Absent Fathers and Overbearing Mothers

A recipe for same-sex attraction?

I’ve heard that men who experience same-sex attraction generally have absent fathers and overbearing mothers.

If you told me that a few years ago, I would’ve dismissed it. I thought my parents were great. My dad wasn’t ‘absent’ and my mom wasn’t ‘overbearing.’ Not really. I had a great childhood.

Or so I thought.

Until recently I thought my childhood was quite normal. And in many ways it was. But I actually don’t remember much about it. There seems to be large chunks missing.

How can we explain this? What causes the lapse in memory? Homosexuality can’t solely be attributed to inadequate parenting? Are we painting with a broad brush when we say ‘absent’ and ‘overbearing’?

I’m going to try and unpack some of this here.

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Drawing from my own experience, I have always felt different from other guys. I’ve had those feelings for as long as I can remember. And it wasn’t until therapy that I began to unpack them. My therapist and I spent a lot of time talking about my childhood. At first, I was surprised because I was more focused on reconciling my attractions and values. But I soon learned that for me to move forward, I needed to go back.

We began working through some painful memories. Things that happened that shouldn’t have. I was confused. Memories came up that I had pushed out of my mind. I cried about things I hadn’t thought about for years. An anger was boiling within me. It was directed at others, but also at myself. But it felt good to let it out. And slowly I began to realize maybe things weren’t always so rosy growing up.

Perhaps what’s even more difficult is grieving things that never happened that should have. A dad who would go camping with me. A mom who would ask how I was. Not only did I need to work through negative experiences, I needed to grieve that absence of positive ones as well. It was something I was blind to because I didn’t know what was missing. And as I continued to work through the past, my perception of my childhood began to change. I began to see more clearly.

It’s a scary prospect. My life felt like it was built on shaky ground. I was rediscovering the past. Uncovering feelings I had buried. How was I so blind? And why did it take therapy for me to realize how deeply the past influenced me?

The reality is that same-sex attraction is the result of many complex factors which include early relational wounds. Often those wounds set up patterns of thinking which impact how we see ourselves and interact with the world. They’re given to us at a young age through relationships with our caregivers, and over time we begin to adopt those patterns for ourselves.

When we’re kids, our minds are impressionable. We don’t quite yet have the faculties to reason. For example, when my dad forgot to pick me up from school, my mind didn’t go to, ‘dad must be really busy’ or ‘he’s probably just running late.’ Rather because of repeated similar experiences, my mind turned to ‘I’m not cared for’ or maybe even ‘dad doesn’t love me’. It’s the nature of the relationship that begins to form the lens through which the child sees himself. But at a young age, it’s something children have little to no control over.

Clinically speaking, we might call these attachment wounds brought about from early adverse childhood experiences, or in other words, complex trauma. Over time that pattern of thinking — which was born from early experiences — can take hold, impacting the child’s emotional state well into adulthood.

Even worse, these wounds are complex because the child is placed in a lose-lose situation. At a young age, kids are wholly dependent on their parents. And maintaining that relationship is paramount to survival. In my situation, if dad forgot to pick me up, I couldn’t voice my frustration without him somehow making it my fault. So rather than speaking up and jeopardizing the relationship, the child quietly accepts his fate and preemptively internalizes the shame. ‘It really is me. I’m not loveable’. It doesn’t even cross my mind that there are other explanations.

And sometimes these kinds of experiences are marked with such emotional pain that the mind does its best to shield the child from those painful experiences. It’s trying to protect us. And so a sort of subconscious amnesia develops¹. The mind subtly alters our perception of events to make them more bearable. And in more extreme cases, sometimes the mind even helps fabricate a new reality for us.

Over time, those natural longings for paternal affection continue to go unmet. But the underlying needs don’t go away. I needed my dad to love me and protect me. I needed to feel like I could be emotionally vulnerable with my mom. Somewhere along the way, men became desirable and women exhausting. Not of my own conscious choosing, but because of the cards I was dealt.

Perhaps I had felt that my childhood was good, because I wanted to believe that it was. I didn’t want to remember, and so my mind carefully hid away experiences from my conscious awareness. Therapy not only helped me identify those relational wounds but helped me start the healing process by gently making the ‘unconscious conscious.’²

So, ‘absent fathers and overbearing mothers’ are the cause of same-sex attraction?

Each person will be different. More accurately, we might say early relational wounds are a contributing factor for many individuals experiencing same-sex attraction, including myself. How those wounds come about will depend on the individual. And identifying those wounds is no simple task. By design, our minds are shielding them from us — helping us cope in ways that are fueled by our subconscious.

At least that’s been my experience. My childhood looked great from the outside, but from the inside it didn’t feel that way. So maybe I put on a mask. I didn’t want anyone to know any different…including myself. But it was eating me up inside. It wasn’t until I started to confront the past that my life and relationships began change. Even my sexuality too.

In hindsight, it feels like I’ve woken up. I’m no longer a child in a man’s body. I see more clearly, am more present, and no longer as emotionally reactive as I once was.

And to a certain extent, we all have a less than ideal childhoods. I’m still learning how to move past the past. I’m still learning how to forgive. My parents did the best they could. And if ever I have kids of my own, I pray to God I might do a little better.

1. Bowlby, J. (1988). A secure base: Parent child attachment and healthy human development. New York: Basic Books.

2. Carl Jung reportedly has said, ‘Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate’.