Trans-Affirmative Parenting

Raising Kids Across the Gender Spectrum

Elizabeth Rahilly

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9781479817153
• eBook ISBN:
  9781479812806
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Gender Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

First-hand accounts of how parents support their transgender children

There is a new generation of parents and families who are identifying, supporting, and raising transgender children. In Trans-Affirmative Parenting, Elizabeth Rahilly presents their fascinating stories, interviewing parents of children who identify across the gender spectrum, as well as the doctors, mental health practitioners, educators, and advocates who support their journeys.

Rahilly provides a window into parents' experiences, exploring how they come to terms with new ideas about gender, sexuality, identity, and the body, as well as examining their complex deliberations about nonbinary possibilities and medical interventions. Ultimately, Rahilly compassionately shows how parents can best advocate for transgender awareness and move beyond traditional gendered expectations. She also shows that child-centered, child-driven parenting is as central to this new trans-affirmative paradigm as growing LGBTQ awareness. In an era that is increasingly trans-aware, Trans-Affirmative Parenting offers provocative new insights into transgender children and the parents who raise them.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1. “She’s Just Who She Is”: Identifying the Transgender Child
• 2. “Our World Has Been Rocked”: Gender and Sexuality
• 3. “Picking the ‘Other Box’ ”: Troubling the (Non)Binary
• 4. “A Regular, Normal Childhood”: Privacy, Protection, and Medical Interventions
• Conclusion
• Acknowledgments
• Appendix I. Participant Reference Chart
• Appendix II. Methods, Ethics, Politics
• Notes
• References
• Index
• About the Author