Coming out to your family

Whatever their first reaction is, it's unlikely to be their last. Families often get there slowly, through shock, silence, tears, questions that sound like accusations, and a period of saying nothing at all. "Are you sure?" usually means "I need this not to be true for a bit longer". "Is this because of something we did?" means "I'm frightened I failed you". "What will people say?" is fear for you, and for them, expressed badly. Silence means they don't have words yet. Minus18 puts it simply: it's new for them, and they may need patience. The Family Acceptance Project found that families who were unsure or conflicted at first were a large group, and that small movements in a family's behaviour mattered, so plan for the long version.

What they need from you is the true thing in one plain sentence, and then room to react. What you need is to be safe while they do. Minus18 (Australia), the Trevor Project (United States) and Stonewall (United Kingdom) all publish guidance on coming out, and they agree: your safety and wellbeing come first, and if telling someone could cost you your home, your income or your physical safety, you can wait and have a back-up plan; there is no one way and no right time, you can tell some people and not others, and you can change your mind; it isn't a one-off, and most people come out many times over years; you don't owe anyone information you're not comfortable giving; and a bad reaction is not your fault and doesn't undermine who you are. If speaking is too hard, a letter can guide the conversation or replace it. The Extended Family Dynamics module's SAFE conversation is built on this: safety and support first, anticipate that the first reaction isn't the last, few words said plainly, expect to come back to it. In Australia, QLife (1800 184 527, phone and webchat, 3pm to 9pm every day) offers free, anonymous peer support for anyone thinking about coming out and for the people around them; most of the countries this app serves have an equivalent, and the Trevor Project's lines in the United States run around the clock.

The research is about what families do, not what they feel. The Family Acceptance Project at San Francisco State University, led by Caitlin Ryan, surveyed 224 white and Latino lesbian, gay and bisexual young adults about their families' reactions during their teenage years (Ryan, Huebner, Diaz and Sanchez, 2009): those who reported high levels of family rejection were 8.4 times more likely to report having attempted suicide and 5.9 times more likely to report high levels of depression than those whose families rejected them little or not at all. A second study (Ryan, Russell, Huebner, Diaz and Sanchez, 2010) found that family acceptance predicted higher self-esteem, more social support and better general health. Both studies asked young adults to look back, and both were done with white and Latino participants in the United States, so the pattern is strong but the numbers belong to those samples. What makes the work useful is that it measured specific behaviours: talking with the young person about their identity, expressing affection, standing up for them and welcoming their friends and partners helped; excluding them, enforcing secrecy and telling them they shamed the family harmed, and even families that were only a little less rejecting saw real differences. If what you're telling them is something else, leaving a faith, refusing an expected marriage, choosing not to have children, the shape holds but the numbers don't carry over; what carries is that a family that keeps the door open and refuses to let others be cruel is doing the thing that matters, even before its feelings catch up.