Fertility Preservation and Parenthood: Perspectives of Trans and Non-Binary Youth and Parents in Portugal
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This is an excellent paper. It is well written and makes a valuable, original contribution to a newly burgeoning body of evidence.
Only a small number of very minor edits suggested:
Line 104 - perhaps reconsider use of the phrase 'existence of emotional disturbance'? Mental illness, emotional wellbeing maybe?
Line 131 - reword slightly to clarify the point- refusal of gender affirmative or treatment for general health/mental health?
Line 308 - remove 'was' from 'In addition, it was intended...
Author Response
This is an excellent paper. It is well written and makes a valuable, original contribution to a newly burgeoning body of evidence. Only a small number of very minor edits suggested:
A: We are thankful for the reviewer general appreciation and minor corrections.
Line 104 - perhaps reconsider use of the phrase 'existence of emotional disturbance'? Mental illness, emotional wellbeing maybe?
We replaced the expression “emotional disturbance” by “emotional difficulties”.
Line 131 - reword slightly to clarify the point- refusal of gender affirmative or treatment for general health/mental health?
A: We meant refusal of gender-affirmative primary healthcare. We reformulated the paragraph to: “For instance, non-binary people and especially non-binary youth (…) report more barriers in accessing gender-affirmative healthcare (Clark et al. 2018; Riggs and Bartholomaeus, 2018).”
Line 308 - remove 'was' from 'In addition, it was intended...
A: Done
Reviewer 2 Report
I thank the editor for the opportunity to revise the paper titled “Fertility Preservation and Parenthood: Perspectives of Trans and Non-Binary Youth and Parents in Portugal”
I read it with great interest and attention and I found it to have several strengths.
Surely the work deals with a very innovative theme, on which the scientific literature is still very scarce. The authors' intent is therefore commendable. The reading is very fluid, the writing is clear, the theoretical framework and the description of the sampling are very thorough and valuable, and the bibliography has really updated references. I really believe the article could be of interest to the readers of 'Social Sciences'. At the same time, I believe there is still some room for improvement that the manuscript could benefit from, before I can recommend its publication on the Journal.
I would ask the authors to respond promptly to the following points which I hope will be useful:
1. I think that after the introduction, a paragraph named ‘The current study and research objectives/hypotheses’ could be useful. The authors might rename the paragraph ‘The role of parents in their children’s parenthood decision’ or create a new paragraph, adapting the contents.
2. On a related note, I would ask the authors to explain the fully exploratory perspective of the study (if it is). If, on the other hand, the authors have specific hypotheses in mind, they should be made explicit.
3. My major request for clarification concerns the TYFAQ tool. While reading the paragraph on measurements, I realized that the reliability of the instrument was not indicated (in the present sample or in the validation sample), nor was the instrument scoring method was indicated (i.e., use of the average or the sum of the items, possible reverse items presences, if higher scores correspond to more favorable attitudes or vice versa, etc...). After that I saw that the analyzes were conducted item by item. The choice of authors may be legitimate. However, I wonder if it is also possible to use a total score of the instrument or its specific dimensions, in order to make comparisons also on these scores (in addition to those of the individual items already described).
Please, could the authors write something about this?
4. I wonder if the authors had in mind a minimum number of participants to reach. Considerations on sample size could be included in the 'participants' section. Obviously, given the particularity of the sample used and the understandable difficulty in recruiting such a specific sample, I don't expect a power analysis. I believe that some considerations on this aspect are sufficient, which the authors can then resume (as they did) within the limits of the study.
5. I generally prefer a specific and separate section from the discussions, relating to limits, application implications and future directions. But I understand it could be personal taste. I therefore leave the decision on this aspect to the authors and the editor. However, I believe that here a particularly relevant factor of this work should be stressed more, namely the focus on trans* and non-binary people, who often constitute an invisible population also in the sociopsychological research on LGBT + issues, which often focuses on ‘G’ and ‘L’ of the acronym. The authors might find useful to read and cite the following work to integrate such a paragraph: Salvati, M., & Koc, Y. (2022). Advancing research into the social psychology of sexual orientations and gender identities: Current research and future directions. European Journal of Social Psychology, 52(2), 225-232. doi: 10.1002/ejsp.2875
Thanks again for the opportunity to revise this interesting work and I really hope that my suggestions could be useful for the authors to improve their work. I invite them to continue on this line of research.
After their revisions, I would be glad to recommend their work for publication on Social Sciences.
Good luck
Author Response
I thank the editor for the opportunity to revise the paper titled “Fertility Preservation and Parenthood: Perspectives of Trans and Non-Binary Youth and Parents in Portugal”
I read it with great interest and attention and I found it to have several strengths.
Surely the work deals with a very innovative theme, on which the scientific literature is still very scarce. The authors' intent is therefore commendable. The reading is very fluid, the writing is clear, the theoretical framework and the description of the sampling are very thorough and valuable, and the bibliography has really updated references. I really believe the article could be of interest to the readers of 'Social Sciences'. At the same time, I believe there is still some room for improvement that the manuscript could benefit from, before I can recommend its publication on the Journal. I would ask the authors to respond promptly to the following points which I hope will be useful.
A: We would like to thank the reviewers’ thorough, kind, and constructive comments. We hope we have answered accordingly.
- I think that after the introduction, a paragraph named ‘The current study and research objectives/hypotheses’ could be useful. The authors might rename the paragraph ‘The role of parents in their children’s parenthood decision’ or create a new paragraph, adapting the contents.
- On a related note, I would ask the authors to explain the fully exploratory perspective of the study (if it is). If, on the other hand, the authors have specific hypotheses in mind, they should be made explicit.
A: Regarding points 1 and 2, we have followed the reviewers’ suggestions and devised a new subsection named “Current research”. We have also justified the exploratory nature of the study:
“The current research
Trans and non-binary people remain an invisible population within the sociopsychological research on LGBTQ+ issues (Salvati et al., 2022), and more so within the field of queer families (van Eeden-Moorefield (2018) and prospective parenthood processes among sexual and gender minority individuals (Gato et al., 2021). For these reasons, this exploratory study aimed to investigate differences in attitudes toward parenthood and FP among TNB youth and parents of TNB youth in Portugal. Furthermore, associations with age and gender identity (trans vs. non-binary) were also explored among youth. “
- My major request for clarification concerns the TYFAQ tool. While reading the paragraph on measurements, I realized that the reliability of the instrument was not indicated (in the present sample or in the validation sample), nor was the instrument scoring method was indicated (i.e., use of the average or the sum of the items, possible reverse items presences, if higher scores correspond to more favorable attitudes or vice versa, etc...). After that I saw that the analyzes were conducted item by item. The choice of authors may be legitimate. However, I wonder if it is also possible to use a total score of the instrument or its specific dimensions, in order to make comparisons also on these scores (in addition to those of the individual items already described). Please, could the authors write something about this?
A: The statistical analysis strategy was the one recommended in the original work of Strang et al. (2017). If, on the one hand, analyzing single items enabled comparisons with the original work, we concur with the reviewer and added a paragraph to the limitation’s subsection.
“Second, following Strang et al.’s (2017) recommendation we conducted analyses item by item. If on the one hand, this strategy enabled comparisons with the original work, on the other hand it increased the chance of measurement error. This way, exploratory factor analyses could be run in the future to identify possible latent constructs.”
We have also added information about the scoring method:
“Items were averaged with higher scores indicating a higher level of agreement with item content.”
- I wonder if the authors had in mind a minimum number of participants to reach. Considerations on sample size could be included in the 'participants' section. Obviously, given the particularity of the sample used and the understandable difficulty in recruiting such a specific sample, I don't expect a power analysis. I believe that some considerations on this aspect are sufficient, which the authors can then resume (as they did) within the limits of the study.
A: We added the following information,
“As in the original study (Strang et al., 2017), we aimed to collect 51 dyads of parents and children, resorting to two different strategies.”
We resumed this aspect in the Discussion (information between brackets):
“First, the initial objective of the study consisted of the comparative analysis of TNB youth and their own parents (aiming at 51 dyads), a relationship that was only guaranteed in five cases, corresponding to the questionnaires collected on paper.
- I generally prefer a specific and separate section from the discussions, relating to limits, application implications and future directions. But I understand it could be personal taste. I therefore leave the decision on this aspect to the authors and the editor. However, I believe that here a particularly relevant factor of this work should be stressed more, namely the focus on trans* and non-binary people, who often constitute an invisible population also in the sociopsychological research on LGBT + issues, which often focuses on ‘G’ and ‘L’ of the acronym. The authors might find useful to read and cite the following work to integrate such a paragraph: Salvati, M., & Koc, Y. (2022). Advancing research into the social psychology of sexual orientations and gender identities: Current research and future directions. European Journal of Social Psychology, 52(2), 225-232. doi: 10.1002/ejsp.2875
A: We concur with the reviewer’s suggestions and added 3 new subsections in the Discussion: Limitations and future directions, Implications for practice, and Conclusion. We emphasized the focus on a trans and non-binary sample both on the Current Research subsection (see point 2) and again in the Conclusion.
