Journeys of Parents with LGBTQ+ Children: How Trauma and Healing Reshape Identity and (Mis)Informating Practices
For CSCW and queer HCI researchers, this work provides a nuanced understanding of how trauma and identity reconstruction shape information practices among an underrepresented stakeholder group, arguing for a broader, more humanized approach to misinformation.
This study explores how South Korean parents of LGBTQ+ children experience emotional trauma after learning their child's identity, use queer-related (mis)information to cope, and ultimately reconstruct their identities as supportive parents, leading to more critical information practices. The findings highlight the relational, cultural, and emotional dimensions of misinformation, challenging purely fact-based approaches.
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.