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Transitional Perspectives on Family: Impact of Coming Out on the Personal Meaning of Family for Transgender Individuals

Ward, M Hadassah
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8299-6707
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1563273614069085

Abstract Details

2019, MA, University of Cincinnati, Arts and Sciences: Communication.
In this study, the researcher explores how coming out as transgender to family member(s) causes a re-negotiation of the meaning of family for the individual coming out by performing in-depth qualitative interviews. Three case studies were examined under the guidance of three main queer theorists viewpoints on queer family. Overall, the study identified five themes common in the three participants’ narratives in response to the guiding research questions and gathered data. First, participants experience trepidation and anxiety about coming out. Second, after coming out to their mothers participants experienced a shift in their transition journey. Third, participants experienced a reinforcement of their pre-coming out family structure after coming out. Fourth, after coming out some participants experienced familial misgendering and relationship struggles. Last, participants came to experience family as blood with chosen family added and all explicitly defined family as choice after coming out. Ultimately, participants explicitly defined family as chosen family but implicitly defined, through enactment, majorly heteronormative and nuclear family structures with some family of choice around the edges. This family structure introduced an innate tension between the way participants came to describe family and the way they enact family. Participants differing implicit and explicit definitions of family contrasts with the clearly defined lines between family structures presented by queer theorists and supports research that indicates queer folk who are constructing families combine all forms of family depending on emotional and social needs.
John Lynch, Ph.D. (Committee Chair)
Stephen Haas, Ph.D. (Committee Member)
Heather Zoller, Ph.D. (Committee Member)
112 p.
Communication
communication; family; religion; transgender; coming out; thematic analysis

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Ward, M. H. (2019). Transitional Perspectives on Family: Impact of Coming Out on the Personal Meaning of Family for Transgender Individuals [Master's thesis, University of Cincinnati]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1563273614069085

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Ward, M Hadassah. Transitional Perspectives on Family: Impact of Coming Out on the Personal Meaning of Family for Transgender Individuals. 2019. University of Cincinnati, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1563273614069085.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Ward, M Hadassah. "Transitional Perspectives on Family: Impact of Coming Out on the Personal Meaning of Family for Transgender Individuals." Master's thesis, University of Cincinnati, 2019. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1563273614069085

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

ucin1563273614069085
370
© 2019, some rights reserved.Creative Commons License Transitional Perspectives on Family: Impact of Coming Out on the Personal Meaning of Family for Transgender Individuals by M Hadassah Ward is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at etd.ohiolink.edu.
This open access ETD is published by University of Cincinnati and OhioLINK.