Post‐Divorce <scp>LGBTQ</scp> ‐Parent Families: Navigating Loyalty Conflicts and Stepfamily Closeting

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.