While much of the literature on the relationship between gender-diverse children and their parents focuses on the role caretakers play in their child’s development, fewer studies explore how parents themselves are changed by said relationship. Addressing this gap, this paper explores how advocacy for gender-diverse children reshapes the lives of affirming parents, fostering deeper kinship bonds and a broader understanding of human diversity and struggle. Drawing on preliminary analysis of interviews with 62 affirming parents across Canada, we contrast the views of the parental rights movement, which seeks to control young people’s gender nonconformity, with that of affirming parents who view parenting as a practice of relationality. This paper reaffirms the well-documented finding that parental support improves the mental health of gender-diverse youth, but also shows how affirming parents themselves experience personal growth through their advocacy. Applying the concept of a "psychologically rich life" (Oishi & Westgate, 2021), we suggest that affirming a transgender child can reflect the complexity and perspective change that characterizes a psychologically rich life, offering an alternative framework for gender-creative parenting shaped by openness, transformation and an ethic of care.

Kimberley Ens Manning’s research focuses on gender and politics in the People’s Republic of China and Canada, with a particular interest in the advocacy of Canadian parents of transgender children and youth. Analyzing the relationship between gender and political institutions through the lens of family ties, Kimberley has previously published in the Canadian Journal of Political Science, Feminist Media Studies, Gender and History, and the China Quarterly, and is most recently the author of The Party Family: Revolutionary Attachments and the Gendered Origins of State Power in China (Cornell University Press, 2023). Professor of Political Science and Women’s Studies at Concordia University, Kimberley’s recent research, writing, and teaching explores how feminist leadership practices can contribute to the creation of more equitable institutions.