Advice to Parents of Transgender Children: Strategies of Affirmation, Questioning, and Disaffirmation

• In Event: 20416 - Global Perspectives on Same-Sex Marriage and Queer Parenting

Abstract

The personal is political, but the political is also personal. And familial. Over the past decade, the U.S. has hosted a new set of “culture wars” targeting trans youth and their families. Transgender people—especially children and their families—have been increasingly subjected to political speech and laws (e.g., to ban trans youth from sports, to prevent them from accessing healthcare) that attempt to define and limit their lives. While progressive groups have countered with support and visibility, as with calling for gender-affirming care, the climate for trans youth and their families remains difficult. How do families find their way through such unsettled cultural terrain? In our earlier work (Martin et al. 2010), we found that unsettled cultural times, where lesbian and gay identities were incompletely normalized, led parents to develop strategies that included understanding ‘coming out’ as a grieving process or using ordinary parenting skills to manage a child’s identity. Given the political, cultural, and institutional battles in the current culture wars around trans youth, we wondered how families with trans children develop strategies in such a polarized, unsettled, and stormy time. When parents look for support and advice about caring for trans children, what range of framings about transgender identities and people are they likely to encounter? What cultural stories, symbols, and worldviews are part of the cultural offerings for parents seeking advice? To answer these questions, this paper uses a sample of 19 advice books aimed at parents of trans children to discern what advice, support, non-support, definitions, and shaping of meaning parents might encounter when they seek advice or support in parenting transgender children. We find that readers are presented with three different strategies—affirming, questioning, and disaffirming—each of which has consequences for how parents try to make sense of a transgender child’s identity.

Authors

• David J. Hutson, Pennsylvania State University-Abington

• Emily Kazyak, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

• K Scherrer, Metropolitan State University of Denver

• Karin A. Martin, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor