The Study of Psychological Challenges in Mothers with Transsexual’s Child: A Phenomenological Study

The family is the first and most important social system. It is the first place where each person’s sexual identity is based on which the individual accepts self as a man or a woman in family. The mother is the main core of the family and the first person to whom the communication with her child, and effects of their children issues. Due to key role of the mother and her interaction with the transsexual’s child, she faces numerous psychological challenges. Therefore, the present study was conducted to investigate the psychological challenges in mothers with transsexual’s child.

The method of research was a qualitative type based on phenomenological descriptive study. The information of study gathering by a deep and semi-structured interview type. The participants of this study consisted of all mother with transsexual’s child in some city in Iran by 2018.17 of them were selected purposefully for this interview the sampling by target and was based on snowball. Analysis of interviews was done through content analysis using a seven-step Colaizzi’s method.

The results of the research showed that the psychological challenges of the participating five main contents, including: negative and painful reactions of mothers, mother’s concerns about his child future’s, negative and biased reactions of family members and relatives, social stigma, lack of government and professional Advocacy.

According to the results, the lack of awareness of the issue of transsexual has led to reactions such as fear, shame, and confusion in these mothers. The awareness of cusecs’ and the effects of the mental and physical problems could be helping the mental health professionals and the health system to dealing with this issue.