Parenting Trans and Non-binary Children Exploring Practices of Love, Support, and Everyday Advocacy

Based on interviews conducted with parents of trans and gender diverse children in the UK, this book presents an account and analysis of the love, support, and advocacy involved in parenting trans and gender diverse children. Mikulak explores how parents negotiate and challenge cis-normativity to make familial, educational, and healthcare settings livable for their trans and gender diverse children. By examining the educational and emotional labor that parents perform as they advocate for their children across these different settings, the book highlights the value of parental expertise and labor while calling out the systemic failures that continue to make this work necessary. This research will be of interest to scholars researching family studies, kinship studies, gender studies, and queer studies. 

1.Introduction: Parenting trans and gender diverse children: Background and the current (hysterical) historical moment.- 2. Leaving the comforts of cis-certitude: Parents making sense of their child’s gender.- 3. Advocating for a trans or gender diverse children: establishing foundations, finding information and support, and negotiating pressures.- 4. You should be so lucky not to be treated poorly: Parents’ and carers’ of trans and gender diverse children experiences of healthcare.- 5. More than bullying, less than support: Parental advocacy and re(inventing) the wheel of inclusion of trans and gender diverse young people in school.- 6. Negotiating relationships/managing harm: Advocating for trans and gender diverse children in families and communities.- 7. Conclusion: The function of love is to affirm.

Magdalena Mikulak (she/her) is a Senior Research Associate in the Department of Social Care and Social Work, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. Previously, she worked as a researcher with the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, University of Oxford, UK. She has a PhD in Gender Studies from the London School of Economics and Political Sciences (LSE), UK.