Transgender parents bring child-centered perspective to parenthood
Transgender parents may let children explore gender on their own before labeling child's identity
Peer-Reviewed PublicationUNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Many transgender parents with children between one-and-a-half and six years of age hesitate to label their child’s gender identity, according to new research from a team at Penn State and Guilford College. In addition, the results suggest that many children with transgender parents play in ways that conform to gendered societal expectations, while others play in more gender-expansive ways.
“Previous research has shown that misgendering, or incorrectly labeling someone’s gender identity, often harms a person’s mental and physical health,” said Samantha L. Tornello, assistant professor of human development and family studies at Penn State and principal investigator of the Gender Diverse Parents Study, who noted that gender identity is a person’s internal sense of their own gender — for example, woman, man, nonbinary, or another gender identity. “This new research suggests that transgender parents may offer their children supportive environments to explore their own gender identity and expression."
Tornello and lead co-author Rachel G. Riskind, the Christina B. Gidynski Associate Professor of Psychology at Guilford College, also found a strong link between child age and the likelihood of labeling — the older the child, the more likely parents were to label their child’s gender identity. Transgender parents of elementary-school-aged children may be more likely than transgender parents of toddlers to label their child’s gender identity.
“This study can’t speak to whether transgender parents assign their children gendered names or pronouns, or otherwise socialize them in gendered ways,” Riskind said. “But it does suggest that transgender parents hesitate to label their child’s gender identity before their child can communicate it themselves.”
The study utilized web-based surveys of 64 nonbinary and binary transgender parents from across the United States. Binary transgender people are those who identify primarily as women, girls, men, or boys; nonbinary people are those whose gender identity is not captured by these labels.
The study measured children’s gender expression: their interest in masculinized and feminized toys (e.g., toolsets and jewelry), activities (e.g., climbing and playing house), and personality characteristics (e.g., enjoying tumble play and liking pretty things). Participants rated how often their child engaged with and enjoyed each item or activity.
The surveys also asked parents about the sex their child was assigned at birth and about their child’s current gender identity.
The team found that 41% of the participants did not report their child’s current gender identity, choosing either “unknown,” “choose not to label,” or “self-describe,” with a text field to write in their response. For “self-describe,” parents often described a gender-fluid child or a child who had not verbalized their gender identity. Several parents wrote, “I think it’s too early to know.” Although the surveys revealed that, on average, children’s play was conventionally gendered, there was a great deal of diversity within the sample. Older children of nonbinary parents, for example, may be more likely to engage in gender-expansive play.
The study published on Aug. 17 in the journal Frontiers in Psychology.
According to Tornello, “Some believe that parent gender identity has either everything, or nothing, to do with child gender expression. But this study suggests that the truth is somewhere in between.”
“This is one of the largest studies to focus on the gender of young children with transgender parents. It will further inform our understanding of gender development, parenting, and child development more broadly.”
JOURNAL
Frontiers in Psychology
DOI
Fertility preservation counseling
Rutgers researchers provide guidelines for fertility preservation counseling before gender-affirming medical procedures for transgender men
Peer-Reviewed PublicationThere are no standards on comprehensive counseling for transgender men on how to preserve their fertility while undergoing gender-affirming medical procedures, according to a new Rutgers study.
The study, published in the journal F&S Reports, lists guidelines that health care providers can follow to effectively counsel transgender men on fertility preservation to help them make informed decisions regarding pelvic surgery and future family-building plans. An estimated 1.4 million adults and 150,000 youth in the United States are transgender.
“Fertility preservation is important to discuss with patients prior to beginning gender-affirming interventions like hysterectomy and removal of ovaries, which result in irreversible infertility,” said Juana Hutchinson-Colas, a coauthor of the study who is director of the division of Female Pelvic Medicine and Reconstructive Surgery and co-director of the Women’s Health Institute at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School.
Researchers reviewed six medical databases to determine guidelines for fertility preservation counseling in transgender men and created the following guidelines for health care providers to follow:
- Offer fertility preservation counseling in an inclusive environment that is welcoming, gender-neutral and with staff that is trained on the proper use of pronouns. Office spaces should clearly state a nondiscrimination policy and avoid assumptions about a patient’s orientation, name or pronoun. Providers should be aware of biases that may affect how they offer and deliver fertility counseling.
- Start fertility preservation counseling before the transition. “Transgender youth and adolescents also should be counseled that the long-term impact of medical treatment on fertility remains unclear,” said Hutchinson-Colas. “They should also be counseled on the effect of puberty suppression medications and the psychosocial implications of treatments. However, fertility preservation options for transgender men can be pursued during any stage of gender transition, even after gender-affirming hormonal therapy has started.”
- Include discussions of ovarian tissue cryopreservation – surgical excision of ovarian tissue for preservation for future thawing and maturing of follicles – which is the only procedure that can be offered to adolescents before puberty as well as oocyte or embryo cryopreservation, which are the preferred methods of fertility preservation in transgender men after puberty.
- Include discussions of other family-building options, such as fostering, adoption and donor eggs. “Some studies suggest transgender men prefer adoption, but that might be because they do not realize that they can start a family through fertility preservation,” said Hutchinson-Colas.
- Provide contraception counseling, which includes addressing the misconception that testosterone is an effective contraceptive. About one-quarter of transgender men on testosterone experience unplanned pregnancies.
- Provide information about third-party reproduction options, such as surrogacy.
- Discuss the importance of disclosing a parent’s identity to a child early in childhood and disclose the limited, but positive, data showing normal development of children of transgender parents. “Patients should be reassured that children of transgender parents are not adversely affected and few experience psychosocial problems, identity distress, depression or gender dysphoria,” said Hutchinson-Colas.
- Acknowledge and address all barriers to family-building and fertility services that transgender patients may face, particularly the barrier of cost.
- Use a multidisciplinary approach, including fertility specialists, obstetricians, transgender care specialists, mental health professionals, financial advisers and patient navigators.
Other Rutgers authors include Selena U. Park, Devika Sachdev, Shelley Dolitsky, Matthew
Bridgeman, Mark V. Sauer and Gloria Bachmann.
METHOD OF RESEARCH
Literature review
SUBJECT OF RESEARCH
People
ARTICLE TITLE
Fertility preservation in transgender men and the need for uniform, comprehensive counseling
