@DominicX well first of all I believe you’re still quite young, so even if you weren’t gay, your parents wouldn’t start bugging you for another decade or so. Mainly because they’re not all that old themselves yet. It’s only when a person nears the end of their own life (or at least their working life) that they start thinking about death, the family name, retirement, grandchildren and all that. If your parents are still in their early 50s, they’re probably too worried about their daily routine and mortgage and so on to think about the afterlife.
Secondly, I guess it’s different for men and women. If you’re an only son, your parents (depending on their social and cultural bavckground of course) would want you to continue the lineage. In that sense, my father was just as disappointed that my only child is a daughter as he would have been if I were gay or sterile. Similarly, I wouldn’t care much if my daughter were gay or straight, at least in terms of the family line, since she wouldn’t be keeping my name anyway (and I wouldn’t care about her keeping it to start with). Personally I’m more interested in her having a happy life and eventually giving me some grandchildren to play with than any name she or her children may be carrying. But if she decides not to have kids, I won’t try and bug her (at least that’s what I say now, ask me again in 30 years).
Also remember that parents always like to bug kids about something. Anything. First it was my marks at school, then I got good marks but they complained that I’d got them without studying, so they didn’t count. Then I got a scholarship at uni and they complained that this was because the uni can’t have been that good (if it would give a loser like myself a scholarship). Then I finished top of my class, but it only meant my class must have been a bunch of losers, so I was hanging around bad company. Then they complained that I had no job, then that I got a job in the Czech Republic which was too far. And when was I gonna settle down and have a family? When I finally did marry, they nagged me to have a child, and when I did that, they nagged me to finalise my divorce so I could marry again. Now they’re complaining I don’t have a car (I have 4, but none of them is good enough). And why don’t I have a girlfriend, and when am I going to get married again? And how come I don’t have a son?
There’s always something…I’ve learnt to ignore them.