"There Will Be No Thanksgiving This Year"

On grandparental grief and the culture of rejection

The announcement seemed out of the blue: a text from Diana’s daughter, declaring that Jane, Diana’s six-year-old granddaughter, was now James. Her—no, his—pronouns were now he/him.

Diana had noticed changes over the past couple of months, of course—and to be honest, she hadn’t necessarily understood or approved of them. Her daughter, Samantha, had given Jane a crew cut, and sent her swimming shirtless in boys’ swim trunks. But Diana was able to maintain connection to the grandchild she so adored, and whom she saw almost every week, even through these shifts.

This text, though—it ushered in something else altogether: a new reality, one with its own set of hard-to-follow rules.

Shouldn’t we talk about this, Diana asked? Where is this coming from?

A week later, Diana received another text from Samantha, this one informing her that her access to her grandchild had been revoked. Diana was not supportive, her daughter said. She could not be trusted.

Diana was suddenly cut out of both her child’s and her grandchild’s life.

***

We often hear about the importance of family acceptance when it comes to kids who identity somewhere on the LGBT+ spectrum. More accurately, we hear that kids who aren’t affirmed will attempt or complete a suicide, despite the lack of strong evidence behind this assertion.

Some of these ideas originated with, or have been hijacked from, the Family Acceptance Project, housed at San Francisco State University. The group has authored several papers suggesting a link between family acceptance and mental health. “Higher rates of family rejection were significantly associated with poorer health outcomes,” per a 2009 FAP paper, “Family Rejection as a Predictor of Negative Health Outcomes in White and Latino Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Young Adults.”

“Rejecting behaviors” on the part of parents and caregivers, this research suggests, may lead to increases in depression, anxiety, and even suicide. Those behaviors include “trying to discourage or change their child’s sexual orientation or gender expression or blaming them when others mistreat them because of their LGBT identity.”

I’m not going to spend a lot of time today going into the problem with conflating sexual orientation with “gender expression” (a term I object to), or on the quality of this research. I’m just going to say, yeah, there is some research that says accepting kids seems better for their mental health than rejecting them. This should surprise no one. There’s a reason shunning is such a powerful tool to keep people in line: it hurts!

But nowhere in this research does it say that the kids should in turn reject parents. In fact, the research starts by understanding where non-accepting family members are coming from: "(FAP) recognizes that parents and caregivers who are seen as rejecting their LGBT child are motivated by care and concern to help their child fit in, have a ‘good life,’ and be accepted by others,” per their list of “Core Assumptions.”

Another core assumption from FAP is that we should meet families where they are. Also: provide “a nonjudgmental space where parents and caregivers can tell their story and share their experiences and expressions of care and concern for their children’s well-being that are rooted in culture, values, and specific beliefs such as faith traditions.”

Yes, FAP research is full of ways to pressure parents to deny their own beliefs, feelings, and realities in favor of supporting children, but it doesn’t say, “If family members don’t use your pronouns, CUT THEM OUT OF YOUR LIFE.”

On the contrary, they write, “Parents and caregivers who believe that homosexuality or gender non-conformity are wrong can still support their gay or transgender child by modifying or changing rejecting behaviors that increase their LGBT child’s risk, without accepting an identity they think is wrong.” (Notice that gender nonconformity is conflated here with being transgender.)

Support and affirmation are not synonymous.

Yet sometimes it feels—to these grandparents, to families, to those of us charting these cultural tides—as if the next step after coming out as trans is scanning for any reason to reject a family member, and the bar is lower every year. It’s some kind of gateway to authenticity: once rejected—even if you directed the rejection—you are officially oppressed, sufficiently discriminated against, and allowed access to the steaming pools of pain. I’m very familiar with this mindset: the waiting-to-find-who-will-hurt-me radar.

The FAP research began in an era when gay people would regularly be kicked out of their houses, their families, for coming out. Most of these families with LGBTQIA++ kids today wouldn’t shun them for being gay, but may hesitate to affirm, socially or medically, which is something else entirely. One gay friend of mine, whose husband was indeed rejected by his family for being gay, called this phenomenon a kind of cultural appropriation: They’ve never actually experienced this kind of rejection, but arranged to make it so.

The research wasn’t designed with confused grandparents, unable to adapt quickly to a lightning-quick zeitgeist shift, in mind.

***

I met twice over Zoom with a group of grandmothers who’d either become estranged from their grandkids, or whose relationships had become deeply strained by their concern over a grandchild’s social and/or medical transition. Their stories weren’t all the same. Some had grandchildren who’d already medicalized and weren’t faring well after transition; the relationships between grandparents and grandparents seemed damaged beyond repair, and they were deep in grief, or moved onto anger. Others were tenuously hanging on to relationships, willing to avoid pronouns to maintain connection. One had fought for custody of her grandchild, as both parents were struggling with addiction and unfit to care for the minor; so far, her efforts have been unsuccessful.

What they had in common was deep, unyielding affection for their grandchildren. “When you have grandchildren, you love them as much as you love your children,” one said. She noted that many of these young people had come out as trans, or had been transitioned by a parent, after a traumatic family event: a divorce, an overdose, a death.

In such cases, grandparents might be considered an important resource for these kids. Many studies have suggested a correlation between grandparental relationships and improved outcomes. “The nurturing bond between grandparents and grandchildren is likely to influence determinants of child health, and has the potential to reduce risky behavior, including smoking and drug use among teenagers,” per a 2023 paper, “Multigenerational Health Perspectives: The Role of Grandparents’ Influence in Grandchildren’s Wellbeing.” Playing with grandchildren is thought to be beneficial for grandparents and the grandkids, too.

This also doesn’t seem like rocket science. Cutting off family members is traumatic for all involved. It’s a drastic measure, one that makes sense only if a child is in imminent danger—not because a grandparent doesn’t understand how a six-year-old girl has suddenly become a boy, and wonders why asking any questions about the shift is verboten.

***

Diana didn’t really know anything about the idea of transgender children, beyond recalling that a few women she knew had experienced something similar: a sudden announcement of a grandchild’s gender change. Mostly, she wanted to talk about it, but Samantha refused, accusing her of being incapable of unconditional love. But Diana had never stopped loving her grandchild. She’d never stopped offering love.

Samantha told Diana to educate herself, to read. And so she did. But that only made her more confused. Diana read about gender dysphoria, marked distress at a mismatch between one’s sex and one’s sense of self—distress that leads to some kind of impairment. The book she read suggested that kids as young as two would start insisting they were the opposite sex, and if they still continued to do so a decade later, maybe the picture would get clearer—insistent, persistent, consistent. That had never been the case with Jane/James. When Diana asked Samantha about this incongruity, she told her that the preschool teacher had noted James preferred “boy toys.” Then she told Diana that she didn’t have to share anything with her anything anymore, didn’t have to defend her decisions.

That was their last exchange. Grandparents rarely have legal right to their grandkids. There was nothing Diana could do.

The situation only got worse. Though she hadn’t officially taken a stance against Jane’s, or James’, social transition, Diana had been confused and skeptical, and that was enough for her to be recast as a villain. Diana’s son took his sister’s side. Then Diana’s brother did the same. Another family member, a doctor, admitted to Diana that she was probably correct that Jane wasn’t gender dysphoric—that social transition might not be the best thing for her. But she didn’t want to get involved, to speak up. She didn’t want to lose her family, too.

Diana is 70. For the past 40 years, she has gathered her family for Thanksgiving. This year, her children will be elsewhere, for the first time. This year, she said, there’s no Thanksgiving.