What helps family members cope in situations like these?
Coping doesn't mean the road gets easy — it means finding footing on uneven ground. Research on families in situations like yours points to a few things that consistently help. None of these are quick fixes, but each one is something you can actually work on, a little at a time.
Start with understanding
Learning more about gender dysphoria — what it is, what current research says about its causes, and what treatment approaches exist — can help you feel less in the dark. Our Etiology, Treatment, & Outcomes page goes into more depth on this. It's written with clinicians in mind, but many family members find it useful too.
What research says helps
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Family cooperation and stability — when parents work together and extended family offers support, families tend to cope better.[¹] Support from your community — including your church — matters too.
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Communication and meaning-making — talking openly, and working together to make sense of what's happening, helps families adjust.[²] Some families find it helpful to separate biological and gendered roles — for example, a transgender parent may always be a child's biological father, even if they can no longer fill the role of "dad" the way they once did.
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Tolerance for ambiguity — being willing to sit with not having a precise, fixed picture of what your family will look like, and a willingness to compromise, both help with the kind of ambiguous loss described elsewhere on this site.[³]
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Building on protective factors — continuity (keeping up family traditions and activities), honest answers to family members' questions, helping each other accept what's happening, and looking for meaning in the process all support better outcomes.[⁴]
Building resilience together
Resilience — the ability to adapt positively even to hard situations[⁵] — isn't something families either have or don't. It's built through small, repeatable habits:
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Maintaining a strong spiritual life, individually and as a family
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Improving communication skills
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Learning to manage strong emotions like anger constructively
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Strengthening family bonds
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Staying connected to school, work, and church community
For parents specifically, Harvest USA offers a conservative Christian perspective on pursuing relationship with a transgender or gay child, and Q Christian Fellowship offers a more progressive relational guide for parents of newly out LGBTQ+ family members.
Talking as a family
Once your family is ready, having honest conversations — at a pace and depth appropriate for each person's age — can go a long way. Here are some starting points, organized by what you might be facing:
If a parent is transitioning:
What will this mean for their job, or their role in the community or church? What effect might that have on the rest of the family, and how can you best support them right now? For discussion prompts you can adapt, see Focus on the Family's Responding to a Transgender Family Member (conservative perspective) or FreedHearts' Addressing the Core Issues and Answering the Tough Questions (more progressive perspective).
If a child or sibling is transitioning:
How might this affect their school experience — relationships with teachers, friends, classmates? What impact might that have on siblings or parents? Focus on the Family's Helping Children with Gender Identity Confusion offers conservative-perspective prompts; this video offers a more progressive one.
On faith and Scripture:
Even if you land somewhere different from a given author, it can help to understand more than one viewpoint. For a conservative Christian perspective, see chapters 4–7 of God & the Transgender Debate. For a more progressive Christian perspective, see chapter 4 of The Bible & the Lives of Transgender Christians.
On treatment options:
Our Etiology, Treatment, & Outcomes page covers this in more depth, from a conservative perspective (Understanding Gender Dysphoria) and a clinical/secular perspective (WPATH Standards of Care). This Reuters special report also explores some of the hard decisions families face around adolescent treatment.
On stigma and community:
What do people in your community think about transgender people? Does your area, and your church, lean more conservative or more accepting? How might that shape what you expect, and what can your family do to prepare for it together? What does the timing of a transition mean for other family members' needs — school schedules, a sibling's milestones, and so on?
On finding support:
Which family members or friends can you lean on? Would your clergy or church community be supportive? Are there mental health or physical health providers nearby who understand this? Are there other community organizations that could help?
You don't have to figure all of this out today.
Continue exploring:
*The citations on this page come from the research literature and other publications and are available upon request.
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White & Ettner, 2004
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Dierckx, 2017
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Boss, 1999
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Dierckx 2017
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Luthar & Cicchetti 2000