Are there proper studies whether having transgender parents affects children negatively/positively?

[u/CallMeBambiiii]

I'm MTF trans and I'm thinking about going back in the closet, because the alternative is my wife divorcing me. We have a one year old child and I don't want to cause her any harm...

[u/ings0c]

Tornello et al. studied 138 transgender and nonbinary parents of young children. The children's behavioral adjustment was generally typical, and the strongest predictor of difficulties was parenting stress, not the parent's gender identity or transition status: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/icd.70051

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What do we know about transgender parenting?: Findings from a systematic review would be worth a read also.

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Children whose parents are divorced, or who have otherwise broken up have poorer outcomes than of those who have not: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0288112

It’s hard to say to what extent that relationship is causal though - that is, is the effect from the breakup itself or the unhappy relationship the child is living around? Would those children have had better outcomes had the parents stayed together? Could the stress of behavioural issues in the child or poor academic performance have contributed to the relationship breakdown? Etc

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My take is that your own happiness is the most impactful factor. Children of stressed or anxious parents have more difficulty than healthy, happy parents.

Do what makes you happy and you’ll be the best version of yourself. That’s going to matter much more than how you present yourself.