Endocrine Abstracts

Background: Fertility preservation (FP) amongst transgender adolescents (TA) is receiving more attention as individuals are transitioning at younger ages. Parents have a key role at exploring options for their children and are usually the ones responsible for consenting to interventions. Our aim was to explore parent’s attitudes regarding their offspring parenthood goals, FP counselling and perceived barriers to successful gamete banking.

Methods: Parents of TA who attended the Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS - endocrine clinic) between March and June 2018, were invited to complete an online survey based on a modified version of The Transgender Youth Fertility Attitudes Questionnaire (TYFAQ).

Results: 32 parents answered the questionnaire: 22 (68.75%) respondents described their children as trans-males, 9 (28.1%) as trans-females and 1 parent as gender fluid (3.1%). 16 TA (50%) were younger than 16 years old and 28 TA (87.5%) received pharmacological treatment for gender dysphoria. 13 parents of TA (40.6%) indicated their own desire of having grandchildren biologically related but only 9 (28.1%) agreed would feel disappointment if their children could not reproduce. 50% of respondents agreed that their children decision about FP could change when older. Regarding fertility implications of gender dysphoria treatment, 20 individuals (62.5%) strongly agreed and 11 (34.3%) agreed that counselling was important. Information given by psychologist, endocrinologist, general practitioners and fertility units was rated good or very good by 19 (59.37%), 16 (50%), 5 (15.6%) and 9 (28.12%) individuals respectively. 14 respondents had not received any information prior their first appointment at GIDS. Parents reported a very low FP uptake among their offspring (1 trans-female). Their perception about the most common barriers to access FP in descending order were: delay to start pharmacological intervention, funding issues, discomfort with FP procedures and incongruence between perceived gender and biological parental role.

Conclusions: Parents in our cohort expressed similar attitudes to those of their children regarding fertility and FP. Overall they did not emphasize the importance of their child having biological children but agreed that that FP counselling was relevant. Parent’s expectations seem to adjust to their children’s life course and wishes.