Project information
Title
Lived experience of children and youth 4-17 years with gender-creative identities/expressions and their parents/legal guardians in Sweden.
Doctoral student
Kristiina Tyni, Linnaeus University
Main supervisor
Idor Svensson, Linnaeus University
Assistant supervisors
Anna Bratt, Linnaeus University, and Matilda Wurm, Örebro University
Timetable
1 April 2019–31 March 2024
Subject
Clinical psychology (Department of Psychology, Faculty of Health and Life Sciences)
More about the project
The understanding of transgender issues is going through great and rapid changes in the Western World. For example we see a first generation of children and youth growing up living in line with their asserted gender identities from a very young age, with families supporting social transitioning (i.e. having the name, pronoun and appearance fit the person’s authentic gender as experienced). The knowledge of gender creative youth, especially pre-pubertal children, is still limited in research even though it’s a rapidly growing field.
We are conducting an interview study on the experiences of gender creative children and youth under 18 years and their legal guardians, related to gender identities. Gender creative is our choice of affirmative term including young children or youth who do not identify with their gender assigned at birth, but do not use the concept of transgender. In addition, we believe the term has positive connotations non-related to medical or psychiatric diagnoses.
The aim of the study is to get a better understanding of the phenomenon of gender creative identities/expressions as defined and described by gender creative children and youth themselves. We are interested in their experiences in areas of everyday life such as self-worth, family relations, friends, school, free time activities, health and/or gender affirming care and so on, related to gender identity. The study is of importance since there is a lack of research in this area and most research so far focuses on gender creative children’s and youth’s mental health and experiences related to gender affirming care, as reported by parents or health care personnel.
For the study we apply a phenomenological research approach called Reflective Lifeworld Research, RLR. The study is part of a PhD-project at the Department of Psychology, Linneaus University.
