P4A228: Testing the Waters: Impact of a Gender Diverse Child’s Age When Coming out on Parents’ Experience

Background: The role of a parent is dynamic, changing and adapting as their child ages and develops. Parents have different needs and expectations as their child grows from an infant to a young adult, and parents of gender-diverse youth (GDY) are no exception. Current support programs and pediatric medical spaces often struggle to meet the needs of all parents of GDY, and minimal guidance exists on how to tailor support for parents based on their child’s age. To begin addressing that need, this qualitative study explored how the parent experience differed based on the age that their child came out to them as gender diverse.

Methods: Parents of GDY were recruited to submit self-recorded videos and participate in telephone interviews discussing their lived experience parenting a GDY. Videos and interviews were transcribed, and independent analysts conducted reflexive thematic analysis using the RADaR method. In phase 3 of analysis, transcripts were sorted based on age of coming out into pre-pubertal and post-pubertal categories.

Results: In total, 25 parents submitted 23 videos and interviews; 36% identified as a non-white race or ethnicity, and 28% were fathers. They discussed their 25 gender-diverse children, whose age range was 6-21 years old. They came out between 4-20 years old, with 9 GDY coming out before puberty and 18 coming out during or after puberty. Three themes and 10 sub-themes were identified from a codebook containing 35 codes.
Theme 1: Parent Observations included participants noting that their child’s age impacted their understanding of identity and maturity as well as differences in how age affected hyper vs. non-conforming gendered behaviors.
Theme 2: Parent Reactions centered on the diversity of emotions and support needs parents had when they learned about their child’s identity, and how this was impacted by their age.
Theme 3: Interactions with the outside world focused on how parents differentially navigated their communities, extended families, and medical spaces with pre-pubertal or older GDY.

Conclusion: Parents of GDY have varying experiences when their child’s age and developmental stage differs at the time of coming out. Parents of pre-pubertal GDY in this study shared that they noticed different methods of gender expression, had frequent involvement in coming out to family and community members, and were more substantially involved in navigating their child’s medical and mental health care. Additionally, parents had differing emotional reactions to their child’s identity and different fears and concerns about the medical implications of the onset of puberty. Age is one component of the diverse experiences that impact parents of GDY, and more research is needed to fully capture these differences and develop systems of support to meet unique needs.