Psychology
Document Type
Article
Abstract
Objective: The purpose of this study was to investigate underexplored dynamics of post-divorce LGBTQ-parent families.
Background: In LGBTQ-parent families in which children were conceived in the context of a prior different-gender partnership, children experience the coinciding events of parental separation and a parent's coming out as LGBTQ. In recent decades, research on LGBTQ-parent families formed following different-gender divorce has stalled, perhaps due to the increasing emphasis on planned LGBTQ-parent families, or families formed after parents have come out.
Method: Twenty-four adults who were born to different-gender married parents (i.e., mother/father families) who divorced when one parent came out as LGBTQ responded to a survey about their childhood experiences involving parental divorce and a parent coming out.
Results: Our data shed light on two themes: navigating loyalty conflicts and LGBTQ stepfamily closeting. When queer mothers divorced straight fathers, participants often described loyalties to their mothers, but when queer fathers divorced straight mothers, participants were less likely to describe divided loyalties and more likely to describe cooperative coparenting. Even once parents came out and formed LGBTQ stepfamilies, they often remained closeted at the family level in that participants kept the nature of their parent and stepparent's relationship hidden from family outsiders, typically to protect their families from real and anticipated heterosexism.
Conclusion: Our findings have implications for the present-day well-being of people who navigated family conflict and secrecy as youth. Amid renewed anti-LGBTQ hostility, our results highlight the invisible familial costs of adapting to systems of oppression.
Publication Title
Journal of Marriage and Family
Publication Date
2026
ISSN
0022-2445
DOI
10.1111/jomf.70071
Keywords
divorce, LGBTQ-parent families, loyalty conflicts, stepfamilies
Repository Citation
Sanner, Caroline; Goldberg, Abbie E.; and Allen, Katherine R., "Post-Divorce LGBTQ-Parent Families: Navigating Loyalty Conflicts and Stepfamily Closeting" (2026). Psychology. 990.
https://commons.clarku.edu/faculty_psychology/990
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Copyright Conditions
Sanner, C., Goldberg, A. E., & Allen, K. R. (2026). Post‐Divorce LGBTQ‐Parent Families: Navigating Loyalty Conflicts and Stepfamily Closeting. Journal of Marriage and Family.
