When My Parents Came to the Gay Ball: Comfort Work in Adult Child

Abstract

In addition to the emotion work that occurs in families, I theorize that adult children also engage in comfort work with their parents, navigations, and strategies to reduce the discomfort of parents with their adult children’s lives. This study analyzes how gay and lesbian adults navigate the participation of their parents at events run by lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) clubs or “krewes” in the Gulf South during Carnival season. I conducted over 50 days of ethnographic fieldwork during Mardi Gras events and 26 interviews with gay and lesbian members of krewes in Mobile, Alabama, and Baton Rouge, Louisiana. I argue that gay and lesbian adults negotiate their parents’ attendance in gay spaces by comfort work, mostly by creating comfort for their parents and managing disreputability through education. Ultimately, I conclude that parents’ attendance at LGBTQ events results in supportive reciprocation, “payoffs” of acceptance that are rich in emotional and symbolic significance for adult children.

Keywords

parent/child relations LGBTQ issues mother–child relationship father–child relationship family processes

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Acosta

(2010). “How could you do this to me?”: How lesbian, bisexual, and queer Latinas negotiate sexual identity with their families. Black Women, Gender & Families, 4(1), 6385.

Acosta

K. L.

(2011). The language of (in) visibility: Using in-between spaces as a vehicle for empowerment in the family. Journal of Homosexuality, 58(6–7), 883–900.

Acosta

K. L.

(2013). Amigas y amantes: Sexually nonconforming Latinas negotiate family. Rutgers University Press.

Aldous

(1995). New views of grandparents in intergenerational context. Journal of Family Issues, 16(1), 104–122.

Stone

Amy L

. “In my dad’s gun room there’s an 8x10 picture of me in drag”: Drag and Respectability in the Deep South in Dana Berkowitz, eds. Male Femininities. NYU Press.

Aveline

(2006). “Did I have blinders on or what?” Retrospective sense making by parents of gay sons recalling their sons’ earlier years. Journal of Family Issues, 27(6), 777–802.

Barton

(2012). Pray the gay away: The extraordinary lives of Bible Belt gays. NYU Press.

Bottorff

J.L.

Mary

Michelle

E. L.

(1995) “Comforting: exploring the work of cancer nurses.” Journal of Advanced Nursing 22(6), 1077–1084.

Broad

K. L.

(2011). Coming out for parents, families and friends of lesbians and gays: From support group grieving to love advocacy. Sexualities, 14(4), 399–415.

10.

Deterding

N. M.

Waters

M. C.

(2018). Flexible coding of In-depth interviews: A twenty-first-century approach. Sociological Methods & Research. https://doi.org/10.1177/0049124118799377

11.

DeVault

M. L.

(1999). Comfort and struggle: Emotion work in family life. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 561(1), 52–63.

12.

Fetner

Heath

(2016). Editor’s pick: Do same-sex and straight weddings aspire to the fairytale? Women’s conformity and resistance to traditional weddings. Sociological Perspectives, 59(4), 721–742.

13.

Fingerman

K. L.

Kim

Davis

E. M.

Furstenberg

F. F.

Birditt

K. S.

Zarit

S. H.

(2015). “I’ll give you the world”: Socioeconomic differences in parental support of adult children. Journal of Marriage and Family, 77(4), 844–865.

14.

Glass

V. Q.

(2014). “We are with family”: Black lesbian couples negotiate rituals with extended families. Journal of GLBT Family Studies, 10(1–2), 79–100.

15.

Goffman

(1963). Stigma: Notes on the management of spoiled identity. Prentice Hall.

16.

Gottschalk

(2003). Reli(e)ving the past: Emotion work in the Holocaust’s second generation. Symbolic Interaction, 26(3), 355–380.

17.

Hochschild

A. R.

(1979). Emotion work, feeling rules, and social structure. American Journal of Sociology, 85(3), 551–575.

18.

Hochschild

A. R.

(1983). The managed heart: Commercialization of human feeling. University of California Press.

19.

Hopkins

S. J.

(2004). “Let the drag race begin”: The rewards of becoming a queen. Journal of Homosexuality, 46(3–4), 135–149.

20.

Howard

(1997). Carryin’ on in the Lesbian and Gay South. NYU Press.

21.

Jadwin-Cakmak

L. A.

Pingel

E. S.

Harper

G. W.

Bauermeister

J. A.

(2015). Coming out to dad: Young gay and bisexual men’s experiences disclosing same-sex attraction to their fathers. American Journal of Men’s Health, 9(4), 274–288.

22.

Johnson

E. P.

(2008). Sweet tea: Black gay men of the South. The University of North Carolina Press.

23.

Kane

E. W.

(2006). “No way my boys are going to be like that!” Parents’ responses to children’s gender nonconformity. Gender & Society, 20(2), 149–176.

24.

Kinser

(1990). Carnival, American style: Mardi Gras at New Orleans and Mobile. The University of Chicago Press.

25.

LaSala

M. C.

(2000). Gay male couples: The importance of coming out and being out to parents. Journal of Homosexuality, 39(2), 47–71.

26.

Lüscher

Pillemer

(1998). Intergenerational ambivalence: A new approach to the study of parent-child relations in later life. Journal of Marriage and Family, 60(2), 413–425.

27.

Lye

D. N.

(1996). Adult child–parent relationships. Annual Review of Sociology, 22, 79–102.

28.

Morse

J. M.

(1992) “Comfort: the refocusing of nursing care.” Clinical Nursing Research, 1(1): 91–106.

29.

Morse

J. M.

Joan

L. B.

Sally

(1992). “The phenomenology of comfort.” Journal of Advanced Nursing 20(1), 189–195.

30.

Morse

J. M.

Adele

(1998). “Maintaining patient endurance: The comfort work of trauma nurses.” Clinical Nursing Research, 7(3), 250–274.

31.

Moore

(2011). Invisible families: Gay identities, relationships, and motherhood among Black women. University of California Press.

32.

Ocobock

(2013). The power and limits of marriage: Married gay men’s family relationships. Journal of Marriage and Family, 75(1), 191–205.

33.

Oswald

R. F.

(2000). A member of the wedding? Heterosexism and family ritual. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 17(3), 349–368.

34.

Oswald

R. F.

(2002). Inclusion and belonging in the family rituals of gay and lesbian people Journal of Family Psychology, 16(4), 428–436.

35.

Pillemer

Munsch

C. L.

Fuller-Rowell

Riffin

Suitor

J. J.

(2012). Ambivalence toward adult children: Differences between mothers and fathers. Journal of Marriage and Family, 74(5), 1101–1113.

36.

Reczek

(2016). Parental disapproval and gay and lesbian relationship quality. Journal of Family Issues, 37(15), 2189–2212.

37.

Robinson

B. A.

(2018). Conditional families and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer youth homelessness: Gender, sexuality, family instability, and rejection. Journal of Marriage and Family, 80(2), 383–396.

38.

Ryan

Russell

S. T.

Huebner

Diaz

Sanchez

(2010). Family acceptance in adolescence and the health of LGBT young adults. Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Nursing, 23(4), 205–213.

39.

Savin-Williams

R. C.

Dubé

E. M.

(1998). Parental reactions to their child’s disclosure of a gay/lesbian identity. Family relations, 47(1), 7–13.

40.

Scherrer

K. S.

Kazyak

Schmitz

(2015). Getting “bi” in the family: Bisexual people’s disclosure experiences. Journal of Marriage and Family, 77(3), 680–696.

41.

Schmitz

R. M.

Tyler

K. A.

(2018). The complexity of family reactions to identity among homeless and college lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer young adults. Archives of sexual behavior, 47(4), 1195–1207.

42.

Seidman

(2002). Beyond the closet: The transformation of gay and lesbian life. Routledge.

43.

Seltzer

J. A.

Bianchi

S. M.

(2013). Demographic change and parent-child relationships in adulthood. Annual Review of Sociology, 39, 275–290.

44.

Simpson

Acton

G. J.

(2013). Emotion work in family caregiving for persons with dementia. Issues in Mental Health Nursing, 34(1), 52–58.

45.

Solebello

Elliott

(2011). “We want them to be as heterosexual as possible”: Fathers talk about their teen children’s sexuality. Gender & Society, 25(3), 293–315.

46.

Starrels

M. E.

Ingersoll-Dayton

Dowler

D. W.

Neal

M. B.

(1997). The stress of caring for a parent: Effects of the elder’s impairment on an employed, adult child. Journal of Marriage and Family, 59(4), 860–872.

47.

Walker

A. C.

(2002) “Safety and comfort work of nurses glimpsed through patient narratives.” International Journal of Nursing Practice, 8(1), 42–48.

48.

Watson

J. B.

(2014). Bisexuality and family: Narratives of silence, solace, and strength. Journal of GLBT Family Studies, 10(1–2), 101–123.

49.

Yoshino

(2007). Covering: The hidden assault on our civil rights. Random House Incorporated.

When My Parents Came to the Gay Ball: Comfort Work in Adult Child–Parent Relationships

Abstract

Keywords

Get full access to this article

References