Working With Parents of Gender-Variant Children: Using Social Action as an Emancipatory Research Framework

Sansfaçon, Annie Pullen; Ward, David; Robichaud, Marie-Joëlle; Dumais-Michaud, Audrey-Anne; Clegg, Andrea

doi:10.1080/10428232.2014.939938

Cited by 13 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…In the spirit of collaborative action research and its focus on empowering and not simply studying participants, no formal demographic information was collected as we wanted to keep formal data gathering (i.e., completion of forms and questionnaires) to a minimum. Formalized means of gathering data may exacerbate unequal power hierarchies among participants and researchers, which does not fit within the epistemological parameters of social action methodology (Fleming and Ward, 2004;Sansfaçon, Ward, Robichaud, Dumais-Michaud, & Clegg, 2014). Indeed, it is believed that participants should own and be responsible for keeping a record: "It is more in keeping with the self-directed approach if either the workers maintain a record but share it with group members, in a way that makes it the property of the whole group, or if group members themselves act in this capacity" (Mullender & Ward, 1991, p. 76).…”

Section: Theoretical Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Experience of Parents Who Support Their Children's Gender Variance

Sansfaçon

Robichaud

Dumais-Michaud

2015

Journal of LGBT Youth

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102

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This article details the findings of a qualitative action research project with parents of gender-variant children in Montreal,Canada. Through a unique methodology, the project aimed at understanding the issues and challenges facing parents in the process of supporting their children, as well as offering them support and an empowering platform for effecting change around them. The article explores how parents understand their children's experiences, the various challenges they themselves cope with in supporting their children, and the solutions they believe would improve their lives and the lives of their offspring. Recommendations for practice conclude this article.Gender variance in children is receiving growing media attention, but little research is available on the experience of parents who are supportive of their gender-variant children. This article details the findings of a qualitative participatory action research project undertaken with parents of gendervariant children in Montreal, Canada. The article begins with a review of the literature, reports on the methodology, and offers an analysis of findings, drawing on queer and antioppressive theories to theorize the lack of visibility and recognition felt by participants. The article concludes by proposing

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Section: Theoretical Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Experience of Parents Who Support Their Children's Gender Variance

Sansfaçon

Robichaud

Dumais-Michaud

2015

Journal of LGBT Youth

Self Cite

102

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“…Gender variance (GV) is the most common term used in literature to refer to an individual's atypical growth in a binary and normalized system. This term is grounded in the medical realm (Pullen Sansfaçon, Ward, Robichaud, Dumais‐Michaud, & Clegg, 2014; Pullen Sansfaçon, Robichaud, & Dumais‐Michaud, 2015), and for this reason, more kaleidoscopic and fluid terms have started to become widespread in the literature on childhood gender issues including gender creative, gender expansive (Ehrensaft, 2016), gender diverse (Nealy, 2017), gender explorers, and gender bosses (Roche, 2020). These terms have been proposed both by GV supportive clinicians (Ehrensaft, 2016) and parents (Pullen Sansfaçon et al, 2015) to make it clear that gender variance is not a mental illness but one of the possibilities of gender expression (American Psychological Association [APA], 2015; Coleman et al, 2012).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

When the context rows against. Voicing parents of transgender children and teenagers in Italy: A qualitative study

Lorusso

Albanesi

2021

Community & Applied Soc Psy

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Having a supportive family with a non‐binary vision of gender differences is a protective factor for transgender and gender‐variant (TGV) children and teenagers; however, the parents of TGV children find themselves alone when dealing with doubts and challenges, and this may hamper their capacity to provide support to their children. This study aimed to map/describe the needs of the parents of TGV children in Italy, their relationship with the health care and educational systems, and how they cope with the challenges of the context they live in. We used a qualitative approach based on thematic interviews with respondent validation, involving 13 parents of TGV children and teenagers. Our participants reported difficulties in accessing information, obstacles in finding adequate support from mental health professionals and in interactions with educational professionals, recognizing that these challenges are strongly embedded in the Italian socio‐cultural context and its widespread homobitransphobic culture. Nevertheless, they are personally committed to changing this situation through advocacy and affirmative action for their children, engaged in knowledge production on gender variance, and with parent support groups. Please refer to the Supplementary Material section to find this article's Community and Social Impact Statement.

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“…A CBPR approach intentionally takes power differences into account in partnering with communities to answer a research question or to conduct a research project with tangible outcomes for the community. CBPR may be especially useful for research involving marginalized communities, such as TGN youth and their families (Clements-Nolle & Bachrach, 2003;Pullen Sansfac¸on et al, 2014;Travers et al, 2013), because this approach seeks to identify and address the source of marginalization (Israel, Schultz, Parker, & Becker, 1998). CBPR seeks to ensure the relevance of the research for the community.…”

Section: Why Cbpr?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Lessons from a community-based participatory research study with transgender and gender nonconforming youth and their families

et al. 2018

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Community-based participatory research (CBPR) involves community members collaborating with academic investigators in each step of the research process. CBPR may be especially useful for research involving marginalized populations with unique perspectives and needs. In this paper, we discuss successes and challenges of using a CBPR approach for the Trans Teen and Family Narratives Project, a longitudinal mixedmethods study to examine how the family environment affects the health and wellbeing of transgender and gender nonconforming youth. We describe considerations for using a CBPR approach with this population, including defining the community of transgender and gender nonconforming youth and families, engaging the community in the research process, managing conflicting agendas for community partner meetings, addressing insider/outsider status of the researchers, resolving researcher/community tensions regarding data collection tools, integrating academic and community members into a cohesive research team, developing safety plans to address participant suicidality disclosures, and differentiating the role of academics as researchers vs. advocates. We conclude by sharing lessons learned, which can inform future research to address the needs of transgender and gender nonconforming youth and families. Keywords Community-based participatory research (CBPR), family systems, gender nonconforming, transgender health Conducting community-based research with marginalized communities can help empower communities and share their voices, as well as inform more effective interventions that serve community members' needs. In using a communitybased participatory research (CBPR) approach for a study with families with transgender and gender nonconforming (TGN) youth, we have navigated

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Working With Parents of Gender-Variant Children: Using Social Action as an Emancipatory Research Framework

Cited by 13 publications

References 23 publications

The Experience of Parents Who Support Their Children's Gender Variance

The Experience of Parents Who Support Their Children's Gender Variance

When the context rows against. Voicing parents of transgender children and teenagers in Italy: A qualitative study

Lessons from a community-based participatory research study with transgender and gender nonconforming youth and their families

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