Is Your Dad Gay—or Are You a Gay Dad?

Are you a daughter whose dad is gay? Or are you a gay dad? Has this had any negative impact on your father-daughter relationship? If so, the following research findings might be useful to you both in terms of creating a more comfortable, honest relationship.

1. In 2020 surveys (Jones, 2011), slightly less than 6 percent of all American men and women over the age of 18 identify themselves as LBGT. Nearly 3 percent consider themselves bisexual, though the numbers differ considerably by age. Here’s the breakdown.

bisexual: 3%
gay: 1.4%
lesbian: 0.7%
transgender: 0.6%

By age:
18–23: 16%
24–39: 9%
40–55: 4%
56–73: 2%
over 74: 1%

Most children under the age of 18 have parents in the 24 to 39 age bracket. This means that only 9 percent of parents are LBGT in contrast to 16 percent of young adult children between the ages of 18 and 23. The likelihood that a father or a mother is transgender is relatively small, since only 0.6 percent of all Americans are in this group.

2. If your dad is LBGT, he is half as likely as an LBGT woman to be bisexual.

3. Most children whose dads are gay were born while their biological mom and biological dad were married and living together. Because half of LBGT Americans are bisexual, this is not surprising. (Jones, 2021)

4. If you have a gay dad or a lesbian mom, after they separate, which of them is most likely to remarry or to remarry and then divorce? Lesbian moms are more likely than gay dads to marry their same-sex partner. But gay dads are less likely to get divorced from their husbands than lesbian moms are to get divorced from their wives. (Lau, 2012).

5. Gay men may experience more discrimination than lesbians, especially if they are parents. Our society is still less accepting of gay men being fathers than of lesbians being mothers.

But perhaps the most important research finding is that gay dads and their daughters have closer relationships when dads tell the truth—and these dads are less clinically depressed than dads who hide this important information from their children (Tornello, 2018). Sadly, gay fathers are more afraid than lesbian mothers to tell their children the truth, regardless of their age. This isn’t beneficial for the dad or for his daughter, since this kind of secrecy creates unnecessary stress on their relationship. I've given you detailed advice on how to discuss these difficult father-daughter issues in my book Improving Father-Daughter Relationships. So if you as a daughter or as a gay dad are still tiptoeing around the topic, it’s time to give yourselves a gift by getting this skeleton out of the closet.