Humility as a Parenting Practice for Promoting the Health and Safety of Transgender and Gender Diverse Youth

Abstract

Parent–child relationship quality, including the degree of emotional support and acceptance, is the single biggest predictor of suicidal ideation, suicide attempts, and mental health for transgender and gender diverse (TGD) youth. Family intervention research is underway for identifying how to change poor parent–child relationships where parents reject or are ambiguous about TGD identities. This manuscript conceptualizes parental gender-affirming cultural humility based on previous research on humility in psychology and cultural humility in psychotherapy. Parental gender-affirming cultural humility (PGACH) is applied to parent–child relationships with TGD youth, specifically. TGD youth and their cisgender parents occupy a cross-cultural relationship; parental humility practices may offer an effective point of family intervention for cultivating a new interpersonal process in the family. A case study is described with dialogue and analysis of the case for illustrating how parental humility could be cultivated and enacted in a family therapy context with parents and a TGD adolescent. Finally, implications for practice indicate a need for therapists to exercise cultural humility when engaging parents with respect and care, given their cultural backgrounds while simultaneously supporting the youth. Continued research is needed on scale formation for PGACH for measuring outcomes in family research and intervention.