Intensive parenting, health care stigma, and positive identity among cisgender, transgender, and nonbinary LGBQ parents

This study investigated the associations among stigma in health care settings, parental positive identity (i.e., a multidimensional and affirming sense of self that emerges from navigating parenthood as an lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer-identified individual within a cis-heteronormative context), and intensive parenting attitudes (i.e., a parenting ideology marked by a relentless devotion to children’s developmental, emotional, and social outcomes) in a sample of cisgender and transgender/nonbinary (TNB) lesbian, gay, bisexual, and queer parents in Italy. Participants were 197 lesbian, gay, bisexual, and queer parents (M = 37.23, SD = 7.71; 159 assigned female at birth; 54.82% cisgender, 45.18% TNB), all identifying as White and parenting children aged 0–18 years (M = 5.88, SD = 3.97; 115 assigned female at birth). Findings indicated that TNB parents reported significantly higher levels of health care stigma and endorsement of intensive parenting compared to cisgender parents, though levels of parental positive identity did not differ. Across both groups, greater health care stigma was associated with stronger endorsement of intensive parenting, particularly among those reporting lower positive identity. Notably, only among TNB parents with higher positive identity, greater experiences of stigma were associated with lower endorsement of intensive parenting. These findings underscore parental positive identity as a key psychological resource that buffers the negative impact of health care stigma on parenting attitudes. They also suggest that lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer parents may internalize pressure to overperform by adopting intensive parenting norms in response to minority stress. The study emphasizes the need to integrate strength-based frameworks into lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer parenting research and to advocate for health care policy reforms aimed at reducing structural stigma. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)