Early Reactions of Parents to Their Trans and Gender Non-Conforming Children

Abstract

Pre-adolescent transgender and gender non-conforming (TGNC) youth who are supported by their parents have improved psychosocial outcomes. Despite the important role parents play in TGNC youth’s development, there is little research on their experiences. This study explored the early parenting experiences of 34 parents of pre-adolescent TGNC youth. Parents were recruited from online communities and listservs, and interviewed via phone about their early parenting experiences. Data were analyzed via thematic analysis. Findings indicate that parents became aware of their child’s TGNC identity either through observing their child’s gender behaviors, or by their child verbalizing their identity. Parents, on average, became aware of their child’s gender identity exploration when they were just over 3 and a half years old. Parents felt a mix of emotions, with many reporting a lack of concern or positive emotions regarding their child’s rejection of traditional gender roles. Parents without prior knowledge of transgender people or existing connections to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer (LGBTQ+) people sought out information from the Internet. The findings are both consistent with and diverge from prior research with parents, suggesting both new areas for research, and additional ways in which TGNC youth and their parents can be best supported.

Keywords:

• Transgender
• children
• parenting
• gender identity

Acknowledgements

Thank you to the participants who were willing to share their stories with us, to Abbey Hamburg, Claire Howard, Audriana Holstein, Alexis Pritchard, Deija Spencer, Juliet Vaspva, and Celeste Welsh for their assistance on this project, and to the anonymous reviewers who provided feedback on prior versions of this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

There are no conflicts of interest.

Funding

Notes

1 The term “TGNC” is used for both consistency with prior literature and with the interview questions used in this project. However, other gender identities, including but not limited to gender expansive, nonbinary, and agender identities are included under this term.

2 Not all transgender adults identified as transgender in childhood, and not all transgender adults engaged in gender atypical behaviors as children.

3 One interview was removed from analyses as the interview contained inconsistencies and was vague, which taken together implied that some or all of the data were either inaccurate or fabricated.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues Grant-in-Aid awarded to the first author.