Preventive Emotion Work

Abstract

The contemporary Gay Right's Movement is incomplete. More LGBs are “out” to—and report regular contact with—their parents than 20 years ago. Parent-child relationships, however, are often fraught. Acceptance sometimes comes in the form of “tolerance” and is contingent on LGBs' ability to appear like heterosexuals. In this chapter, the focus is on how LGBs and their parents maintain relationships with each other under these conditions. More specifically, the concept of “preventive emotion work” is developed to demonstrate the relationship management that goes into maintaining parent-child relationships in a context of incomplete acceptance. To conclude, the chapter emphasizes how the use of preventive emotion work—to preserve parent-LGB child relationships—is often invisible and reproduces heterosexism by placing the emotional wellbeing of parents above those of LGB children.