Experiences of parents and carers of young trans and gender diverse people
Social transition
- Time and place – negotiating transition across different settings;
- Parents’ and carers’ feelings about their children’s social transition; and
- Living in stealth – choosing not to disclose one’s trans status.
Time and place – negotiating social transition across different settings
Georgina talks about supporting her son’s social transition and how they made a list of all the things that they needed to do when he came out to her.
Georgina talks about supporting her son’s social transition and how they made a list of all the things that they needed to do when he came out to her.
The night he came out and asked us to call him a different name, we discussed exactly what he wanted to happen. And in which order and all that kind of stuff. Well we kind of went through a list of all the things that we would need to do and people we need to contact or whatever. And we just literally did everything in the order that he wanted to do it. And at this point I'd done no research whatsoever. I didn't know if I was doing the right thing or not. I just thought, I need to listen to him. I haven't done for such a long time. I've been letting him down, so I'm gonna do this how he wants within reason obviously we needed to do it safely and all that sort of stuff. So, I said to him, okay, we'll talk to the teachers tomorrow morning and we'll sort that as much as we can. But these things will take time and luckily it didn't take any time by the end of day that they called, called him his new name and that was brilliant. And then I said, when you know, you go and tell your dad and things like that. And then when we got to the doctors that he said, can we book it tomorrow. So, my list for the next day was to tell school and ring the doctors. And book an appointment.
E and D talk about their son’s social transition over time.
E and D talk about their son’s social transition over time.
Father: He just suddenly, out of the blue announced it. But there’ve been some signs during the gap year. That’s what I remember, because do you remember, he suddenly once he’d left school, suddenly started wearing kind of…
Mother: Very grungy clothes.
Father: Jeans and T-Shirts and—
Mother: Whereas before as a younger teenager, he was quite short skirts and dresses.
Father: He could be quite dressy, yes.
Mother: Quite dressy, yes.
Father: But it was like suddenly over the summer things changed like that and he just suddenly got out and he was all jeans and T-Shirts, no dresses and yeah. I think we noticed that before he went travelling. And then, I think we had a wedding in June when he got back. We had to go to a wedding in [name of a country] and he was wearing a suit instead of a dress.
Mother: That’s right, yes. That’s right.
Father: That is I think where we got our first inkling. So, he’d have been 19 at the time.
Mother: That’s right.
Father: Yeah.
Mother: Yes.
Father: That’s right. And then I think later when he came, after his first term at university, he came back. Did he start talking about wanting to be called [male name].
Mother: That’s right he told his university friends that, you know, his male name. And that’s what he wanted to be called there.
Parents’ and carers’ feelings about their children’s social transition
For Interview 1, supporting her daughter’s social transition started with not rejecting her gender diverse identity.
For Interview 1, supporting her daughter’s social transition started with not rejecting her gender diverse identity.
The phrase that I think is used by other people is like ‘supporting social transition’, but for us it was stopping rejecting our daughter, cause it was the point before we changed pronouns and things. She was asking us, every day, to recognise her as a girl. And that period where she was asking us every day, we were either saying, ‘no’, or we were kind of saying, I don't know like just saying, ‘okay, well, we'll talk about that later’. You know, but it really wasn't working for her and for us. And it was like she was stalled at that point of like she couldn't think about anything else and she couldn't, didn't want to talk about anything else. That was the thing that I guess, you know, she was feeling rejected by her parents, which is a big thing for a kid. Anyway, so we got we did lots of other reading and talked to lots of other people and eventually we got to a point of saying to her okay, we'll call you a girl. And that was after we'd spoken to the gender clinic on the telephone, but before we'd seen them, because there was this nearly year waiting period before we saw them. And I don't know if you want to talk about that. But for us that was an entirely positive experience I think. We were, we were stuck in this in this [inhales] very stressful stage beforehand where our daughter was feeling really, really rejected. She was crying every day. She was really down. She was really unable to enjoy her life. And as soon as we said, ‘okay, we'll call you a girl’ and we shifted pronouns. It was a dramatic improvement in her mental health like literally overnight. And straight away she was able to, straight away she was, instead of talking about gender every bed time she was asking about animals and, you know, it was like it's like she'd got over that block that was making her feel unhappy. And then as soon as that was out the way, she just was, you know, interested in the world again. And that was delightful to see that she'd had the kind of this burden of yeah, she'd had this heavy burden of stress on her and suddenly she was able to sort of and really we, as far as her happiness, we haven't looked back at all since then. She's just been super happy since then.
Leigh felt her foster son’s social transition could have ‘gone quicker’ if it wasn’t for her insisting on slowing things down.
Leigh felt her foster son’s social transition could have ‘gone quicker’ if it wasn’t for her insisting on slowing things down.
So in that sense, the whole transition thing happened quite quickly, the whole process. Did you feel that?
I think it could have gone quicker. It could have gone quicker. And that was me being more insistent on him just slowing down and taking a breath and making sure of certain things before he did it. I know, in my heart of hearts he is who he is and he's always gonna be who he is, you know. Even though we have conversations, the door is always open. He's never going to go back. He was never happy. He would never fitted. He never was a female.
Mel felt her stepdaughter’s social transition ‘accelerated’ and she and her husband were ‘way behind in terms of coming to grips’ with it.
Mel felt her stepdaughter’s social transition ‘accelerated’ and she and her husband were ‘way behind in terms of coming to grips’ with it.
She seemed to do a lot of research and then confided in her mum. So, we, my husband and I were the last ones to know. So, we were way behind in terms of kind of getting to grips with what this was. Was there some sort of collusion going on between her daughter and her mum. We were worried about the mum’s mental health because there had been issues in the past. So, there was all sorts of kind of like ‘uh!, what is going on!’. And, for me, I just wanted to be able to support my husband and the kids as much as I could, but also understand like what on earth is going on. This is completely, is it completely, it felt like it was. And it had felt like it was accelerated. We went from her wanting to say that I’m trans to right, now I want to go to school and I wanna dress as a girl and it was really quick. That’s what I remember about it the initial transition; it felt like it was quick. It felt like it was a bit rushed. And we were just concerned. We, I felt like I wanted to have as much information as I could. And were we involving as many people that needed to know in this, in this process, which was really important. My husband just was, I think his world was turned upside down, ‘cos they have a really close bond, very, very, very, very close. I don’t like to use the word ‘favourites’, but there’s something that really ties or maybe it’s because his, his first born, I am not sure. So, yeah, it was a lot.
Living in stealth – choosing not to disclose one’s trans status
Lisa talks about her son’s reasons to remain in stealth at his new school.
Lisa talks about her son’s reasons to remain in stealth at his new school.
We then moved him into a different school and he’s been in stealth since then. We are currently working with whether or not that’s something he wants to continue or whether he wants to start talking to people about his identity.
He just wants to be himself, that’s all he wants. And he wants to be respected for being himself. He wants to be open and honest about who he is. But he’s frightened of doing that, because however proud he is of himself, he knows that as soon as he tells other people that he’s transgender, he opens himself up to a plethora of risk in terms of relationships changing, the way he is treated, not just by other kids at school, but by teaching staff as well.
Ali talks about her daughter not being ‘out’ at school and how that made her feel.
Ali talks about her daughter not being ‘out’ at school and how that made her feel.
It's been so good she's met people online and she's visited them, and she's got so much more confidence. But it took us a long time for her to get the confidence up to come out socially and she's has (now) completely. But, it was very much in stealth when we first started. And she never let me tell the school and to try and get help from the school without being overt, which sounds like a terrible betrayal and I felt that I was betraying my daughter. But, yeah. That was really our journey and are waiting to go onto adult services now.