Abstract
Research on LGBTIQ+ families has focused on the effects of being in a diverse family on the development of children. We seek to show the experience of parenthood from the perspective of LGBTIQ+ people, considering its particularities and the role that health care services play as a potential support network. We used the biographical method through open-ended interviews, participants were LGBT people, and key informants from Chile, Colombia, and Mexico were selected based on a sociostructural sampling. We found that internalized stigma impacts LGBTIQ+ parenting in five ways: the impossibility of thinking of oneself as a parent, fear of violating children’s rights, fear of passing on the stigma, fear of introducing their LGBTIQ+ partner, and the greater discrimination that trans and intersex people suffer. We identified gaps in health care perceptions: the need to guarantee universal access to health care, the need to include a gender perspective and inclusive treatment by health personnel, mental health programs with a community approach, access to assisted fertilization programs, and the generation of collaborative alliances between health services, civil society organizations, and the LGBTIQ+ community. We conclude that the health system is a crucial space from which to enable guarantees for the exercise of rights and overcome internalized stigma.
Highlights
The heterocisnormative Judeo-Christian model (HJCM), present in Latin America [1,2,3,4], promotes ideologies regarding what constitutes a “normal” family, gender roles, and normative social milestones to be accomplished, denaturalizing sexual and gender diversity and validating discrimination and subordination of LGBTIQ+ people
Parenting is confused with fecundity, associating LGBTIQ+ people with sterility, arguing that a couple formed by LGBTIQ+ people cannot reproduce “naturally” and, could not experience maternity/paternity [8,9,10]
Bi/transphobia system that LGBTIQ+ people experience as discrimination in their intimate and broader social environments
Summary
The heterocisnormative Judeo-Christian model (HJCM), present in Latin America [1,2,3,4], promotes ideologies regarding what constitutes a “normal” family, gender roles, and normative social milestones to be accomplished, denaturalizing sexual and gender diversity and validating discrimination and subordination of LGBTIQ+ people. The HJCM sustains, at a sociocultural level, homo/lesbo/bi/transphobia and discrimination [1,2,3,4]. Prejudice, and discrimination create a hostile and stressful social environment for LGBTIQ+ people that can cause mental health problems, expectations of rejection, hiding/camouflaging (performing as a hetero cisgender person), internalized homo/lesbo/bi/transphobia, and ameliorative coping processes [5]. Heterosexual-cisgender parenting is considered the foundational nucleus of the family [6,7]. The same criterion is not applied when couples formed by cisgender heterosexual people (CHP) are infertile and perform procedures of adoption and assisted reproduction techniques [8,11,12]
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