The findings are important given that previous research has shown that incorrectly labeling someone’s gender identity harms a person’s mental and physical health, says Rachel Riskind, the Christina B. Gidynski '54 Associate Professor of Psychology at Guilford.

Rachel and Samantha Tornello, an Assistant Professor of Human Development and Family Studies at Penn State and principal investigator of the Gender Diverse Parents Study, also found a link between a child’s age and the likelihood of labeling. The study showed that the older the child, the more likely parents were to label their child’s gender identity — for example, as a girl or boy.

“This study can’t speak to whether transgender parents assign their children gendered names or pronouns or otherwise socialize them in gendered ways,” Rachel says. “But it does suggest that some transgender parents hesitate to label their child’s gender identity before their child can communicate it themselves.”

Samantha says the new research suggests that “transgender parents may offer their children supportive environments to explore their own gender identity and expression."

Rachel and Samantha’s findings were drawn from one of the largest studies to focus on the gender of young children with transgender parents.

The study utilized web-based surveys of 64 nonbinary and binary transgender parents from across the United States. Binary transgender people are those who identify primarily as women, girls, men, or boys; nonbinary people are those whose gender identity is not captured by these labels.

The study measured children’s gender expression: their interest in masculinized and feminized toys (e.g., toolsets and jewelry), activities (e.g., climbing and playing house), and personality characteristics (e.g., enjoying tumble play and liking pretty things). Participants rated how often their child engaged with and enjoyed each item or activity.

The surveys also asked parents about the sex their child was assigned at birth and about their child’s current gender identity.

Rachel and Samantha found that 41 percent of the participants did not report their child’s current gender identity, choosing either “unknown,” “choose not to label,” or “self-describe,” with a text field to write in their response. For “self-describe,” parents often described a gender-fluid child or a child who had not verbalized their gender identity. Several parents wrote that they didn’t know yet or that it was “too early to know.” Although the surveys revealed that, on average, children’s play was conventionally gendered, there was a great deal of diversity within the sample. Older children of nonbinary parents, for example, may be more likely than other children to engage in gender-expansive play.

The idea for this study came about when Rachel and Samantha, who attended graduate school together at the University of Virginia, noticed that media and policymakers’ narratives about transgender parents and their families were often speculative and rarely grounded in systematic research. “We felt it was important to hear from transgender parents themselves,” Rachel says. 

Rachel and Samantha began developing their study in 2019, when Rachel was the parent of three children under the age of 4 years old — the same ages as many children of participants. As childcare infrastructure crumbled in 2020, both Rachel and Samantha became primary caregivers in their families, and their research progress slowed accordingly. Today, Rachel’s oldest child is almost seven and her twins are four. “It’s been fun to watch them learn to communicate and express their gender over the course of this research,” Rachel says. 

The study was recently published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology.