We know that family support promotes the health and wellbeing of transgender youth, but we know less about what this support looks like in practice. International research focuses mainly on parents’ views of raising transgender children, but family support extends beyond parenting to extended and chosen family, and expressions of family support vary across cultural groups.  Research to date often involves thematic analysis of interviews, missing important insights that can be gained from a discourse analysis approach.

Our research project (2023-2026) centers the perspectives of transgender young people, whose views on family support have been neglected. We use the method of reflective drawing, asking participants to draw and discuss their experiences in interview. A mixed-gender and mixed-ethnicity research team is interviewing twelve transgender young people (3 Māori, 3 Pacific, 3 Asian and 3 Pākehā) who identify as having experienced support from at least some of their family (including biological, extended and/or chosen family). These young people are being invited to draw their experience of family support and to list their family support network and describe how these people have supported them. With the young people’s permission, the team is then interviewing up to five of these family members per participant (60 in total), who are being invited to draw and discuss their experience of supporting the young person.

In this presentation, we will discuss the results of our project to date.  Using verbal and visual discourse analysis, we will identify how participants of different cultural backgrounds, genders, and family roles discursively construct their experiences of receiving and providing family support in their drawings and interviews.  The results will provide valuable insights to those who seek to be part of the village that raises a transgender child.