An estimated 19 percent of transgender adults in the U.S. are parents, according to a new study—the first to use a nationally representative sample of transgender parents and nonparents. The study authors also hypothesize that the fulfilling experiences of parenthood may even improve transgender parents’ well-being and help counter the negative effects of stigmatization in a cisgenderist/heterosexist society.
The paper, “Demographics and Health Outcomes in a U.S. Probability Sample of Transgender Parents,” appears this month in the Journal of Family Psychology. It used data from the U.S. Transgender Population Health Survey (TransPop), the first national probability sample (essentially a randomized sample) of transgender people in the U.S. The TransPop respondents included a total of 274 transgender and (for comparison) 1,162 cisgender people. Among the transgender respondents, 19 percent are parents, versus 68 percent of the cisgender respondents. Of the transgender parents, the majority (53 percent) are transgender women, while approximately one-third (36 percent) are non-binary and one-tenth (12 percent) are transgender men.
Overall, transgender people (parents and not) experience more psychological distress and are less happy and satisfied with their lives than cisgender people, which the researchers attribute to minority stress, stigma, and discrimination in a cisgenderist/heterosexist society. Yet surprisingly, there were no differences in physical or mental health outcomes (including happiness, life satisfaction, quality of life, and psychological distress) between transgender and cisgender parents.
Why is this? The researchers note that the (mistaken) expectation that transgender parents would score worse on health outcomes “conveys a view of transgender parents as an oppressed, disadvantaged group for whom parenthood adds a further burden to their well-being.” This focus on the negative, however, “ignores the extent to which a person’s minority identity (or identities) can serve a vital role in alleviating the negative impact of minority stresses.” In other words:
For transgender people, having children may be a particularly fulfilling and valuable life event, which increases feelings of autonomy and control and, in turn, improves well-being even in the face of obstacles throughout their parenthood journey. Indeed, parenthood may counteract some effects of stigmatization and may possibly explain the health-related outcomes among transgender parents.
Some other findings the researchers noted were that:
- Transgender and cisgender parents are more likely to live in non-urban areas, and more likely to have a high school diploma or less, compared to non-parents.
- Transgender parents were significantly older than transgender non-parents, but significantly younger than cisgender parents.
- Fewer transgender parents than cisgender parents reported a heterosexual orientation, a cisgender partner, or a relationship longer than five years.
Lead author Nicola Carone, assistant professor at the University of Pavia, observed, “Transgender parents often face substantial challenges becoming parents or establishing legal recognition as parents. These findings indicate that family practitioners and policymakers should not assume that problems reported by transgender parents are at all related to their ability to parent. They are more likely the result of pervasive stigma and discrimination against transgender people.”
In conclusion, the authors write, “This study represents an initial step in loosening the T from the LGBT acronym in order to acknowledge the specific context of transgender parenthood.” At the same time, much remains to be investigated. Among other things, the authors note that the TransPop study on which it was based, “was not developed as a parenting study but as a health survey. As such, it did not ask either about the number of children trans- and cisgender parents had or children’s relative ages—factors that are known to affect parental health indicators.”
Additionally, “the limited sample size led us to combine transgender women, transgender men, and gender nonbinary people into the same category of transgender parents, obscuring within-group differences.” Future research is needed, they say, “that explores and disaggregates their unique parenting experiences.” It could also help us better understand “the associations between parenthood and health outcomes through a gendered lens, insofar as research on cisgender parents necessarily constrains male and female gender identities into fatherhood and motherhood, respectively.”
Despite the limitations, though, this study feels like a definite step forward in the understanding of transgender parents.
The study was co-authored by Nicola Carone, Assistant Professor of Developmental Psychology at the University of Pavia; Esther D. Rothblum, Ph.D., Williams Institute Visiting Distinguished Scholar; Henny Bos, Ph.D., Professor of Behavioral and Social Sciences at the University of Amsterdam; Nanette Gartrell, M.D., Williams Institute Visiting Distinguished Scholar; and Jody Herman, Scholar of Public Policy at the Williams Institute. Astute readers may recognize Gartrell and Bos from their work on the long-running National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study, about which more here; Rothblum and Carone are also research collaborators on that project.