Cher admitted that it was “difficult” when her daughter Chaz Bono decided to “transition” from a woman to a man.
The 77-year-old singer-songwriter discussed some of the “difficult, challenging, exciting, interesting” moments of parenthood during an interview with the Los Angeles Times published Friday.
She started by saying parenting “wasn’t easy” with either of her husbands but that Sonny Bono was a “better father.” He and Cher married in 1969 and gave birth to their only child together, a daughter they named Chastity Sun Bono.
Cher has been a “gay icon” for most of her career and was always supportive of LGBT communities. Cher’s daughter came out publicly as a lesbian in 1995. She became an advocate for many related causes, including the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), GLAAD, and National Coming Out Day, to name a few. Then, in 2008, the activist decided to “transition” to male and began going by the name Chaz.
The story was eventually made into a documentary film called “Becoming Chaz,” which premiered at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival.
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Cher acknowledged that getting used to seeing her child as someone else was hard.
“When Chaz went through the transition, that was difficult for me. It shouldn’t have been because, you know, I’ve had gay friends forever. I just met some beautiful trans chicks and we have an affinity. Now I’m totally fine,” Cher explained.
She continued, “But it’s hard to lose one child to get a new one, especially so late. I think that was the hard thing for me. I don’t think it was the transition. It was waiting to see who the person would be, and would they be so much different than the person that was before them.”
Cher had previously talked about her difficulty accepting Chaz’s new identity during a 2020 interview on CNN.
“It was very unlike me to — in the beginning — [having] a problem with Chaz being gay, and it disappeared like that. And then we talked about transgender for many years, and she would say, ‘No I don’t want to do it,’ and then he went and said, ‘OK I want to do this.'”
“It wasn’t easy,” Cher said. “Like I remember calling, and the old message — the old Chaz message was on the phone — and that was very difficult. But then you have one child, but you don’t really lose them — they just are in a different shape.”