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

TL;DR

This study explores how South Korean parents of LGBTQ+ children navigate trauma, misinformation, and identity reconstruction, leading to more critical and supportive information practices.

Contribution

It highlights the transformative process of trauma and healing on parents' identities and their information practices, emphasizing relational and emotional dimensions.

Findings

Parents develop critical skills to assess queer-related misinformation.

Trauma and healing reshape parents' identities and informating practices.

Parents actively challenge harmful narratives and support others.

Abstract

This study examines how parents of LGBTQ+ individuals in South Korea navigate the emotional rupture fueled by fear, isolation, and disorientation after learning their children's queer identity, encounter queer-related (mis)information as a way of coping with this emotional toll, and come to listen to queer realities relationally. Through this process, we highlight how parents reconstruct their identities as supportive parents, which reshapes their informating practices, making them more critical in assessing queer-related (mis)information, developing strategies to protect themselves from harmful narratives, and actively challenging misinformation to support others navigating similar experiences. This work contributes to CSCW by (1) foregrounding parents of LGBTQ+ individuals, an underrepresented yet critical stakeholder group in Queer HCI; (2) demonstrating how identity reconfiguration following a trauma-healing process could transform information practices; and (3) arguing that addressing misinformation requires attention beyond individual fact-based discerning to account for its relational, cultural, and emotional dimensions. Further, we invite CSCW scholars to reconsider the balance between abstracting and humanizing information, explore future design possibilities for parents of LGBTQ+ children, and reflect on the role of researchers as participants in collective research communities fueled by care.