How to Be a ‘Good Enough’ Queer Parent: Letting Go of Perfection
Understanding Parent-Child Disconnect: The Lego Box Metaphor in Family Therapy
When I was working in wilderness therapy, I spent a weekend working at the affiliated residential school and was able to witness a group family therapy session where a therapist demonstrated a concept in a way that has really stuck with me. She had a parent and child represent themselves with teddy bears, and each of them built a box around their teddy bear using legos where each brick represented an expectation of them. For example, the child added a brick for the parent’s wish that they are always happy. Part of the desire for the parent was to have an always happy child because that would prove they are a “good” parent. The expectation the parent had for themself to be an always “good” parent became a brick in the box around their own teddy bear. After adding block after block, it became clear that the teddy bears couldn’t see each other or interact directly with each other. It was actually the two outer boxes that could interact, which maintained a kind of disconnection between the parent and child. The disconnection between parent and child seemed counterproductive to the goal for a “happy” or “successful” kid. After seeing these lego boxes, I found myself taking stock of the kind of parent I wanted to be. I want to feel connected to my child, and I also want to feel like I can be myself and not have to build up a box around me. I don’t need my child to be happy all of the time, but I do hope that they feel seen and understood often enough. This lego box image has always stuck with me and has led me to strive to be a ‘good enough’ parent rather than needing to always be seen as “good” in my parenting.
What is ‘Good Enough Parenting’ and Why It Matters for LGBTQ+ Families
The concept of the ‘good enough mother’ (and the adapted good enough parent) comes from Donald Winnicott and has been repeated by many psychologists and parenting advice-givers since. Winnicott describes a good enough parent as the caregiver for a child who is responsive to the child’s needs and, as the child grows, adapts to the child's increasing tolerance for frustrations.[1] This means that as the child becomes more independent and more resilient, the parent can ‘afford’ to not ‘get responsiveness right” all the time. ‘Good enough’ parenting allows for parents to be imperfectand for parents to not always respond immediately or perfectly to their children’s needs. I think of a good enough parent in the context of ruptures and repairs in relationships. Ruptures are moments of disconnection between a parent and child. Through this lens, each brick in the above lego wall can be seen to represent a rupture or disconnection. This might be when a parent is misattuned or misaligned with their child’s basic physical needs or emotional needs including safety, stability, nurturance, and acceptance. A repair is any way that a parent and child reconnect with each other after a rupture. This is a way to remove a brick from a wall of disconnection. I might make a mistake in my parenting, or not be as responsive as my kiddo needs or wants, but being a good enough parent gives me the permission to tolerate my flaws. I can own my imperfections and continue to repair any riffs in my relationship with my kid as best I can.
Queer Parenting and the Pressure for Perfection: How to Let Go
The ‘good enough [parent]’ was conceptualized within a heteronormative context, but I think it is quite applicable to queer families. Many queer and trans parents experience internalized homophobia and transphobia which can lead to a desire to compensate by trying to be extra good/perfect/better-than-straight-parents in order to prove oneself and one’s community as legitimate and worthy of parenthood. The trouble is, much of the weight of being a “perfect parent” ultimately falls on the child being “perfect”. This striving to be perceived as perfect can build the lego walls between us. As queer parents, we can remove some of these bricks by recognizing the influence of homophobia and transphobia and work to not pass along the resulting expectations of perfection onto our children. In order to break free from the need to prove ourselves to our straight contemporaries, we queer parents also need to let some of our messiness leak into the public sphere. Being a ‘good enough’ parent, messiness and all, allows parents to maintain a connection to their child and, for queerspawn kids, that might mean enough of an opening in the lego wall to share their own messy feelings, such as the pressure to prove the worth and legitimacy of their family.
Raising Queerspawn Children
The first time I heard the term queerspawn was 10 years ago while volunteering at Camp Ten Oaks, a summer camp for queer and trans youth and youth with queer and trans families. I learned that queerspawn was an identity held by children of queer and trans parents, and that their experiences are often excluded from queer spaces. When my (queerspawn) partner and I decided to have a kiddo of our own, we had many conversations about what raising a queerspawn might look like and how we might support the unique needs of growing up in a queer family. We talked about how we might befriend other queer folks with kids around the same age so our kid could see families like theirs. We talked about our hopes and worries around our kid’s relationship with their sperm donor. And we talked about the pressures that we feel to do a ‘good job’ parenting and how that might impact our kiddo.
How Queerspawn Navigate the Pressure to Defend Their Family's Legitimacy
I’ve come to understand that queerspawn often grow up feeling a need to defend their family’s legitimacy in the eyes of others both because of pressures within their family and because of their own experiences of homophobia and transphobia. This leads many to try to become “poster children” in order to paint their (very human and imperfect) families as perfect because they feel held to a higher standard than their peers with straight families. In our family, this means that we want to create space for our kiddo to see us as imperfect parents, to own our mistakes, repair and reconnect, and to offer a wide range of representations of queer families that allow for the messiness of reality. We work really hard to not shy away from our messiness, to not build up our lego walls, allowing our kiddo to see us as the 'good enough' parents we are: complicated, loving and not always getting it perfect.
I am particularly passionate about supporting queerspawn and queer and trans people in my practice. I have been working with these communities for many years and I have a deep knowledge about some of the nuances of what people in these communities can experience. If you want more information about my work you can check out my profile.
Resources
COLAGE - an American-based organization by and for queerspawn
Camp Ten Oaks - A summer camp for queerspawn and queer and trans youth
https://www.tenoaksproject.org/camp-ten-oaks/
Family Week in Provincetown - An annual gathering of LGBTQ+ families
https://www.ptownfamilyweek.com/
Queerspawn Resource Project - a hub with links to many other resources
https://queerspawnresource.org/
Spawning Generations: Rants and Reflections on Growing up with LGBTQ+ Parents - an anthology of stories written by queerspawn about their experiences
References
[1] Winnicott, D.W. (1971). Playing and Reality. London: Routledge.