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Coming Out, Coming Home: Helping Families Adjust to a Gay or Lesbian Child resources

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Appendix  251 to the same question were grouped together and the texts of their responses were analyzed. In keeping with grounded theory methods, these grouped responses were read, and preliminary codes were developed. Through con- stant comparative analysis, axial codes led to the primary themes, which included the family adjustment stages, the importance of strong parent-child boundaries, and the reciprocal interactions of parents and children. As the principal investigator, I regularly debriefed with peers who were family therapists, social workers, parents of adult gay and lesbian children, and gay lay people. Repeated reading of transcripts, coding, and discussion of the findings with peers and research assistants led to the concepts and theory that described family adjustment. As a reliability check, one of the research assistants coded portions of the interview transcripts into the key codes that I developed, and agreement ranged from 84–100 percent, with a mean of 94.5 percent. Additional Study Limitations Throughout this book, and especially in chapters6 and7, I have diligently tried to point out the limitations of the findings of this research, and in this section I reiterate some of these and add others. It bears repeating that this sample consisted primarily of families with parents who had mostly adjusted to the news that a daughter or son was gay, so the findings must be inter- preted with that in mind. It would be helpful, though rather difficult, to recruit and interview parents who had rejected their children in order to examine how child factors such as cross-gendered mannerisms, developmen- tal problems, and parent-child interactions play a role in parents’ decisions to reject their children. Further, it would be helpful to know more about how families of Latino, Asian, and other cultural backgrounds adjust to having a gay or lesbian child, as it is likely that culture plays a strong role in parent’s and children’s feelings about homosexuality. Principal investigators who are bicultural and bilingual might be more likely than I, a third-generation Italian American white man, to have sufficient insider knowledge as to how to recruit such parents and encourage them to discuss these deeply personal issues. All but five of the parents were living in the New York City and Philadelphia metropolitan areas, which are known to be fairly liberal parts of the country. It is expected the findings would be different if the study took place in a 08_lasala14382_app.indd 251 3/10/10 1:12:11 PM

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