Trans-Affirmative Parenting: Raising Children Across the Gender Spectrum

In recent years, sociologists have worked to expand understandings of a new generation of transgender youth and the families who support them. In Trans-Affirmative Parenting: Raising Kids across the Gender Spectrum, Elizabeth Rahilly extends scholarly attention to the parents of some of these youth. In doing so, 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. Drawing from interviews with 55 parents of 43 gender-nonconforming children, Trans-Affirmative Parenting centers the stories of families challenging normative expectations about gender and childrearing. 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. Some of the best insights of the book come from Rahilly’s success in documenting the complexity of parents’ deliberative practices. Trans-Affirmative Parenting also includes a thoughtfully written methodological appendix that details some of the opportunities and challenges of this research. Scholars in training and experienced researchers alike will find valuable guidance in these pages. In concluding the book, Rahilly argues that child-centered parenting practices should not be thought of simply as mechanisms for social reproduction. Instead, she illuminates the ways these parenting strategies may also unearth possibilities for social change. (Blake Silver, Gender & Society)