Families with more than one trans person: Investments and divestments in cisnormativity

Objective: To examine how having more than one trans person in a family facilitates investments in or divestments from cisnormativity.

Background: While there is now a robust body of literature on trans people’s experiences with cisgender family members and vice versa, largely missing has been a focus on families where more than one person in the family is trans.

Method: This paper focuses on a subsample of 10 families from a large international qualitative longitudinal study conducted across six countries, focused on trans young people and their families. The paper draws on interviews conducted in 2022 and 2023 with families in which more than one family member was trans. Transcribed interviews were analyzed thematically.

Results: The themes developed indicate that while for some families having multiple trans family members may mean that some cisgender family members invest further in cisnormativity, for other family members the existence of multiple trans family members may encourage divestments from cisnormativity, to the benefit of trans young people. Specifically, themes focus on multiple trans family members highlighting cisnormativity, and conversely, multiple trans family members indicating likelihood of support and offering a safe haven.

Implications: The paper concludes by emphasizing that while encouraging divestments from cisnormativity should not be the work of trans people, it is nonetheless important that research continues to investigate the experiences of families in which more than one person is trans.