Sexuality, Gender, and Parental Expectations Theme Analysis

The central conflict of “Ashes” is that between Chris, a 35-year-old gay man, and his parents. His mother and his late father wanted their son to look, act, and live his life in a stereotypically masculine way. But throughout his childhood, they treated Chris as if something was wrong with him—he felt “an obscure sense that he’d failed some test,” even though his parents never fully articulated their disapproval of his gender expression and sexuality. This feeling continues into adulthood, as Chris’s mother regularly laments that Chris is unmarried and childless. The root of all of this, Chris reveals, is his parents’ thinly-veiled disapproval: he’s never felt comfortable expressing his sexuality and his true self around them. Thus, Chris struggles to reconcile what he somewhat secretly wants for his life with what his parents want for his life. And while navigating parental expectations is something that many people struggle with, the story implies that for LGBT or gender-nonconforming people like Chris, this process can be particularly difficult.

Chris’s narration shows that although he’s a 35-year-old adult in the story’s present, this doesn’t mean his mother treats him like an adult. Instead, Chris’s mother constantly infantilizes him. She’s begun inviting him for dinner more frequently—and after dinner, she insists that he stay the night in his childhood bedroom, using the same tone of voice that she used whenever he misbehaved as a child. Her behavior implies that she doesn’t accept that her son is an independent adult with a life and a home of his own, which Chris finds stifling and insulting. Furthermore, as Chris drives his late father’s car in the story’s present, the cruise control beeps at him whenever he exceeds the posted speed limit, which startles him and makes him feel strangely guilty. Chris describes this as feeling like his father is nudging him in the ribs from beyond the grave. His father still seems to be urging compliance in his son, even after his death. Taken together, these instances make it clear that Chris is struggling to establish himself as an independent adult in his parents’ eyes—and to a degree, in his own mind too.

As the story progresses, Chris reveals that one of the reasons his parents behave the way they do is because, due in part to his sexuality, Chris isn’t willing or able to fulfill his parents’ expectations for his life. To Chris’s mother, adulthood is tantamount to getting married and having children. She often talks to Chris about her friends’ grandchildren, or their children’s wedding plans. These comments are hints that she disapproves of Chris’s lifestyle—she’s subtly guilting him for not giving her grandchildren and blaming him for not stepping into the role of what she considers to be the proper adult. However, Chris’s mother’s fixation on grandchildren implies that, in her mind, a person must marry someone of the opposite sex and have biological children. From this, it’s clear that the expectations parents place on their children can be especially difficult to navigate when those children have a sexual orientation or gender identity that doesn’t line up with societal norms. Indeed, the story implies that this pressure to be heterosexual is even to blame for Chris’s breakup with a man named Scott. Chris shares that he’d been “waiting for the right moment” to introduce Scott to his parents, suggesting that Chris isn’t opposed on principle to finding a romantic partner and being open about that relationship with his parents. But he continually put off telling them—and his defensiveness in retrospect that “It wasn’t as if he was ashamed of [Scott], God no” suggests that, on some level, Chris was ashamed to introduce Scott to his parents. Chris knew that his parents expected him to one day bring home a woman, and he likely feared that bringing a man home—even if a male partner didn’t necessarily rule out marriage or children—would disappoint or upset them. And in this way, even well-intentioned expectations can put undue pressure on people (particularly those in the LGBT community)—which can, in turn, prevent them from being themselves and finding genuine happiness.

 “Ashes” implies that for LGBT people, parental pressure to hit specific milestones in life is uniquely damaging, both to the person in question and to the parent-child relationship more broadly. For instance, the story never reveals whether Chris even wants to get married and start a family—in fact, readers never find out much about Chris’s likes and dislikes, or what he wants out of his life more broadly. Put another way, Chris’s parents’ expectations for their son are so great that Chris never feels like he even has the option to be who he really is around them, which contributes to his anger at them and keeps them from connecting on a deeper level. With this, the story suggests that it’s essential that parents take care when talking about their hopes for their children’s future, especially if their child is LGBT. Framing one’s hopes as expectations that must be met at any cost creates a heavy burden for a child to bear—and, as Chris’s story demonstrates, this can be isolating and demeaning for the adult child in question.