Healthy relationships within a family are the fundament for the child’s successful development. However, there are debates on the role of gay families in bringing up children. Sandra Williams, the author of the movie Caught in the Crossfire: Children of Gay and Lesbian Parents (1997), focuses on the discussion of this controversial question because she is a lesbian, and she has a daughter. The impact of the parents’ sexuality on the child’s development is the main concern analyzed in the movie (Caught in the Crossfire, 1997).
The discussion is based on the vision of several children whose parents are gays and lesbians. Children develop successfully and feel happy, if they are desired and loved. Although love, understanding, and support are the main components of the healthy relationships between a child and a parent, the parents’ sexuality can become a real challenge for children because it affects their vision of parents, of themselves, and their interactions within the society.
The conversations with children growing in the families with gay parents presented in the movie support the opinion that only few children can react to their parents’ gay orientation positively. The most typical reactions are anger, distress, anxiety, unwillingness to understand and accept the fact, confusion, and the fear of social ignorance.
From this point, discovering the aspects of the parents’ sexuality, children are challenged, and their life can become more complicated because of the necessity to overcome inner and social stereotypes and biases. Thus, the children’s visions can differ significantly, and the range of reactions is large, including the absolute disagreement and discussion of gay relations as the “sickest thing” and acceptance of the idea along with sharing the mother or father’s sexuality (Caught in the Crossfire, 1997).
It is stated in the movie that the child’s reaction depends on the bond between a parent and a child. If relations in a family are open and positive, based on the mutual understanding, children do not feel that they are betrayed by the fact of the parent’s discovered sexuality which is abnormal in relation to the social visions.
However, it is necessary to pay attention to the opinion of the boy depicted in the movie who states that children should not choose whether to like the situation or not, whether to accept the parent’s sexuality or not (Caught in the Crossfire, 1997).
From this perspective, emphasizing on their sexuality, parents make children choose and take definite positions of acceptance gay relations or not. In spite of the fact those children who are depicted in the movie know about their parents’ sexuality, a lot of them want not to learn that their mother or father is a gay. That is why, parents should understand that their sexuality can affect their children’s emotional and psychological state directly and can create many difficulties associated with the aspects of the social life.
Basing on the research, Sandra Williams concludes that her sexuality can hurt her daughter in the future because of the necessity to accept or understand it. It is important to note that children’s reactions to the fact can be different, depending on their relations with parents, on their desire to understand the situation, and on their personal understanding of all the particular aspects of the issue.
The problem is in the fact that if the relations in a gay family are balanced and children do not feel anxiety or stress, they can feel much confusion interacting with the other people who surround them because of belonging to something unnatural or socially unaccepted.
Reference
Caught in the Crossfire: Children of gay and lesbian parents. (1997). Web.