Endocrine Abstracts

Background: This article attends to parents’ involvement in child-centred sequences in paediatric transgender and differences of sex development (DSD)/intersex care. In these healthcare settings where the child’s wish is pre-eminently crucial, parents may find themselves in a complex position as they must balance their involvement and the child’s participation.

Methods: We used conversation analysis to examine parents’ contributions after healthcare providers’ (HPs) child-directed questions in 20 video-recorded clinical consultations.

Results: In our collection, parents were found to corroborate their child’s response, pursue a (further) response from their child or extend their child’s response. With response corroborations, parents facilitate both progression of the interactional activity at hand and child participation. Parents’ response pursuits, however, halt progression of the interaction in favour of the child’s participation. With response extensions, parents treat both interactional progression and child participation as subordinate to their own contribution. In general, HPs remained largely oriented to children as the primary interlocutor. We analyse one deviant case in which the HP addresses the parents as respondent to their next action.

Conclusions: Our findings advance our understanding of parental involvement in paediatric transgender and DSD/intersex care. HPs are offered valuable insights to reflect on their own role regarding parents’ involvement in clinical consultations.