These percentages are close to those of Generation Z, but this study was conducted in 2018, so the majority of participants aged 27 would have been born around 1991 (Millennials).
(2)
This highlights that perhaps the children of queer parents are able to be more open about their own sexual orientations compared to the general public, but that is a topic for another article.
In order to assess the parent-child relationship and mental health, participants were asked open-ended and Likert scale (1 to 7) questions, as well as validated questionnaires for depression (The Center for Epidemiological Studies–Depression (CES-D)) and satisfaction with life (The Satisfaction with Life scale).
Overall, the study found that adult children of gay fathers were well-adjusted and the vast majority had good, close relationships with their gay fathers. 70.5% described their relationship quality with their gay fathers in adulthood as ‘positive’.
In terms of the parent-child relationship, three key results emerged:
Those who reported having more positive relationships in adulthood also reported feel- ing closer to their father as adults.
Participants who did not learn of their fathers’ sexual orientation until they were adults reported poorer relationships with their fathers in adulthood.
Those who reported learning of their fathers’ sexual orientation at an older age also lived significantly further away from their fathers.
In terms of mental health, the major result was that participants who reported closer current relationships with their fathers reported fewer depressive symptoms.
In summary, the best predictor of adult children’s mental health was the quality of their current relationships with their gay fathers.
Implications for Gay Fathers through Surrogacy
This was the first study of adult children of gay fathers to explore associations between timing of sexual orientation disclosure, parent-child relationship quality, and individual well being among adult children.
However, as mentioned before, almost all the gay fathers came out during their relationship with the mother of their children, causing significant turmoil around separation, divorce, and the ‘fracturing’ of the traditional family unit.
While it’s heartwarming to see that even with coming out, the majority of gay fathers still enjoy positive relationships with their well-balanced adult children, this is not the situation for myself or other men who undergo IVF and surrogacy while in a relationship with their male partner.
Despite this, I believe there are important learnings that can be applied to more current rainbow families:
Early communication around the process of surrogacy and family formation with children.
Close relationships with parents have an impact on their children’s mental health.
The study demonstrated that gay fathers who disclosed their sexuality earlier to their children ended up having closer relationships. I believe this reflects the damage that can be done to any parent-child relationship when parents do not share who they are with their children. This type of emotional and informational withholding leads children to not trust their parents and to question even the positive aspects to their relationships.
For gay men who have children through surrogacy, I believe this highlights the importance of sharing in an open and honest way how your child came to be in your family. For this reason, my husband and I have no desire to have a closed agreement with our egg donor, and we want to have as open and ongoing relationship with our gestational carrier as possible.
We want our child to know these women and the amazing things they did to bring them into the world, as soon as possible. I believe any attempts to shield a child from this truth will only have a negative impact on the relationship, possibly into their adulthood, as evidenced by the later disclosure of sexual orientation for the gay fathers in this study.
Lastly, this study supports my own lived experience of mental health challenges due to my parental estrangement. Adult children who were not close to their gay fathers had worse mental health.
While there are many valid reasons to not have or maintain a relationship with a parent, this study demonstrates that gay fathers more often have healthy relationships with their adult children, and when they do, it improves the lives of their children in a similar way to a heterosexual parent-child dynamic.
This mental health impact on children is important for any gay father, whether they become a father through a relationship with a woman, adoption, or surrogacy.
Thanks for joining this installment of the BabyMoon Family journal club, and if you would like a PDF of the full article, please email me at bryan@babymoonfamily.com.
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