New study shows power of parental acceptance, rejection

When John Hanawalt, a 23-year-old Easton man, decided to come out to his parents at age 14 he had good reason to assume they would be supportive. As a first grader he dressed up as the Wicked Witch of the West for Halloween. When he asked to wear his costume to school his mother, Wendy, warned him that he might face teasing from classmates, but told him she had no problem with him wearing the costume. Hanawalt said his mother, who had long suspected he might be gay, also told him while he was growing up that she would still love him if he was.

"The most important thing was she wasn't afraid to outright say it. She verbalized it that she would love me no matter what, including if I was gay," said Hanawalt. "I'm sure a lot of parents tell their children, 'I love you no matter what,' and leave it up to their child to wonder if that includes being gay, but she was very explicit about it."

A new study published this month in the journal Pediatrics shows how important the supportive reactions of parents like Wendy Hanawalt can be to the health of their LGBT children. The study, conducted by San Francisco State University researcher Caitlin Ryan and her colleagues, shows that when parents are unsupportive of their children and display what Ryan calls rejecting behaviors it has a significant negative impact on their health. The study surveyed gay, lesbian and bisexual people between the ages of 21 and 25 and found that those who had families who were highly rejecting were over eight times more likely to have attempted suicide, nearly six times as likely to have experienced serious depression, and more than three times as likely to have used illegal drugs or engaged in unsafe sex than those participants from supportive families.

The study is the first published in a major journal by Ryan's Family Acceptance Project, based out of SFSU and devoted to studying the impact of parental acceptance on LGBT young people.

Ryan said the study is the product of seven years of work, and is just a piece of the Family Acceptance Project's work. The project has another study in the works focused on the positive benefits of parents who accept their children, and Ryan and her colleagues are developing interventions that doctors, social workers, and others working with LGBT youth and their families can use to persuade families to become more accepting of their children.

As part of the first study Ryan and her team developed a list of 106 behaviors that could be classified as either accepting or rejecting, and after conducting their survey with the study participants they found that there was a high correlation between those behaviors and the future health outcomes of the youth. Some of their findings were unsurprising; respondents whose parents subjected them to verbal or physical abuse were much more likely than other gay, lesbian and bisexual youth to have made suicide attempts or to have suffered from depression. But they found there were other rejecting behaviors that had just as negative an impact on the young people. Among the most damaging behaviors were when parents either forbade their children to be friends with other LGBT young people or when they blocked their access to LGBT activities or organizations, such as gay/straight alliances or community-based LGBT youth groups.

"Those had an extremely high risk for suicide attempts and depression," said Ryan.

Conversely Ryan found that parents who displayed accepting behaviors had a positive impact on their children.

"Welcoming their LGBT friends and partners to family events and activities is one of the most important things you can do to support their wellbeing," said Ryan. Other important positive behaviors are supporting their gender expression, connecting them to LGBT role models and advocating on their behalf if they are victimized.

Ryan said following their analysis of the responses from the survey participants they scheduled meetings with a diverse array of families across California, including families that had rejected their LGBT children and kicked them out of the house. The families represented a wide range of races and ethnicities, and they included rural families, immigrant families, poor families, and families whose children were in the custody of the state. During the meetings Ryan and her team presented the families with the results of their research and showed them the negative health consequences of rejecting their children. She said many of the parents who had displayed rejecting behaviors with their children were devastated to learn of the impact their actions could have on their children.

"Parents who were engaging in behaviors like trying to change their child's sexual orientation or gender identity or preventing them from having gay friends ... they were acting out of concern, and they were motivated by trying to help their children fit in the world and have a good life," said Ryan. "Many parents were in tears when they learned what we had to tell them."

She said the goal of the new interventions that the Family Acceptance Project is developing is to convince parents to modify their behavior toward their children away from rejection toward acceptance. Even parents who are not ready to fully accept their children's sexuality or gender identity, Ryan said, are often willing to curb some of their more harmful rejecting behaviors.

"You meet families where they are with respect for their cultural or religious beliefs," said Ryan. "Our role with them is not to change them. It's to empower them to make decisions about how to interact with their children that will help them survive and thrive in the world and have healthy futures."

Even before the release of the first study Ryan has been sharing her findings with many advocates and service providers working with LGBT youth, and her research has validated much of what they have seen in their own work. Colby Berger, director of LGBTQ services at the Home for Little Wanderers, said she has worked with parents of LGBT youth to help them become more accepting of their children and she has seen firsthand that when parents make even small changes to the way they behave around their children it can have a significant impact on their children's health and emotional wellbeing.

"I think it's one of the most rewarding things we can see, when families are able to take steps of accepting their child," said Berger. "We may not always get to a place where they celebrate their child ... [but] if they can communicate that they love and care for their child and they want them to be safe, the kids are quite resilient."

Berger said in one instance she worked with the parents of a female-to-male transgender youth. Initially the parents' reaction to their child's trans identity was one of grief over the loss of their daughter.

"Over the course of working with the family they understood the blessing of gaining a son. ... There were many components of the child that were still core to the young person that they raised," said Berger.

Ryan said while the first study focused largely on the negative impact of family rejection, her long-term goal is to show the positive benefits of families that accept their children. Those benefits are no surprise to Hanawalt, who said the support he received from his family, and particularly from his mother, made it much easier to adjust to being an openly gay teen.

"I think it's really easier to be comfortable with yourself when you have your family standing beside you. My mom took me to my first BAGLY meeting. A couple weeks after I came out to her she took me to see Edge of Seventeen at Kendall [Square Cinema]," said Hanawalt. "It was much easier for me to be open about myself with other people because I could be myself at home, and it wasn't an issue."

Wendy Hanawalt said after her son came out to the family she saw an immediate change in his wellbeing. She said prior to his coming out he seemed depressed, and he largely kept to himself. After he came out he became much more outgoing and confident.

"After he came out it was really sort of a relief and pleasant change in him," said Wendy Hanawalt.

Pam Garramone, executive director of Greater Boston Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG), said the group has been eagerly awaiting the release of Ryan's study, and she said many of its findings validate the work that PFLAG has done. Ryan will be the honoree this May at Greater Boston PFLAG's Pride and Passion event.

Garramone said Ryan's worked showed Greater Boston PFLAG how important it is to reach out to parents, no matter what their comfort zone around their LGBT children. The group has been working with gay/straight alliances (GSAs) around the state to hold evening events where GSA members and their parents watch a screening of the documentary Anywhere and Everywhere, which details the struggles of diverse families to learn to support their LGBT children. PFLAG has held screenings in Natick and Charlton, and Garramone said she plans to organize another one on the North Shore.

"[The parents in the film] didn't just get there. They show the struggle they went through," said Garramone. "We're really trying to get any parent to come to this presentation to show that their words and actions have an effect on their child, whether they know they're gay or not."