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Author Spotlight: Unveiling Mechanisms of Stress Resilience - Significant Findings, Advancements, and Future Research
Published on: December 15, 2023
Between Vulnerability and Resilience: Parents of Transgender Young Adults
1The Paul Baerwald School of Social Work and Social Welfare, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel.
Abstract:
This study explores the lived experiences of Israeli parents of transgender young adults, depicting gender diversity as a family-relational phenomenon. The analysis of 18 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with Israeli parents of trans young adults suggests that the parents' experiences were characterized by a dialectic between feelings of vulnerability and resilience. The parents' vulnerability was shaped by their social positioning as a minority group as well as their socio-political environment, and their ability to cope with these hardships enhanced their resilience. As the parents developed their resilience through meaning-making, social support, and activism, they gained a new sense of agency alongside a deep sense of vulnerability, suggesting that vulnerability and resilience are not objective, opposite binaries but rather fluid categories that are continually constructed through the intersection of micro- and macro-level factors.
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