Overview

When a son or daughter announces a new gender identity, the parents go through something of their own. Parents describe shock, fear and grief. Some describe guilt, rows with a spouse, being called transphobic by their own child, pressure from clinicians, and losing friends. For some families the result is estrangement, sometimes for years. For others, it ends in reconciliation, either because the parents came to accept the transition or because the child later detransitioned (stopped or reversed a transition) and came home.

This page covers what parents report, what the research on parents shows, and how detransitioners describe their relationships with their parents. It also includes parents who supported transition and are glad they did.

For practical guidance, see when a child says they are trans, supporting a detransitioning child and support and resources. For the school side, see social transition at school.

Grieving a child who is still alive

Ambiguous loss

Ambiguous loss is a term coined in the 1970s by the family therapist Pauline Boss. It describes a loss that has no clear ending. Boss first studied the families of airmen missing in action, who could not be sure whether to mourn or to wait. She later applied the idea to dementia, where the person is physically present but psychologically changed. She called these the two types: physically absent but psychologically present, and physically present but psychologically absent (Boss & Yeats 2014). Her central point is that with this kind of loss the usual comforts of mourning don't apply. There is no funeral, no ritual and no agreed point at which to grieve, so grief can stay unresolved and be mistaken for depression or personal weakness (Boss 1999).

Family researchers have applied this framework to parents of young people who identify as transgender. The psychologist Jeni Wahlig argued that parents who struggle with a child's transition may be experiencing ambiguous loss. She proposed a dual ambiguous loss: the child is physically present but the son or daughter they knew seems gone, and the changing name, body and future make the loss physical as well (Wahlig 2015). In interviews with parents of trans-identified adolescent girls, the family therapist Deborah Coolhart and colleagues found that some parents experienced ambiguous loss and others did not (Coolhart et al. 2018). Grief is common, but it is not universal.

"Like a death"

Parents posting on r/detrans often describe the grief in terms of death. One mother wrote several times over a year about her 14-year-old daughter's announcement:

An adult friendship with this girl that looks so much like her grandma (my mom) and that I raised into a woman is important to most moms. It is a full circle life moment. —sara7147, parent

She went on to call the experience "a slow horrible agonizing death" that she hid and suffered "in silence". Detransitioners report hearing the same thing from their own parents:

My mom told me she had to grieve like I died because of how much I wanted to be a different person despite how TRAs will downplay that and say that its not a big deal and that they're still alive so its not grieving. —grimtheweeper, detrans female

("TRAs" is short for trans rights activists.) A parent posting on r/MtF explained the comparison: the only other time his mental image of someone had changed so completely "was when they had died" (Duranis, self-described cis parent posting in r/MtF).

The critique of "loss"

Many trans people find the grief framing hurtful. To them the child has not died or been replaced. They are simply being seen accurately for the first time.

ugh my mom has said this before "im mourning the little boy that i raised", like seriously? theres nothing to mourn im not dead —AbigaleRose99, mtf

Some academics agree. The Australian researchers Damien Riggs and Clare Bartholomaeus argue that what parents lose is not a child but certitude: the assumption, which society encourages, that their child's sex and future would never be questioned (Riggs & Bartholomaeus 2018, as summarised in a 2025 review).

The two framings rest on different premises. If gender identity is an innate truth that transition reveals, the parent's grief is for an illusion. If identity in adolescence can be fluid, and is sometimes shaped by distress, trauma or peers, then a parent may be grieving something real: a body, a name, fertility and a likely future, given up on the strength of a belief the child may later drop. Boss's framework does not settle which premise is right. What it does explain is why the grief can be so hard to resolve, because the loss is unclear and could still be undone.

Detransition makes the ambiguity more literal still. One detransitioner, thinking about her mother, wrote:

She lost a daughter when I transitioned, and then she lost a son once I detransitioned -- just as she was starting to come around... —IronAlcoholic, detrans female

Shock, fear and depression

Parents' accounts often start with the announcement itself, which some describe as coming "out of the blue". That phrase also appears in the parent surveys behind the contested rapid-onset gender dysphoria (ROGD) hypothesis, which is covered on its own page. What follows in many accounts is fear, especially of irreversible medical steps:

When your healthy beautiful confident 13 year old who you love more than yourself... comes to you and says she hates herself so much that she is willing completely deconstruct her physical body and change every single thing about who she is as a human being in this world to be a different person (and the medical community will allow it)... it is an extremely devastating thing for a parent. —sara7147, parent

The same mother wrote that she had been diagnosed with depression for the first time at 48. She only realised when her husband pointed out that she had stopped showering, eating and doing basic tasks. Research on parents recruited through affirming clinics also finds distress. In a Canadian study of 36 trans-identified young people and one parent each, the young people tended to feel relief at coming out. Their parents were "thrust into an often new reality" of mourning and worry, and often "struggled to accept their child's identity even while outwardly showing support" (Pullen Sansfaçon et al. 2022). Whatever their views, parents in both literatures describe a gap between how they feel inside and what they let their child see.

Being called transphobic

For many parents, the most disorienting part is being seen as the enemy by their own child. In the 2018 parent survey that introduced the ROGD hypothesis, 63.8% of the 256 parents said their child had called them "transphobic" or "bigoted". The most common reasons were disagreeing with the child's self-assessment (51.2%) and recommending the child take more time (44.6%). About a third (34.3%) said their child had received online advice that parents who opposed hormones were "abusive" and "transphobic" (Littman 2018). These are parents' reports, from a sample recruited through sceptical websites (see below).

A mother who had worked for 11 years in a trans health clinic wrote that her own daughter was "still using “terf” and “transphobe” for us" (Manuerafa2, parent). "TERF" stands for trans-exclusionary radical feminist, a label often used as an insult (see gender-critical feminism).

Some detransitioners say their parents' resistance was right but delivered in a way that made them dig in:

They were always talking about me as though they knew me better than myself, and they didn't want me to transition because they were afraid I would regret it and blame them for not stopping me. I felt like they were trying to defend themselves, not help me make a good decision. —bababeboooom, detrans female

Pressure from professionals

"A living son or a dead daughter"

A recurring theme in parents' and detransitioners' accounts is a clinician presenting the choice as transition or suicide. This is often put as "would you rather have a living son or a dead daughter?" (or the reverse). Several detransitioners say they were in the room when it was said:

My mom got asked if she wants a dead daughter or a living son when she was with me at the doctor's appointment (who signed my approval). I hate this phrase, it's just manipulation. —thistle_ev, detrans female

A detransitioned man described the effect on each of his parents:

My mother was less prone to believing this nonsense but she did seek help from a psychologist. She was hoping the psychologist would help her deal with my decision to transition but instead he just bullied her for not immediately accepting it right off the bat. —Hedera_Thorn, detrans male

His father, he added, became fixated on suicide statistics and "practically fast-tracked" the transition. The evidence behind this framing is weak. The Cass Review, the 2024 independent review of England's youth gender services, found no good evidence that medical transition reduces suicide in young people (Cass 2024; see suicide and transition).

Being labelled abusive

Some parents describe being labelled abusive for hesitating. One detransitioner wrote that her gender service "repeatedly called my father and name called him abusive for not immediately being okay with hormone treatment" (shloogmo, detrans female). A mother who phoned PFLAG (Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, a US support organisation) said that within two minutes it was talking about testosterone and top surgery for her 14-year-old (sara7147, parent).

In the retracted 2023 survey of parents who contacted the website ParentsofROGDKids.com, the authors reported that parents "had often felt pressured by clinicians to affirm their AYA [adolescent and young adult] child's new gender and support their transition" (Diaz & Bailey 2023, retracted). The same pattern appears in Littman's sample. Of parents who knew what happened at their child's evaluation, 71.6% said the clinician did not explore mental health, trauma or other possible causes before proceeding (Littman 2018).

Parents who strongly affirm their children report a different kind of pressure, coming from their own extended family, other parents and politicians. Researchers working in the affirming tradition describe this as minority stress carried by the parent (Hidalgo & Chen 2019; Brecht et al. 2025). One mother of two trans-identified children wrote in r/ftm that she had "lost friends due to me supporting them" (Financial_Life8114, parent posting in r/ftm).

Guilt

Guilt shows up whichever choice the parent made.

Parents who went along with transition often describe guilt after a detransition. One detransitioner said her parents "were relieved but also felt a lot of anger at themselves for allowing it to happen" (Resetti_Surveillance, detrans female). Another wrote that her mother "felt very guilty that she let me go on T and get top surgery as a child, but I do not blame her at all" (monte-mariopa, detrans female).

Some detransitioners do hold their parents responsible. A recurring argument on r/detrans is that the adults were the grown-ups. Others describe a contradiction that hurt more than either clear support or clear opposition:

Hearing my mom tell me that she didn’t believe I was trans from day one, but then taking me from therapist to therapist until I got my testosterone referral then signing the paperwork really messed me up. —ali-pal, detrans female

Parents who resisted describe a different guilt, and a different fear: that if the child is truly trans, their resistance will be what harms them. Several commenters on r/detrans say parents were trapped between the two. As one put it, parents seeking help "will be told that anything but full affirmation may as well be condemning your child to death", yet the right middle ground "isn't easy to know" (love_mhz).

Conflict between parents

A child's transition can divide the parents. When mothers and fathers disagree, the dispute can end up in the family courts, which is covered in custody and parental rights. One mother wrote on r/detrans in 2020:

I just lost my rights to make medical, educational and psychological decisions for my children in court because I wanted to slow the “transition train” that my 12 yo ftm child is currently on. —DysturbingReality, parent

She added that her child was in puberty, had anxiety and depression, and that the parents were divorcing at the time. Divorce is a context that family therapists would normally treat as relevant to any sudden change in identity.

The split between mother and father does not always go the way people expect. One detransitioner described a reversal:

my dad was the one who was vehemently against my transition in the first place, and he turned out to be the biggest supporter of my detransition. My mom was very supportive of my transition, but not happy about my detransition. —sodacatcicada, detrans female Affirming families describe splits too. In Amy Ellis Nutt's account of the Maines family, the father struggled for years while the mother accepted their child's identity early. The family later became public advocates for trans rights (Nutt 2015).

Detransitioners' accounts also show that a parent's "support" for transition is not always for the child's sake. One detransitioned woman wrote that her misogynistic father "liked me more after I became a trans man" and disowned her younger female self (autochoris, detrans). Others describe parents who were relieved to swap a gender-nonconforming or gay child for a more conventional trans one. See internalised homophobia.

Estrangement

Parents who lost contact

In Littman's sample, 49.4% of parents said their child had tried to isolate themselves from the family, and 57.3% said the parent-child relationship had got worse since the child came out (Littman 2018). Some parents describe years without contact:

When my youngest two adult children announced they were trans, both sexual abuse survivors at the hands of their paternal grandfather (my ex’s father), and the hatred they then turned on me because I don’t believe in actual transformation (as in like really turning into the opposite sex) that was it for me. I steer a wide path. They haven’t spoken to me in several years. —merinw, parent

Genspect, an international gender-critical advocacy group, told NHS England that 24% of the detransitioners and questioning people using its support service were estranged from family. This is unpublished client data from an advocacy organisation (Genspect, advocacy).

Children who cut contact

Estrangement is also described from the other side. On trans subreddits, a recurring theme is people cutting off parents who refused to use their new name and pronouns, and some say it was the right decision:

Haven't heard from, or spoken to her in 10 years. And it's been the most peaceful decade of my life. —PoorlyDressedDandy, ftm

Some families do reject or mistreat children, and nothing on this page should be read as excusing that.

"Cut out toxic people"

Some detransitioners say the advice to go "no contact" was one of the things that kept them stuck. They describe it as a norm in some online trans spaces, where a parent who hesitates is labelled toxic:

I hope we can move away from the “cut out toxic people” mentality in this sub. That is one of the red-flags of a cult ideology and it is rampant within trans communities. —CarriesSmokerStench, desisted

Others point out that outright rejection can push a child further in. A woman who desisted as a teenager wrote that when her parents told her they didn't accept her identity, "I felt extremely alone… (we stopped talking to each other for a while) and I felt suicidal." What made her doubt was her mother saying she "knew something else was behind all of this" (noano9913, desister). For more on how the online communities around transition shape these choices, see echo chambers.

Isolation and parent networks

Sceptical parents often say they cannot talk openly to friends, colleagues or even their own families. Many write under pseudonyms. That isolation has led to parent networks that are support groups and advocacy organisations at the same time:

• Parents with Inconvenient Truths about Trans (PITT): a Substack started in June 2021 by two mothers writing under pseudonyms. It publishes anonymous parent accounts and has also released them as books (First Things review). It is openly advocacy.
• Genspect: an international organisation that began as a voice for parents and now presents itself as an alternative to medicalised care. It publishes family survey tools that parents can submit to gender clinics (Genspect, advocacy).
• Bayswater Support Group: a UK peer group for parents who describe themselves as "cautious about affirmative medical solutions" (Bayswater Support Group, advocacy). It has brought legal challenges, including one with the detransitioner Keira Bell against an NHS puberty-blocker trial, which the High Court refused in July 2026 (Telegraph 2026). A 2024 investigation by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism reported that some members of its private forum discussed restricting their children's internet access and support services and sending them to conversion therapists (TBIJ 2024).

These groups give parents something their own social circles and their child's clinicians often don't: being believed. The risk is the same as in any closed online community, whether sceptical or affirming. A group can harden a parent's reading of their child before the parent has fully understood what the child is going through.

Parents who supported transition and are glad

Many parents support a child's transition and describe the result as a closer relationship. These are mostly families whose children remain trans-identified. Reddit posts and clinic-recruited studies record them:

She immediately started using my name and pronouns (as best she can, she slips up, but it's by mistake). Our relationship is better than ever. She's happy that I'm happy. —MeatAndBourbon, MTF

That account is from someone who came out at 42, an adult making their own decision. In the Canadian clinic study, parents who began in mourning were often able to "bridge this gap" by going through the process together with their child (Pullen Sansfaçon et al. 2022).

There are limits to these accounts. Studies recruited through gender clinics include mainly families who stayed in contact with those clinics. They rarely follow young people into adulthood, when some detransitions happen. Parents who are glad now may not be glad later, and parents who are bitter now may not stay bitter. Neither group's satisfaction shows whether the medical steps were right for the child.

What the research shows

The table below summarises the main studies of parents. They point in different directions mainly because they recruited different parents.

The ROGD papers are often dismissed because they relied on parents' reports. That criticism is fair: a parent cannot know everything a teenager feels. But it applies equally to the affirming literature, which also relies heavily on parents' reports, including of early childhood gender nonconformity. The retracted paper's authors made this point themselves, arguing that there is "no reason to believe that reports of parents who support gender transition are more accurate than those who oppose transition" (Diaz & Bailey 2023, retracted). The retraction was for consent and ethics procedure, not for fabricated data. That still means the findings should not be cited as established, and this page uses them only to describe what those parents reported.

What the research does show is that parents of trans-identified young people are under heavy strain, whatever their views. Their observations are seldom treated as clinical evidence in either direction. The Cass Review recommended holistic assessment of each young person's wider needs, which in practice draws on what families have seen.

What r/detrans stories show

Across the 3,094 r/detrans stories analysed by detrans.ai (detrans.ai stats), most do not say clearly how family relationships changed after detransition. Of those that do, about 333 indicate relationships became somewhat or much better or were restored, and about 177 indicate they got worse. Around 244 stories describe parental or medical pressure as having contributed to the transition. These figures were extracted by AI from public posts that people chose to write. They show what themes come up, not how often anything happens.

Coming back: relief, guilt and reconciliation

When a child detransitions, a recurring reaction in r/detrans accounts is relief, often quiet. Many commenters say they dreaded hearing "I told you so" and didn't:

It was so so hard to get my parents to support me (they never really did) so when I wanted to detransition I was TERRIFIED of them being angry, saying that they were right. Honestly, they were just relieved it was over. We don’t talk about it, it’s like it never happened —fresh-taco, detrans female

Reconciliation is not always easy. A detransitioned man who had cut his parents out during his transition wrote:

So telling them when I started to detrans was hard af. I hated admitting they were right. It was some hard conversations. And they did do a little bit of I told you so, again I’m not gonna say this was perfect or easy. But we got through it and have a good relationship now, a much more mature one. —No_Improvement4310, detrans male

Some detransitioners apologise directly. One shared the letter she sent her parents:

I'm sorry for the pain that I put you all through. I'm sorry if I made you question your parenting and my childhood. It was a great childhood. —Ok-Cress-436, detrans female

Reconciliation can also be complicated in the other direction. One young woman who began medical transition at 13 or 14 and detransitioned at 16 wrote that her mother "was just trying to make me happy and listening to the professionals". But years later her mother still treated her as a boy and called her a "frankenstein". She summed it up: "I'm not angry, but I'm not happy with her choices either" (UsualRaisin3939, detrans female).

One account suggests what can make reconciliation last. A detransitioned woman from a family she described as emotionally neglectful said her parents' effort to accept her transition made them warmer in general, and that warmth carried on through her detransition:

It was as if their process of trans acceptance extended to every other aspect of me as a person, they didn't just accept the trans-ness but also all the other parts of who I am. —Affection-Angel, detrans female

For practical advice on this stage, see supporting a detransitioning child and healing and recovery.

Making sense of it

These accounts are less about parents taking sides than about two kinds of uncertainty.

The child's identity is uncertain. Adolescence is a period of trying out identities, and gender identity beliefs now offer teenagers a ready explanation for distress. The parent cannot know whether a declaration is permanent, and neither can the child. Parents who grieve and parents who celebrate are both acting on a guess about how things will turn out.

The parent's role is uncertain. In many of these accounts, clinicians and activists treat hesitant parents as risks rather than allies, while sceptical networks treat affirming parents as dupes. Either way, the parent loses the ordinary authority to say "let's wait and see". What some detransitioners say they needed was a parent who stayed close, didn't panic, and didn't pretend to be certain.

Boss's advice for ambiguous loss fits this situation. When there is no clear answer, she argues, resilience means learning to tolerate ambiguity rather than forcing closure (Boss 1999). For a parent, that might mean keeping the relationship intact without signing up to the child's current account of themselves. That is the watchful, exploratory stance that several detransitioners say they wish they'd had. It also means accepting that the grief may not resolve on any schedule, and may turn out to have been for a child who comes back.

References

• Boss, P. (1999). Ambiguous Loss: Learning to Live with Unresolved Grief. Harvard University Press. APA interview with the author.
• Boss, P., & Yeats, J. R. (2014). Ambiguous loss: a complicated type of grief when loved ones disappear. Bereavement Care. source.
• Wahlig, J. L. (2015). Losing the child they thought they had: therapeutic suggestions for an ambiguous loss perspective with parents of a transgender child. Journal of GLBT Family Studies, 11(4), 305–326. doi.
• Coolhart, D., et al. (2018). Experiences of ambiguous loss for parents of transgender male youth: a phenomenological exploration. Contemporary Family Therapy, 40, 28–41. doi.
• Riggs, D. W., & Bartholomaeus, C. (2018). Cisgenderism and certitude: parents of transgender children. As summarised in a 2025 phenomenological study of Swedish parents.
• Pullen Sansfaçon, A., et al. (2022). Blossoming child, mourning parent: a qualitative study of trans children and their parents navigating transition. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 31, 1771–1784. source.
• Hidalgo, M. A., & Chen, D. (2019). Experiences of gender minority stress in cisgender parents of transgender/gender-expansive prepubertal children. Journal of Family Issues, 40(7), 865–886. doi.
• Brecht, A., Amacha, M., Richter, J. A., et al. (2025). "And I don't know how I can protect him from everything that's coming": a qualitative study on minority stress among parents of transgender adolescents. BMC Psychiatry, 25, 419. doi.
• Littman, L. (2018). Parent reports of adolescents and young adults perceived to show signs of a rapid onset of gender dysphoria. PLOS ONE. study page, source, 2019 correction.
• Diaz, S., & Bailey, J. M. (2023). Rapid onset gender dysphoria: parent reports on 1655 possible cases. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 52, 1031–1043. Retracted 14 June 2023. source, Retraction Watch.
• Vandenbussche, E. (2022). Detransition-related needs and support: a cross-sectional online survey. Journal of Homosexuality. study page.
• Cass, H. (2024). Independent review of gender identity services for children and young people: final report. study page.
• Nutt, A. E. (2015). Becoming Nicole: The Transformation of an American Family. Random House. publisher.
• Genspect (advocacy). Response to NHS England children's gender service consultation. source; Gender dysphoria support tool. source.
• First Things. The trans scandal and the parent underground (review of the PITT anthology). source.
• The Bureau of Investigative Journalism (2024). 'One day they may thank us for that "abuse"': inside the Bayswater Support Group. source.
• The Telegraph (2026). Children can be recruited for puberty blocker trial, High Court rules. source.
• detrans.ai. r/detrans story statistics (n = 3,094; AI-extracted, self-selected). stats.