Parents’ Retrospective Storytelling of Their Child’s Coming Out: Investigating Contributions of Communicated Perspective-Taking in Relation to Well-Being

ABSTRACT

Guided by communicated narrative sense-making (CNSM) theory, we surveyed parents (n= 133) to elicit retrospective stories of their child’s coming out as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT) and to assess perceptions of their child’s communicated perspective-taking (CPT) during the coming out process. Themes emerging from parents’ stories included casual acceptance, supporting, acknowledging their struggle, and learning. Themes and their links to parents’ individual and relational well-being underscored connections between positively-framed retrospective storytelling content, narrative resilience, and well-being, as proposed in CNSM theory. CPT was also positively related to parents’ individual and relational well-being, demonstrating the benefits of LGBT children taking the perspective of their parent when coming out. Findings suggest an extension of CNSM theory’s second proposition, sharpen the conceptualization of narrative resilience, and highlight the important role of CPT to sense-making and individual and relational well-being.