Family and friends’ responses to their child’s gender identity

There are a range of different responses to the news that someone is trans or gender diverse. Some responses may feel unhelpful and make things more difficult for the young person who is coming out and those who care for them. Other responses can feel more reassuring and show that the young person is loved and supported, regardless of their gender identity.

The support of family and friends was very important for many parents and carers we spoke to (see also Sources of support). Many parents and carers worried about how their families and friends would react to their child coming out and transitioning. Some chose to make an announcement on social media about it, whilst others didn’t overtly tell anyone, with people around them eventually picked up on pronouns and name change. Pronoun and name changes were sometimes difficult to get used to for parents, partners, grandparents, siblings and friends.

Lesley spoke about her son’s reluctance about telling other people, leaving her trying to balance ‘the need to talk to’ wider family and ‘respecting his wishes not to talk to them about it too much’. For people like Andrew, their family have been nothing but supportive and accepting. As he explained: ‘All my family are absolutely fine with it, which is so lucky… Only takes one member of the family to not deal with it very well and that can upset everybody, but we don’t have that. Everybody’s fine with it, absolutely fine and supportive.’ Some parents emphasised that their friends and family have been emotionally supportive, even if they might not fully understand the issue. E said about her family and friends that ‘they didn’t pretend to understand everything. But, they were quite understanding.’

For other parents we spoke to, the experience was more mixed. For many, like Georgina, some reactions were positive whilst others were upsetting. Oonagh suggested that although people could be accepting she worried what they might say to others: ‘all my friends have been quite nice and accepting and I just worry about what people are saying behind my back. I think thats what I worry about most.’

Ross’s family and friends have been largely supportive of his son’s transition but needed some time to get used to the new pronouns.

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Ah, family completely accepting. I don’t think any member of the family were being anti. Both my parents knew, they passed away fairly recently and within a three year period, both of them died. But they were not massively supportive, but certainly not anti. They were very happy or my mum was very happy that some of the inheritance money was being put forward to pay for private treatment. As I say, my brother and my sister. Were not a very close family. So but theyve cottoned onto the name change, the deed polling. They use the correct pronouns and theyre relatively supportive. My own social circle of friends are totally supportive. Quite a few of them had problems with the pronouns, because theyve known my child since birth. So for 13 years of Ross got a daughter and now, all of a sudden Ross has got a son. So some of them slip up with pronouns. But most of them make the effort and try. I don’t think Ive met anybody that is unsupportive apart from mum, sadly.

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Lesley talked about her son being misgendered by his grandparents and the support she gets from her friends.

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it’s been really difficult because my parents are finding it, finding it exceptionally difficult not to misgender our son. Well, they will always say, Well you’re always very blah blah blah to me. You will always be my beautiful granddaughter. He’s 15. He’s growing a moustache. Yet you still refer to him as your granddaughter. They find that really hard. And my son feels rejected by them. When it is, it is a form of rejection. But I think that they’re trying and they are getting there slowly, but it’s so frustratingly slow. I think that part of the issue is that my son is really, not secretive, he’s very private about what’s going on for him. And he doesn’t like me to talk to my extended family about it, but actually it’s, to me it’s really important that they know so they can adjust. So sometimes I feel a bit caught in between the, pardon me, the need to talk to them, but respecting his wishes and not to talk to them about it too much. And then he’ll feel betrayed because I have spoken to them about it. But that’s because I want things to be easier for him. And sometimes I don’t think he gets that bit. But that’s being a teenager and not getting the wider perspective of it. That, that’s really hard. I think that I’m really lucky that I’ve got a good friendship network quite a lot of them have got backgrounds in CAMHS and stuff like that. And are really amazing, so when things have, when things have been particularly tough I’ve needed to like, you know, pop round for a coffee or something like that and I’ve been able to take him with me that because of how containing they are, you know, it’s made it more doable. Yeah, so they’ve been, they’ve been great.

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Partners

Most parents we spoke to were on the same page as their partners in supporting their child and accepting their gender expression. However, a couple of parents did not agree with their ex-partners or current partners about supporting their child’s transition. It can be difficult to manage a situation where parents or partners disagree on the best course of action.

Ross’s ex-partner (the mother of his son) was not particularly supportive. In Lisa’s case, her partner, who was not the father of her son, was not supportive. Lisa said: ‘Family members were really supportive, The only person that wasn’t supportive was my husband.’

Lack of acceptance for her son’s gender identity led to relationship problems for Lisa.

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So this isn’t my son’s father. This was my partner at the time. And I made it absolutely clear that there was a zero tolerance policy that my son was to be called by his new name. That male pronouns were to be used and that there was to be no deviation from that. And it caused, it caused dreadful problems in our relationship it, you know, really it was for me, if I’m honest I felt like I was having to choose at times between my son and my partner. And of course, there was never any contest. My son won hands down every time. But it was it was really, really unpleasant. But you, any parent of any transgender child is likely to experience that from some family member or other. it’s highly unlikely that you will have, you know, given the generational differences between the older members of the family and perhaps younger siblings or different relationships or, you know, different belief systems. it’s highly unlikely that you, that one would find oneself in a family where everybody just said, Oh this is great. You know, Yeah let’s do this all together.

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Siblings

Parents told us how brothers and sisters reacted to their sibling’s coming out and transition.

People we talked to described the responses of siblings as overwhelmingly supportive and understanding. Ali said, ‘My daughter’s siblings were very accepting of when she finally told them, that wed been at the [Gender Identity Development Service] for about a year before she actually got the courage up to say, that was what she was going to [city] to see them about. But they were very supportive and they always have been’. Lisa and Mel said their other children were ‘very protective’ of their trans or gender diverse child, and Leigh’s son keeps an eye on how his trans sibling is at school: ‘he will see if anybody is being threatening towards him or he has made it known, you know, that hes there.’

Often, siblings were also the quickest to adapt to changes of pronouns and names. Leigh talked about how the siblings never got the name or pronouns wrong. She shared: ‘I was getting it wrong. I was saying, ‘she’ pronouns still, it took me weeks. The kids were instantly correcting me, They never got it wrong. They never said the wrong name. They never said the wrong pronouns from day one.’

Kate’s talked about her younger son’s reaction to his brother coming out as trans.

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I think we were all prepared, my husband and I were prepared to, we knew it was coming. But my younger son had no idea, he had no idea. He says now that he can’t believe he had no idea, cos it’s so obvious. But he just had never really considered it. You know, he was always absolutely fine with him wearing boy’s clothes and looking like a boy and he used to be addressed as he, when we went out. People, you know, mistook him for a boy then. My younger son was actually absolutely fine with that. But when I told him, that night, because my son didn’t wanna tell anyone. I had to tell everyone, which was quite hard, actually. But he really cried. He really, really cried. But after that, he’s and it was just before my son’s birthday, so we had to instead of getting daughter cards and we had to go to son cards. Although I hadn’t been getting cards with gender specific things on them, cos I knew that that was a, that was upsetting. But my son was like, that means I don’t get a sister card. I haven’t got a sister any more. And but, he went out and bought him a brother card and he’s been fine since. So, yeah, it was, it was very emotional but I think because it wasn’t a massive shock it was, it wasn’t as hard as we thought it was gonna be, the actual telling.

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Not all siblings were as supportive as hoped. Lesley explained how some of her son’s older siblings were ‘still struggling to get their head around it and so as far as my son’s concerned his eldest brother …avoids him now. I don’t think he does. But it just feels like that.’

Mel and Richard both talked about how it is important to make sure siblings of trans and gender diverse children don’t feel overlooked, when a lot of the attention is focused on supporting their brother’s or sister’s transition and any issues that might arise with that.

Mel talked about how her younger stepdaughter supported her trans sister fully but also felt like ‘an extra’ in her older sister’s show.

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Actually, I haven’t actually spoken about her sister. She’s really, really important, her younger sister at that time who was incredibly accepting, but also was really challenging because all the attention was going on her older sister. And she was just sort of became invisible for a while. Which was really difficult and it still is in a way. But her younger sister was really accepting pretty much of the situation. She’s been an absolute champion and was very protective of her and was very understanding. She’s very mature for her age. And was just really supportive. Even though it’s been really difficult and a lot of the time she had said, I am just an extra in my sister’s show. Which breaks my heart. I’m always advocating for her younger sister all the time.

And I’m sure it’s like a child who is ill, you know, the families of the child whose critically ill or has a long term disability or illness that the other child somehow maybe gets forgotten or they don’t get considered as much and really how to make sure that the other children, child feels so included and held and is given as much attention, I think is super, super, super important. I was, I was genuinely like really worried at one point about her younger sister and what it meant for her just to be invisible. It doesn’t matter what’s going on. I know this stuff with her older sister is really full on. But you can’t let that distract you from the fact that you are a family. There are all of you and there are other children to consider, you know, in it, so that, I don’t know how that will translate. But, for me, I just felt it was really, really important to make sure that the siblings are supported as well as the child is going through the process.

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Lisa recognised that siblings often have ‘niggles’ with each other, and developed an approach for the family of how to resolve whatever queries you have.

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So all of them have embraced the change. They’ve been very protective of him, at times. They, obviously, they, there have been a few niggles, especially between him and the younger sibling who when she cottoned onto the fact that this was a really big button that she could push, she tried a few times. But again, it was just within the household we have just had a zero tolerance policy. This is how it is. If you have an issue with that, you come and talk to mummy about it and we will resolve whatever queries you have, but that’s not going to change what we do here on the ground, which is that we support my son. We refer to him as male with male pronouns and that’s the way. And we don’t speak in any way unsupportively of him outside of the family. If we have any questions around it, we talk together. it’s those issues are not to be discussed outside of the family. That’s, you know, if you want other support, we’ll find it for you, but, you know, don’t be bad mouthing about things to your friends or someone’s parents or whatever.

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Grandparents

Parents and carers we spoke to told us how grandparents reacted to their child’s gender expression and transition. Grandparents responded to their grandchild’s transition in a variety of ways. Some were supportive and adapted to the change of the name and pronouns quickly, and were also an important source of support for parents or carers. Adele said, ‘I spoke to my mum a lot about this, she was giving me a lot of support anyway and sort of helping bring up the kids and she was really on board with it.’

Some parents spoke about generational difference that made it more difficult for grandparents to ‘get their heads around’ the change of pronouns and the idea of transition. While some grandparents took a while to ‘come around,’ others remained unsupportive of their grandchild’s transition.

Jan talked about how the grandparents struggled to get the pronouns right.

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We told the wider family. I think the older members, grandparents, for example have struggled a little really to get their heads around it properly and not struggled with the concept that she’s trans, to they, you know, theyre accepting of that. But they struggle to get the pronouns right, because theyve been so used to saying he/him for so many years. It’s very difficult for them to, at their age, to change that round.

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Mel describes how her husband’s parents took ‘a good year’ to accept their granddaughter’s social transition.

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They just didn’t quite—understandably they are of a generation where they were really confused. And so, first of all, they were trying to put the blame on the mum: it’s the mum. it’s the mum. it’s the mum! She did this. it’s her fault, mental health, mental health, mental health. Then it was, and it wasn’t any of those things, actually, it really wasn’t. Initially, I thought uh, is it? But it really wasn’t. I just think the mum was seeing it all and was a lot more on board with it and a lot more quickly. I think she’s probably guilty of not bringing us in sooner. I think that’s probably what it was. But I think, between the two of them, they were trying to negotiate what to say and how to say it, because it’s such a big thing. The grandparents wouldn’t, as I say, call her by her chosen name. There was lots of confusion between gender and sexuality, all that. And that really quite opinionated actually in that respect, quite violent reactions to things in what they say and how they behave. And my husband was like, look, this is happening’, you know, and if you continue to behave and say these things then we just won’t see you. And they, the grandparents love the children. I mean, to just love them, but they really struggled. The husband’s siblings, his brother and sister, people would make like snide comments and it was, it upset us. It upset us an awful lot because we’re a really close family and we do spend a lot of time together. But it did take them a good year, at least for them—bless them, now, I feel like complete acceptance. There’s no changing of the name. There’s no, the grandfather would merge her boy name with her girl name. Oh, she’s gonna change her mind. And it really challenged them in all sorts of different ways. But I think when they saw this isn’t a phase and actually how important it was as a family to be supportive and to show love and to show understanding. And if they didn’t, you know, that there could be some really, you know, there could be some real consequences like real meaningful consequences, loss of contact you know, real sort of behaviour issues in terms of age. She felt like she’d been rejected. And they, yeah, they’ve really, everyone’s really come on board.

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Not all the parents we spoke to had told the grandparents about their child’s gender identity. Elijah did not tell the grandparents, but told friends and some other family members who all understood. He said: ‘Grandparents don’t know. Friends of the family will know, aunties and friends will know.’

Friends

The parents and carers we spoke to had different experiences with how their friends reacted to their child’s transition. For some, friends were the main source of support from the ‘get go’ as one parent (Ross) put it. Others worried about telling their friends, but found friends to be accepting and supportive.

VM was concerned about telling her friends more than her extended family.

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My husband, my husband’s take on it was, well, she’s our child and we have to, you know, she’s old enough now, cause she was 21 I think when she told us that that’s what has to happen. You know, if that’s what she wants then were her parents and we had to go with that. My son was quite pragmatic about it all.

The rest of the family seem fine. They [sighs] yeah, I don’t have any brothers and sisters, my husband has a brother and he seems to have been fine about that. Yeah, that’s about it, really. I havent told, Ive told some of my cousins who I know would accept it. I havent told my huge wider family, because really, only have Christmas cards and the occasional phone call. So, I feel that’s none of their business, really. I’m not going to go there. My main concern was telling friends, close friends. And because they are close friends, everyone is just gone with it, really.

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Not everyone we spoke to had a positive experience with telling friends. For Leigh the experience has been that she has lost contact with some family members and friends. However, for many people friends and family have been an important source of support. Many have also made new friends and connected to other parents who were going through the same thing via support groups, or online communities.

Leigh lost contact with her sister and many friends who did not agree with her supporting her trans foster son.

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I have lost so many friends through supporting my foster child. In fact, one of my sisters I havent seen or spoken to her in five years now. So she didnt want my foster child to be around her children. So five nieces and nephews. She’s [exhales] there there’s three of us siblings girls and we have a younger brother, but there’s three sibling girls and we were all brought up the same, same parents, same house, same morals, same ethics and weve all gone different ways as an adult. I accept people as they are for who they are whenever they are. My younger sister struggles to be outside of any box, so having a trans child in the family was way out of her realm of comfort. And it was a case of, do you know what, you’re an adult and yes I will lose contact but I’m here if you know, if you ever want to build the relationship back up again. And as her kids have got older and kind of a couple have left home now I still got contact with those. But the younger children who are at home with her I havent seen apart from like a family wedding or at a family funeral in five years.

You mentioned that you also lost friends?

Yeah even foster carers who don’t want my foster child near their looked after children, because their looked after children understandably a lot of them are very vulnerable in that they will take on other people’s problems and personas. And I think it’s scared a few of the foster carers thinking, if your kid is trans and they have conversations it might be the thing that my child saying it and I have to do. So, yeah, my social circle was massive five years ago. I was never in. I was always out doing things. Now, not so much so.

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Uncertainty of others’ reactions and the impacts on relationships

Many of the people we talked to had initially been worried about the reactions of other people. For some, there were negative experiences and some had lost contact with other people or felt their relationships were. But others found that there was acceptance, support and understanding from important people in their and their children’s lives. Sometimes initially upsetting reactions evolved over time and as understanding developed. Mel, speaking of grandparents, explained: ‘I think when they saw this isn’t a phase and actually how important it was as a family to be supportive and to show love and to show understanding… Everyone’s really come on board.’

Mel had new family photographs taken and gifted these to grandparents. This was both to replace older photographs and to represent the family with the trans child being the person who she is.

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You know, and things like having photos around the place of when she was a boy. In the grandparents’ house, there were loads. We were, right, it’s time, last Christmas or the Christmas before, like right we’re going to get brand new photos done, family photos done that we can give because one of the last family photos we have and it’s, you know, she just looks so uncomfortable because she’s in her boy skin. It feels like she’s wearing a costume. To me, when I look at her like, I feel like she’s wearing a boy’s costume and it just looks so uneasy. We all, funnily enough, in that family photo, we all look really weird. We don’t look like ourselves at all [laughs] it’s really strange. And none of us like the photos. We all hate them. But they were really special.

And I felt like we really need to get something else up there as well to show this is the person that she wants to be. This is the person who she is. But yeah, I remember that being tricky. And I think there is still the odd baby photo around. She doesn’t mind the baby photos. it’s just when, you know, she was a bit older

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