Transgender Youth’s Perspectives on Factors Influencing Intended and Unintended Pregnancies

Abstract

Drawing on data from focus groups with 152 trans youth aged 14 to 18 years in the United States, this article explores the factors that the participants understood as contributing to adolescent pregnancy among trans youth. Youth posited that unintended pregnancies occur due to barriers to contraceptives; a lack of gender-affirming sexual health education; sexual assault and dating violence; and mental health–influenced sexual risk-taking. Participants suggested that intended pregnancies may be a self-development strategy; a self-directed effort to repress/change gender modality or identity; and due to the perceived incompatibility between pregnancy and transition, where pregnancy must occur prior to transitioning.

Keywords:

• Transgender
• youth
• pregnancy
• focus groups

Notes

1 Beischel et al. (2022) offer allogender as an additional gender modality, for those who do not fit neatly into the cis/trans binary.

2 Beischel et al. (2022) offer allobinary as an additional binary relation, for those who have no relationship to the gender/sex binary (e.g., someone who claims neither binary nor nonbinary gender identities).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Office of Population Affairs, United States Department of Health and Human Services, under [grant number TP2AH000035], Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development under [grant number R01HD095648], and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research under [Grant FDN154335].