Palliative Emotion Work: Preserving Parent-LGB Child Relationships in an Age Of “Incomplete Acceptance”
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Despite the gains achieved by the gay rights movement, lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LBG) people still face discrimination. LGB acceptance in this context is incomplete. Although familial rejection upon coming out is less common than it was previously, many LGB individuals experience acceptance that is only partial. Drawing on in-depth interviews, we analyze the emotion work used by parents and their LGB adult children to navigate and maintain familial relationships in the absence of full acceptance. We argue this often requires adaptation to heterosexism achieved through “palliative emotion work”—diminishing or transforming noxious feelings in relationships that are strained. Through three strategies of palliative emotion work (minimizing, accounting, and categorizing and comparing) LGB adults and their parents are able to maintain familial relationships that cause emotional pain; but, not without a cost: bolstering a system of heterosexism that places the feelings of heterosexuals above those of LGB people.
Source: Qualitative Sociology
Authors: Tyler Flockhart, Matthew Ezzell
Institutions: University of Wisconsin–La Crosse, James Madison University
Language: English
Subfield: Social Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Reduced inequalities
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $3,190
OpenAlex ID: W4416093538