Threads of Care: Exploring Parental Affirmation Pathways for Trans, Nonbinary, and Genderqueer Youth in Online Forums

Existing research has mainly focused on how parents/caregivers of trans children and adolescents search for information online, but has not examined how forum discourses and interactional dynamics foster feelings of community, emotional processing, negotiations of normative ideas of gender identity, or the development of trans-specific caregiving practices. From a norm-critical perspective, this study investigates how parents/caregivers use online forums to cope with emotional challenges and uncertainties related to their child’s gender identity, which content features encourage affirmative responses, changes in parents’ understanding, and caregiving behaviour. The study applies a netnographic approach based on the LiLEDDA framework combined with reflexive thematic analysis to systematically analyse online discourses. Data are drawn from public online forums used by parents/caregivers of trans youth and are coded for emotional expressions, concerns about safety and stigma, interactional dynamics, cognitions, and caregiving practices. The dataset will comprise several hundred threads from January to June 2025.