Journeys of Parents with LGBTQ+ Children: How Trauma and Healing Reshape Identity and (Mis)Informating Practices

Technical Summary: Journeys of Parents with LGBTQ+ Children: How Trauma and Healing Reshape Identity and (Mis)Informating Practices

Problem Statement
The study addresses the critical yet underrepresented role of parents in the sociotechnical well-being of LGBTQ+ individuals, specifically within the hostile cultural context of South Korea. In this environment, parents often experience significant emotional rupture—characterized by fear, isolation, and disorientation—upon learning their child's queer identity. This distress is frequently compounded by a lack of accurate information and the prevalence of queer-related misinformation (e.g., claims linking queerness to HIV/AIDS or asserting that conversion therapy is effective). While prior research has focused on individual fact-checking or cognitive approaches to misinformation, this paper argues that misinformation navigation is deeply relational, emotional, and cultural. The core problem is understanding how parents navigate this "information desert," how misinformation exacerbates their trauma, and how the process of healing and identity reconstruction alters their information-seeking and validation practices.

Methodology
The research employs a qualitative, feminist, and action-research approach grounded in the traditions of HCI and CSCW.

• Participants: Ten supportive parents of LGBTQ+ individuals in South Korea were recruited through PFLAG Korea, university communities, and snowball sampling. The sample included parents of children with diverse identities (Gay, Lesbian, MTF, FTX) and varying ages.
• Data Collection: The study utilized semi-structured interviews (60–80 minutes) conducted in person or online. The protocol included:
  1. Exploring the timeline of learning the child's identity and initial emotional responses.
  2. An exercise where participants reviewed five specific articles containing common Korean misinformation regarding LGBTQ+ issues (categorized by UN criteria as fabricated, manipulated, or misleading content).
  3. Discussion on how their information practices and attitudes have evolved since accepting their children's identities.
• Analysis: The authors conducted a Reflexive Thematic Analysis (RTA). Rather than seeking generalizability, the analysis focused on "transferability" and situated understanding. The researchers identified five stages in the parental journey and utilized the concept of "listening" from care ethics as an analytic lens to interpret how parents moved from emotional rupture to relational repair.
• Ethical Considerations: The study prioritized emotional safety, consulted with PFLAG Korea to avoid adversarial framing, and included a positionality statement acknowledging the first author's identity as a gay Korean man, which informed the research framing and analysis.

Key Findings
The study traces a trajectory from emotional trauma to identity reconstruction, mediated by the act of "listening" to queer realities.

1. The Information Vacuum and Initial Trauma: Before learning their child's identity, parents often viewed queerness as irrelevant or relied on distorted media portrayals. Upon disclosure, parents experienced a "crisis and rupture" characterized by fear for their child's safety, isolation, and a lack of guidance.
2. Misinformation as a Trauma Response: In the absence of reliable sources, parents initially turned to misinformation as a "graspable" but ineffective solution. Misinformation offering "cures" (conversion therapy) or catastrophic health warnings provided a false sense of actionable direction, yet it ultimately deepened distress, strained parent-child relationships, and reinforced fear.
3. Recovery Through Relational Listening: Healing occurred not through abstract fact-checking but through "relational listening." This involved:
   • Humanizing Encounters: Direct interactions with LGBTQ+ individuals and other parents (e.g., via PFLAG) transformed abstract "dragons" into relatable humans.
   • Narrative Engagement: Consuming narrative-driven media (novels, films) that depicted queer lives with tenderness and complexity.
   • Listening to Children: Recognizing the joy and authenticity in their children's lived experiences.
4. Transformed Informating Practices: As parents reconstructed their identities as supportive figures, their engagement with information shifted fundamentally:
   • Critical Analysis: They developed the ability to deconstruct the intent behind misinformation, recognizing "fear-mongering" and the omission of societal context (e.g., that suicide risks stem from stigma, not identity).
   • Protective Strategies: Parents developed "antennas" to detect harmful narratives, instinctively avoiding toxic content and curating algorithmic feeds (e.g., on YouTube) to create safe information spaces.
   • Informational Activism: Many parents transitioned from passive recipients to active agents, creating communities of care, sharing resources with new parents, and publicly challenging misinformation to advocate for queer realities.

Key Contributions
The paper makes three primary contributions to CSCW and Queer HCI:

1. Stakeholder Inclusion: It foregrounds parents of LGBTQ+ individuals as critical stakeholders in queer well-being, an underrepresented group in existing literature.
2. Identity and Informating Practices: It demonstrates how identity reconfiguration following a trauma-healing process directly transforms "informating practices" (information seeking, validation, and dissemination).
3. Relational Misinformation: It argues that addressing misinformation requires moving beyond individual cognitive fact-checking to account for relational, cultural, and emotional dimensions. The paper posits that dispelling misinformation is a social process rooted in empathy and human connection rather than purely rational discernment.

Significance and Claims
The authors claim that their work invites the CSCW community to reconsider the balance between abstracting and humanizing information. They argue that current information infrastructures often rely on textual, decontextualized representations that facilitate misinformation, whereas "humanizing encounters" (voice, face-to-face interaction, narrative) are essential for fostering the empathy required to counteract it.

The paper modestly frames its design implications not as "solutions" to structural oppression but as ways to augment existing parental capacities. It suggests future designs could support "soft" community-driven sensemaking (e.g., anonymous online groups, privacy-protective video support) and systems that enable agency in curating information to prevent re-traumatization.

Finally, the authors reflect on the researcher-participant relationship, asserting that in advocacy-oriented research, scholars must become part of the "collective research communities fueled by care," extending their role beyond observation to active participation in creating spaces where marginalized voices are heard and valued. The study emphasizes that while technology can support these journeys, the core of healing lies in relational repair and the courage to listen.