Advice When Children Come Out: The Cultural "Tool Kits" of Parents.

The family is one of the main areas of social life where the normalization of gay/lesbian identity is incomplete. Most research analyzes the individual and psychological aspects of how families respond to children's disclosure of a gay/lesbian identity, and ignores the social, cultural, and historical contexts. An examination of the cultural discourses, tools, and strategies that are available to parents is necessary for a full understanding of how families respond to gay/lesbian children. We conduct an interpretive content analysis of 29 advice books in order to assess this cultural field and its institutional resources. We find three broad strategies offered to parents: relying on professionals for overcoming the grief of having a gay/lesbian child, normalizing gay/lesbian identity, and utilizing "good" parenting skills. We discuss how these strategies demonstrate the unsettled and often contradictory cultural field of gay/lesbian identity in the family and its implications for sexual identities beyond the closet.