MIND MOVES: Despite the enormous cultural and ideological changes ascribed to 21st century life, most parents retain straightforward aspirations for their children, writes Marie Murray.
They hope that they will progress "normally" through the stages of childhood and adolescence into adulthood. That en route they will acquire a small cohort of good and loyal friends so that they will not be lonely will have a social life, confidantes in times of worry and co-celebrants in times of joy.
They hope they will achieve academic standards consistent with their ability and obtain sufficient educational credentials to enjoy employment in adequately remunerative work that is of interest and fulfilment.
Finally, that they will love someone, who will love, understand and be faithful to them, get married, have children and in turn observe their own children achieve these life-cycle stages. This is health, wealth and happiness: life's pattern woven, seasonal assuredness, transgenerational continuity guaranteed.
It is not in the life plan of parents that their son or daughter should one day announce that he or she is gay. But an estimated 10 per cent of parents may one day hear this news. How parents are told, what they are told and the expectations of them when they are told are crucial to this "coming out" event.
One expectation that can sever relationships between parents and child is if the news is announced with anticipation of immediate acceptance. Given that the majority of gay people come to their own realisation that they are gay over an extended period and often after their own initial tortuous rejection before adjustment to their sexual orientation, it is unrealistic to expect parents to receive the news with nonchalance.
Parents who learn that their child is gay may experience overwhelming emotion. The news shatters the life-plan, upturns aspirations, invokes enormous guilt and may conjure up the worst and most extreme images of a debaucherous, flamboyant and hazardous lifestyle, while an avalanche of pejorative terms may come to mind.
The news may arouse extreme ambivalence, plunging parents into the extraordinarily complex position of hating the "group" of which their much loved child has declared him or herself a member. It may engender fears that being gay resulted from their failure to protect their child from a sexual abuse in childhood or some other grim parental fault.
It worries parents to contemplate their gay child alone, without love in their adult life, but terrifies them even more to imagine a gay partner lurking in the background who may be intimate in some aberrant way with their offspring.
Every extreme hurtful stereotype may emerge in the moment parents are told.
Some parents react less extremely but with profound sadness for the loneliness and social exclusion their child may face, for the grandchildren that will never be born and for the life their child will lead in the shadow of prejudice and discrimination: for the pretence they may require if they conceal their orientation or the persecution they may endure if they disclose it.
Almost all parents wonder if something can be done to "cure" the condition or ensure that it is an irremediable reality rather than a temporary life-style choice. Families may free-fall emotionally as brothers and sisters respond, frequently with entirely unpredicted reactions. Rejection may come from the sibling most expected to support: acceptance from the least likely family member.
Same-sex siblings may fear the disclosure casts doubt upon their own sexuality and family disputes can erupt between those who support or reject the situation.
While these are understandable family reactions, a gay son who has just bared his soul, disclosed his sexuality and revealed his identity, may experience them as an intense rejection of who and what he is. To seek a cure is to say that he is diseased and to reject reality is to deny his identity.
To risk coming out to that potential intensity of family responses is an act of extreme courage and profound need on the part of the person who is gay.
It is a measure of how important it is to the gay person to continue as an accepted family member and to retain parental love and regard irrespective of sexual orientation.
It is a test of whether love is conditional or unconditional.
It is a test that can have tragic consequences if a son or daughter is ostracized or denied. Therefore, how parents respond, what they say in response, and the tone of their reply, are crucial.
Regardless of inner turmoil the best outward response parents can make is a reassuring embrace and expression of concern for the turmoil their child must have experienced in order to come to this point.
Thereafter, professional family intervention or Parent Support, provided by other parents through the Gay Switchboard should be considered.
Marie Murray is director or psychology at St Vincent's Hospital Fairview