Trans-Affirmative Parenting - by Elizabeth Rahilly (Paperback)

About the Book

"'Trans-Affirmative Parenting' explores the process of raising kids across the gender spectrum"--

Book Synopsis

First-hand accounts of how parents support their transgender children

There is a new generation of parents and families who are identifying, supporting, and raising transgender children. In Trans-Affirmative Parenting, Elizabeth Rahilly presents their fascinating stories, interviewing parents of children who identify across the gender spectrum, as well as the doctors, mental health practitioners, educators, and advocates who support their journeys.

Rahilly provides a window into parents' experiences, exploring how they come to terms with new ideas about gender, sexuality, identity, and the body, as well as examining their complex deliberations about nonbinary possibilities and medical interventions. Ultimately, Rahilly compassionately shows how parents can best advocate for transgender awareness and move beyond traditional gendered expectations. She also shows that child-centered, child-driven parenting is as central to this new trans-affirmative paradigm as growing LGBTQ awareness. In an era that is increasingly trans-aware, Trans-Affirmative Parenting offers provocative new insights into transgender children and the parents who raise them.

Review Quotes

"Elizabeth Rahilly provides a unique and timely analysis of how parents of transgender and gender nonconforming children understand their children's gender...This book is easy to read and informative. This book could be of interest to scholars working on issues about gender, sexuality, and the family. For scholars of the family, this study is an excellent example of child-drive, child-centered parenting that fits into a growing body of literature on intensive mothering"-- "Social Forces"

"This insightful book explores the contours of an emerging style of child-centered parenting and the corresponding conceptual work performed by parents as they confront new possibilities relating to gender and identity ... This book engages with an impressive range of questions of theoretical value to sociologists and it will likely find an eager audience among those who study gender, childhood, family, and parenting."-- "Gender & Society"

About the Author

Elizabeth Rahilly is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Georgia Southern University.