“Too Early to Know”: Transgender and/or Gender Nonbinary Parents’ Reports of Their Child’s Gender Identity

• In Event: Poster Session 07
  In Poster Session: PS 07 Topic - Sex, Gender

Abstract

Transfamily theory (McGuire et al., 2016) posits that the existence of a transgender person in a family can challenge gender-related assumptions. The harms of assuming a young child’s gender—and potentially misgendering a child—may be particularly salient for transgender and/or nonbinary (TGNB) people (Tate et al., 2014). Are TGNB parents challenging assumptions when labeling their young child’s gender identity?

Despite increasing visibility of TGNB people and their families, few studies have focused on children with TGNB parents, and none have focused exclusively on children with gender nonbinary parents. We hypothesized that TGNB parents of infants and toddlers (too young to verbalize their own gender identity; Slaby & Frey, 1975) would be less likely than parents of preschool-age children to label their child’s gender. Based on evidence that nonbinary adults conceptualize gender development differently than binary transgender adults (Catalpa et al., 2019), we also hypothesized that, after controlling for child age, nonbinary parents would be less likely to label their child’s gender than would binary transgender parents. We explored the roles of child gender expression and sex assigned at birth as well as family SES.

Participants were 64 TGNB parents with at least one child aged 18 to 72 months (see Table 1). Recruitment occurred through advertisements on social media and online networking sites for TGNB parents. We conducted multiple logistic regressions with backwards stepwise elimination, using Akaike’s Information Criterion (AIC) to evaluate model performance. The outcome variable was likelihood of labeling their child’s gender identity (as female or male) vs. not labeling their child’s gender identity. The initial model (AIC = 85.06, R2 = .39) included all main effects and 2-way interaction terms for child age, gender expression, and sex assigned at birth as well as parent gender identity (nonbinary vs. binary) and SES (a composite of education and household income).

After backwards stepwise elimination, child sex assigned at birth, SES, and all but one interaction term were eliminated from the final model (AIC = 70.74, R2 = .30; see Table 2). The association between child age and participant’s likelihood of labeling their child’s gender identity was statistically significant, strong, and in the expected direction: the older the child, the more likely parents were to describe their child as female or male (see Figure 1). Remaining parameters were not statistically significant predictors (p = .11-.13). However, removal of each increased the model AIC, so they remain in the final model (Konishi & Kitagawa, 2008). These nonsignificant predictors were inadequately powered and have implications for future study.

Findings suggest that TGNB parents may take a child-centered, developmentally aware approach to labeling their child’s gender identity. Notably, parents who decline to label their child’s gender identity on a survey may nonetheless assign their children gendered names, use gendered pronouns, and otherwise socialize them in gendered ways. TGNB parents, however, may be attentive to the fact that fetuses and infants cannot be relied upon to communicate their gender identities—and that challenging assumptions based on genitalia can promote children’s wellbeing.

Authors

• Rachel Riskind, Guilford College
  Presenting Author

• Samantha Tornello, Pennsylvania State University, University Park
  Non-Presenting Author