Extrafamilial Stressors and Family Functioning in Families of Transgender and Non-Binary Youth Receiving Gender-Affirming Care: A Latent Class Analysis
Abstract
Families often experience extrafamilial, transgender-specific social stressors as they accompany their transgender or non-binary (TGNB) youth through the gender-affirming care process. Guided by family systems theory, family life cycle perspective, and queering family perspective, we explored whether these stressor experiences were quantifiable as a latent variable, and whether such a latent stressor variable might have a relationship with family functioning. We conducted a latent class analysis using parent-report of stressor experiences in a Canadian sample of TGNB youth under 16 years of age who received gender-affirming care for the first time. Families fell into one of 4 stressor groups: “Low Disruption, Policy Advocacy”, “Social Disruption, Social Advocacy”, “Low Disruption, Low Advocacy”, and “Major Disruption, High Advocacy”. Family functioning was strong across all stressor groups, and there was no association between stressor group and family functioning score.