Gay Cisgender Male Parents’ Experiences of Belonging throughout the Transition to Parenthood and its Influence on the Parent-Child Relationship

BACKGROUND/AIMS: Feeling a sense of belonging is vital for mitigating feelings of loneliness and isolation from community and contributes to overall well-being. Gay parents are at increased risk of experiencing threats to their sense of belonging due to marginalisation and negative societal narratives around gay parenthood. These threats impact on supportive parenting spaces that gay parents can access, further limiting their development of belonging in parenthood and access to parenting resources. This study aimed to explore how gay parents’ experiences of belonging in the transition to parenthood influenced their relationship with their child from a contextualised attachment perspective. METHODOLOGY: Five gay adoptive parents were invited to share their stories through semi-structured interviews in this qualitative research project. A critical realist epistemological stance was taken to analyse their stories through experience-centred narrative analysis and the Meaning of the Child (MotC) system (Grey, 2025), which was grounded in a Power Threat Meaning Framework (PTMF; Johnstone & Boyle, 2018). FINDINGS: Analysis resulted in three collective themes: ‘Born into a heteronormative mould’, ‘Held by invisible wounds’, and ‘Out of place, out of mind; calling for belonging’. Gay parents experienced threats to their sense of belonging from multiple contexts that influenced their parenting strategies to manage their survival. Participants related their intersectional contexts to parenting a child with their own trauma history, reflecting on the difficulties that left them feeling hopeless and helpless at times to manage and support their emotions and behaviours. CONCLUSION: Gay parents are uniquely placed to parent adoptive children because of their own experiences of difference, resilience and threatened sense of belonging. Attachment theories, adoption support and parenting spaces are embedded in a heteronormative sphere that requires contextualisation and development for gay parents. Therapeutic intervention is needed to support gay parents’ understanding of their children’s emotional and behavioural needs that are impacted by historical trauma so they can develop strategies to support their child’s attachment development. Finally, gay parents require parenting support spaces that are unique to their intersectional identities to develop their sense of legitimacy and belonging in parenthood.