Letters to Fathers: A Qualitative Analysis of Gay Sons’ Experiences of Paternal Childrearing

Abstract

Gay sons’ personal experiences of the ways in which their father raised them have not been thoroughly addressed in the current body of literature. Utilizing Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (Smith, Flowers, & Larkin, 2009), this dissertation explores the lived experiences of gay men as they share their childhood memories of their father’s paternal caregiving practices as well as growing up as gay males during the Generation X and Generation Y eras in the United States. Five participants wrote a letter to their father and it served to develop the questionnaire used for a follow-up semi-structured interview. The findings resulted in a collection of five superordinate themes: paternal parenting, reciprocal love between father and gay son, growing up as a gay male, gay identity, and personal reflections. Clinical implications of this study suggest gay men who experience psychological difficulties including anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, and isolation may be due to an overlay of heterosexist gender role adherence as well as nonadherence. Gay sons in this study thrived best when their father gave them the resources and support to develop into the person they wanted to become—not who fathers wanted their sons to be.