A new report on transgender parents sheds light on just how the current political and social climate threatens their family safety and security and is having a chilling effect on their future family plans.
The report, “Current Challenges for Transgender Parents,” by Abbie Goldberg, affiliated scholar at the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law and professor of psychology at Clark University and Brad Sears, distinguished senior scholar at the Williams Institute, comes out of a study conducted in 2025 among 108 trans and nonbinary parents (37% nonbinary, 32% trans women, 22% trans men, and 9% genderqueer, genderfluid, or genderflux). All had at least one child under 18; one-third of the respondents were people of color.
The paper identifies five interrelated “core aspects of becoming and being a transgender parent”: having children; navigating one’s trans identity with one’s children and others; having one’s parenting status a) legally recognized; and b) socially supported; and feeling safe as a family. Trans parents face barriers in each of these areas, the authors say, and the obstacles have been “exacerbated by the Trump administration” and the adverse legal and social environment.
“Being a transgender parent means not only raising children but also navigating one’s identity within the community, securing recognition of one’s parenting status, and feeling safe as a family,” said lead author Goldberg. “All of this is happening amid an increasingly hostile sociopolitical climate.”
Fears About Family Security and Safety
The study found that although almost all (93%) of the parents have legal relationships with their children, nearly 60% are worried that the legal validity of those rights could be challenged, given the current political and social climate.
Approximately 40% of respondents feared that schools/daycares, neighbors, or health care providers might report them to child welfare agencies because of their gender identity, while 30% feared such reporting by family members.
Imagine if those percentages of any other group of parents felt like their parental rights, or children themselves, could be taken away. There would be outrage. There should be now.
Intersectional factors are a factor here, too. Among the 43% who felt safer than other trans people, most (91%) attributed this, in part, to their race (i.e., being White); among the 36% who felt less safe, over half (56%) attributed this to being a person of color or a specific race/ethnicity. Other reasons given for perceived differences in safety included living in a trans-affirming state, financial and/or educational privilege, and an extensive social support network.
Most participants said their friends (89%) and family (82%) had expressed concerns or fears about their safety; about one-third said these concerns were in the context of parenting or being out in public with their children.
Future Family Planning
One-third of respondents said that because of Trump’s re-election and presidency, they were planning to have fewer children. More than half said the overall anti-LGBTQ climate and legislation was a barrier to future parenting. Other barriers included a lack of support from other parents, a lack of access to support for LGBTQ parents (such as community centers and support groups), and a lack of access to other LGBTQ parents in the community. Non-LGBTQ specific reasons cited included finances and the economy, personal health/mental health, school shootings, and racism.
More than half (55%) also said that the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs decision, which removed federal protections for abortion rights, impacted their family plans. Nearly 40% said Dobbs led them to have fewer children than they originally intended; for others, it changed the timing, method, or location of growing their family. One explained, “The rollback of reproductive rights made me more cautious about future family planning,” while another expressed that they were afraid of having pregnancy complications that would not be treated in their home state.
Openness, Visibility, and Safety
The vast majority of participants with children 13 years and older said they spoke with them about their trans identities, trans identities in general, and trans rights; the majority of those with children 12 and under did so as well. Nevertheless, some expressed a tension between wanting their kids to see them living as their authentic selves and wanting to sometimes limit what their kids said in non-affirming environments.
Most of the parents (87%) had also taken specific steps to protect their children’s safety since Trump’s reelection; see my coverage of an earlier report to come from this study, focusing on how the Trump administration’s policies are impacting the children of trans parents and what the parents are doing to protect them.
What Can Be Done
The authors recognize that little can likely be done at the federal level in the short term, but they suggest a number of things that state and local entities can do, through policy; parentage protections; education and training of professionals working with trans parents and their children; research-backed, affirming guidance for trans parents on discussing trans identities with children; creating opportunities for community and connection; recognizing that financial, health, support, and safety disparities are intersectional; and more. I urge you to read the whole report for further details.
“What came through clearly in this study is how much transgender parents love their children and how hard they work to protect and nurture their families,” said Sears. “As LGBTQ policies become more restrictive at the federal level, it is essential that social service organizations, government agencies, and policymakers at the state and local levels support transgender parents by ensuring access to inclusive family planning services and stronger parenting protections.”