Kids of Gen Z are up for a greater more open experience of being openly queer, even with their family and parents. On the contrary, for the elder generations, this queer culture is new and to an extent, very wrong. There’s a pre conceived notion that queer confirmation, awareness of one’s sexuality emerges around a mere ‘phase’ of confusion. Due to this, parents often, unknowingly end up neglecting the support needed by their kids, during childhood, where they actually go through the discovery period.
Compared to older times, parents are more positive towards their kids being sexually aware and potentially queer. Like every coin has two sides, with positivity on one side, there’s a range of Indian parents that are evidently cold and harsh towards their kids being a part of the queer community, since there’s a stigma associated with it.
‘Anything beyond the lines of heterosexuality is abnormal’ and to our society abnormal is equivalent to being shunned.
In addition to that, with awareness, there’s a lot of positive queer portrayal in media, in various ways, from television shows, to movies. It still has consequently, due to the strong perception of elders, has failed to create a normalized environment for queer kids in the minds of their parents.
In a brighter light, there’s also a good outcome out of the hardship. Now, parents are with a lot more awareness of the trans identification, it’s easier for young parents to treat gender dysphoria at a very early age, and turn around the stigma in the society against transgender people.
Due to very obvious reasons it’s hard for parents to accept their kids marrying into the same gender, even though it’s been legalized. In similar consequence, we find parents trying to convince their kids into marrying the heterosexual way, and trying to make them believe that, at the end of the day, one needs a partner of opposite gender to meet their physical and sexual needs.
Either ways, it’s hard for Indian parents to accept their child’s queer sexuality, as they themselves have a great urge to fit into and abide by the rules of the society they’re living in. Some of them have a natural instinct to suppress feelings and urges that are against the values and morals taught to them since childhood, therefore, they intend to do the same to their children, by telling them to suppress their sexuality, get married in the heterosexual manner or find a treatment to get rid of it all.
There’s an innate need for queer children to know about the difference between heterosexual physical contact and the one between people of LGBTQ community. In such situations parents lack and fail in giving good advice as they themselves lack in education of the same.
Many parents of queer kids go through the phases of shock and denial, making them have an unacceptable attitude towards their kids feeling this way. Anxiety of the future, of how things are going to go when they reach the age of marriage and start making a family of their own. To an extent, parent of a child, who’s a part of the LGBTQ community, the denial of their child’s situation makes it harder for them to accept or own the truth in front of the family and friends. So, they don’t only teach their kids to suppress their sexuality, but take the case as a matter of shame and aren’t able to openly admit that their child is queer in front of almost everybody, often making it a secret.
At the end of the day, and this article, parents are human, they’re conditioned to be who they are, they’re taught the heterosexual world as the real one , they’re human , so their outrage and shock to their kids coming out of the closet is normal. Kids feeling left out and forced to be someone they’re not is an accepted consequence of the same.
However, this attitude and conversion therapy for queer members of the society is functionally wrong, as it should be. With time, people change, values change, and slowly there’s a hope with change in perception of most parents regarding this, potentially leading to a more normalized environment for queer community and a rather positive aura for them to live in, even around their parents.
