Waves of Change? How Parents' Negotiations with Childhood Gender Variance Impact the Gender Frame

• In Event: 504 - Regular Session. Social/Cultural Impacts on Parents and Parenting

Abstract

The emergence of gender-nonconforming behavior in a child presents an opportunity and, often, significant pressures for parents to question their long held gender beliefs as well as their approach to parenting. In this paper, which is part of a larger dissertation project, I draw on Ridgeway’s (2011) theoretical concept of gender as a primary frame to explore how 41 parents of gender diverse youth respond to these pressures and ultimately come to support and understand their child’s gender. In doing so, I demonstrate both the power of gender as a primary frame for organizing life within the family as well as the circumstances under which hegemonic gender beliefs can be challenged and alternative gender beliefs can be formed. I argue that the process of making space for gender diversity within the home, which is taken on almost exclusively by mothers, can be understood as grappling with the competing maternal mandates of raising “proper” children and modeling selfless devotion to children’s happiness and well being. As mothers navigate these conflicting requirements they demonstrate maternal fitness by devoting themselves tirelessly to becoming lay experts in gender diversity and seeking professional resources for their children. As they do so, gender stereotypes that cast women as natural caregivers are reinforced and perpetuated. Ironically, the work of intensive mothering is also the mechanism through which women come to develop alternative gender beliefs that they then act on to create material changes within their homes and families that challenge hegemonic gender schemas.

Author

• Krysti N. Ryan, University of California, Davis