Books, support groups, fertility tests and more, TransLash has you covered with a resource guide for trans parents.
Hello, TransLash fam!
It’s time for a resource guide for trans parents! Down below you can find personal essays from parents, book that guide you through the legal processes, and more – but before heading down there, there’s a few things we’d like to say:
We recognize that the birthing process is not solely limited to those that identify with the term ‘mother’ or to those with a specific anatomy. For example, there are trans men and intersex people who have given birth that identify with the term mother, there are others that don’t, with people sometimes celebrating themselves on Mother’s Day (May 9th), others on Father’s Day (June 20th), and others everyday in between. But the same can be said of every identity that is physically able to carry another life inside of their own – we’re looking at you, two-spirit, intersex, and genderfluid readers!
We also recognize that parents don’t always start life with you – some are found, some are chosen. And we’re mindful of the necessity to hold space everyday for those who do not have parents, be it through loss, estrangement, or over other circumstances. The journey’s behind these relationships are complex and endless, and so is the respect held for each and every one of them. You are a parent whether or not you were in the child’s life from the moment they were born, whether or not you adopt, whether or not it’s chosen family…nothing stands between you and the bond in your families other than this article distracting you from telling them how much you love them.
Okay, disclaimers and explanations aside, we hope the resources below are helpful! Let us know down below of any resources we may have missed if you have them, may the resources be with you!
Pregnancy-specific Resources
- Family Equality’s Trans Family Building page includes a wide variety of information, from how testosterone could affect eggs, preparing for pregnancy as a non-binary person, fertility for trans women before HRT, and more
- Having Children When Transgender, Very Well Health
- Providing Patient-Centered Perinatal Care for Transgender Men and Gender-Diverse Individuals: A Collaborative Multidisciplinary Team Approach, Hive Online
- Reproductive Options for Transgender Individuals, Yale Medicine
- Resources for Non-binary and Trans People and Their Health Care Providers, Particularly Around Pregnancy, by Serious Play Films
- The Trans Fertility Resource Library has an extensive bank of articles you can filter through by topic to help you through a vast majority of things, some of the topics to search from include: inducing lactation, doulas, fertility preservation, etc
- Thinking About Having A Baby? A Guide for Trans Men* Living with HIV, Hive Online
- Transgender fertility: How kids are still possible when you’re trans, gender nonconforming, or nonbinary, A Modern Fertility Blog, comes with a questionnaire where you can build a fertility plan and order a fertility test for when you’re ready to start family planning
- Transgender Pregnancy: Moving Past Misconseptions, Healthline Parenthood
- Trans Men Giving Birth and Reflections on Fatherhood: What to Expect?, International Journal of Law, Policy, and Family
Great Reads from Non-binary & Intersex Parents
- A mother, but not a woman: Braiden Schirtzinger is non-binary, pregnant and about to take on the most gendered role of all by Samantha Schmidt
- I’m a non-binary parent. There still isn’t space for me. by Andrea Bennett
- I’m nonbinary. I loved being pregnant. It’s complicated. by Mariah MacCarthy *NSFW*
- Tales Of An Intersex Soccer Mom by Kimberly Zieselman
- Thinking about pregnancy as a nonbinary trans person by Elliott Cennetoglu
- What does it mean to be non-binary, a mother, and Black? by Nia Anderson
Resource Pages, Support Groups, & More
- Birth For Everybody’s Resources Page is a hub for understanding appropriate healthcare for both providers and for parents. Here you can find webinars and courses for healthcare providers that appropriately address reproductive health care, a list of international organizations aiding trans people through the parenting process, and more
- COLAGE (Children of Lesbians and Gays Everywhere) runs KidsSafe, a blog full of writings from children of queer parents, and they also have a Facebook group, COLAGE Family: For People with LGBTQ Parent(s), meant for sharing stories, asking questions, and sharing relevant articles and information to help us understand how to help each other better
- Family Equality’s Resources for People with a Transgender Parent page covers ground from guidebooks to videos to groups and more
- Gender Spectrum’s an organization built on the understanding that everyone can live a full life in the way that they choose. Their website includes information on support groups (both in person and online) as well as videos, articles, events, and more
- Lambda Legal’s Resources for Transgender Parents page has a list of organizations that aid transgender and gender nonconforming people, as well as the numbers to their over-the-phone services
- They also have a Transgender Rights Toolkit: A Legal Guide for Trans People and Their Advocates, which answers common questions about transgender parenting, provides tips on how to protect parent-child relationships, and a story from a trans parent
- National Center for Transgender Equality’s resources page has breakdowns on protecting the rights of trans parents and their children in various forms, and a blog where you can read more on people’s experiences with the world of law and updates being made within our legislation
- Transgender Family Law: A Guide to Effective Advocacy Edited by Jennifer L. Levi and Elizabeth E. Monnin-Browder, is the “first book to comprehensively address legal issues facing transgender people in the family law context and provide practitioners the tools to effectively represent transgender clients,” according to GLAD: Legal Advocate and Defenders. It’s a great book to have for an attorney, and for people considering relationships, parenting, and dissolution of marriage
Submit any useful trans/non-binary/intersex/two-spirit Trans Parents resource links that we may have missed here.
[Image Description: A black background holds a sticker of two tall figures in orange shirts with a small figure in between them, all with hearts on their chests. The text, “A Resource Guide for Trans Parents” sits below in white, the trans lash logo sits above the family.]
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