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Why LGBTQ adults don’t end troubled ties with parents and why (perhaps) they should
Families We Keep is a surprising look at the life-long bonds between LGBTQ adults and their parents. Alongside the importance of “chosen families” in the queer community, Rin Reczek and Emma Bosley-Smith found that very few LGBTQ people choose to become estranged from their parents, even if those parent refuse to support their gender identity, sexuality, or both.
Drawing on interviews with over seventy-five LGBTQ people and their parents, Reczek and Bosley-Smith explore the powerful ties that bind families together, for better or worse. They show us why many feel obliged to maintain even troubled—and sometimes outright toxic—relationships with their parents. They argue that this relationship persists because what we think of as the “natural” and inevitable connection between parents and adult children is actually created and sustained by the sociocultural power of compulsory kinship. After revealing what holds even the most troubled intergenerational ties together, Families We Keep gives us permission to break free of those family bonds that are not in our best interests.
Reczek and Bosley-Smith challenge our deep-rooted conviction that family—and specifically, our relationships with our parents—should be maintained at any cost. Families We Keep shines a light on the shifting importance of family in America, and how LGBTQ people navigate its complexities as adults.
— Jane Ward, author of Not Gay and The Tragedy of Heterosexuality
Contrary to news stories about adult children callously estranging themselves from parents, this book reveals how GLBTQ individuals put up with disapproval, rejection, and even abuse in their effort to maintain family ties. Why do they persist, the authors ask, and at what point does such filial commitment become self-destructive?
— Stephanie Coontz, author of The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap
Three decades after Families We Choose showed that "ties that bind" are not to be taken for granted, Families We Keep offers a nuanced account of what happens when LGBTQ+ people decide to stick with their parents, even in the face of misunderstanding. Reczek and Bosley-Smith are careful not to romanticize these enduring solidarities. It takes hard work to work through conflict, in ways profoundly shaped by race and gender. Social compulsion intertwines poignantly with qualities more conventionally considered virtues, such as patience and respect for the uniqueness of relationships that find no counterpart elsewhere. At a time when so much research focuses on loss, breakdown, and disruption, this book makes a compelling case for why relationships that persist merit much closer inspection.
This remarkable book probes the complexities of relationships between adult LGBTQ people and their families of origin, particularly their parents. The qualitative analyses are rich, and the personal stories and discoveries folks share as they navigate these important adult relationships are moving. Families We Keep offers insights that are compelling and relatable to people with a variety of identities and structural locations in society. It brings a fresh new vantage point from which to study familial relationships, sexualities and gender expression.
— Mignon R. Moore, author of Invisible Families: Gay Identities, Relationships, and Motherhood Among Black Women
For those unfamiliar with LGBTQ experience, Families We Keep is a raw look at the heartbreak and struggle that often characterize difficult familial bonds. While religion comes across as a source of pain in the interviews, the tome could be a valuable resource for those interested in pastoral ministry, spiritual direction, or psychotherapy with LGBTQ people since it analyzes the sociocultural forces that hold people in unhealthy situations.
Rin Reczek is Professor of Sociology and Co-Director of the Center for Aging Families at The Ohio State University. She is the co-author of Families We Keep: LGBTQ People and Their Enduring Bonds with Parents and the co-editor of Marriage and Health: The Well-Being of Same-Sex Couples.
Emma Bosley-Smith (Author)
Emma Bosley-Smith is a doctoral candidate in sociology at The Ohio State University.