Transparentalité : vécus sensibles de parents et d’enfants (France, Québec)

Abstract

La transparentalité représente une épreuve sociale et intime autant pour les personnes concernées que pour leurs conjoints et leurs enfants. Il existe peu de recherches sur ce sujet sensible, et encore moins de témoignages d’enfants. Dans cette étude qui croise anthropologie et psychologie, j’ai voulu rendre compte de la manière la plus juste de la parole des personnes rencontrées, en faisant état de leurs sentiments, de leur parcours, de leurs difficultés, de leurs doutes et de leurs victoires, sans jugement de valeur. Dans le cadre limité de cet article, je présente le cas de femmes trans, soit des personnes nées hommes et devenues femmes, qui étaient déjà mariées ou en couple avec une compagne avant leur transition et qui ont eu des enfants dans le cadre de cette union. Leurs récits de vie attestent de leur manière d’ajuster leur transition en femme à leur rôle parental, même si elles doivent faire face à beaucoup d’incompréhension, sinon d’exclusion. J’examine aussi comment les enfants réagissent au changement d’identité sexuée de leur parent, réaction qui peut évoluer au cours du temps, et qui est intrinsèquement liée à la façon dont la nouvelle leur est annoncée, à leur âge, à l’attitude de leur mère et de leur famille proche, ainsi qu’au regard social porté sur la transparentalité.Trans parenting is a challenge both socially and intimately for trans parents themselves, but also for their partners and children. There are few studies on this sensitive subject, and even fewer children’s accounts. In this study, which incorporates aspects of both anthropology and psychology, I strive to report, as accurately as possible and without value judgments, the words of the people I met by presenting their feelings, experiences, difficulties, doubts, and victories. Within the limited scope of this article, I present the case of trans women—people born as men and who have become female—who were already married or in a relationship before their transition and who had children in this relationship. Their life stories relate how they adjusted to their transitions to their role as parents, even in the face of much incomprehension and even exclusion. I also examine how the children react to their parents’ change in sexual identity, a reaction that can change over time and that is linked intrinsically to how they were given the news, their age, the attitudes of their mother and of their immediate family, and society’s view of trans parenting

Negotiating parental designations among trans parents’ families: An ecological model of parental identity.

“…Moving from the overall description to specific levels, our findings at the individual level showed that after starting a transition, our pretransition mothers and fathers were more likely to keep the parental identity consistent with their sex assigned at birth, as did the trans women in the Fortier (2015) and Grenier (2006) studies. Reproductive contribution to childbirth was the most influential strain evoked by pretransition parents for explaining their elected parental designation.…”

“…More recently, studies focused on trans parents. Some of them provided broad descriptive accounts of trans parents’ experience using generally small samples (e.g., Fortier, 2015; Grenier, 2006; Pyne, 2012). Others examined trans people’s desire to have children, reproductive options, experience with fertility clinics, conception, pregnancy and birthing, projected parental role as trans individual, and challenges of discrimination (e.g., De Sutter, Kira, Verschoor, & Hotimsky, 2002; dickey, Ducheny, & Ehrbar, 2016; Ellis, Wojnar, & Pettinato, 2015; Grant, Mottet, & Tanis, 2011; Haines, Ajayi, & Boyd, 2014; James-Abra et al, 2015; Pyne et al, 2015; von Doussa, Power, & Riggs, 2015; Wierckx et al, 2012).…”

“…Without examining this issue specifically and systematically, past studies provided some cues about the parental identity of trans parents. A few trans women who endorsed a father identity before transitioning maintained their father identity after transition (e.g., Fortier, 2015; Grenier, 2006), and some trans men who gave birth to a child before transitioning continued to self-identify as mothers after transitioning (e.g., Rosskam, 2005). Yet, other trans men who gave birth before transitioning saw themselves as a pregnant man before transitioning and persisted in self-identifying as fathers, or used parental gender-neutral terms after transitioning (e.g., Rosskam, 2005; Ryan, 2009).…”

LGBT Desires in Family Land: Parenting in Iceland, from Social Acceptance to Social Pressure

“…There have as yet been few studies on transgender parenting (Fortier 2015;Marchand 2017;Stotzer et al 2014), and those few have often approached it from a psychological, clinical, or even legal angle. It raises questions of its own particular order, just as broad as those around homosexual parenting.…”