Given the marked rise in transgender and gender-diverse (TGD) children and adolescents, schools need to be equipped to support students’ gender transition. Our research explores how mothers of TGD children in Israel experience school responses to their children’s gender expression or gender transition in three educational settings – secular, state-religious, and alternative schools. We identify temporality as a key dimension of coming-out as TGD in school.  Based on studies on the temporality of gender transition (Kennedy, 2022) , and sociological studies on rhythms of healthcare systems and the individuals who access them (Goodman and Tal, 2025; Zarchin and Asher 2025), we point to the lack of synchrony between school response and mothers’ perspectives on the temporality of their children’s gender transition, and discuss mothers’ attempts to align the rhythm of the school’s response with that of their child’s transition.

Studies across national contexts have investigated parent-school relations in the context of TGD children, showing parents proactively sharing information on TGD identities with school staff (Aramburu Alegría 2018). However, school personnel are inadequately prepared to address TGD children's needs (Mangin 2019). Payne and Smith (2022) illustrated how “discomfort serves as a socially acceptable narrative for school personnel to prioritize the feelings of cisgender adults and children over the needs of transgender students” (2022:45). While schools differ in their responses to children's social transition (Schimmel-Bristow et al. 2018), “cisnormativity permeates all aspects of school life,” privileging cisgender young people and fostering restrictive ideas about gender expression (McBride and Neary, 1091).

Parents of TGD children may play an important role in mediating the gender diversity of their children in interactions with school staff, especially in the absence of formal regulations. Based on interviews with mothers of TGD children and a number of other actors in the field, our study  extends previous studies of the temporality of gender transition into the school arena. Several theoretical models have explicated the process of transgender identity development, breaking it down into a sequence of consecutive stages (Bockting and Coleman 2016; Devor 2004; Lev 2004). The temporal dimension of responses to assertions of transgender identity is related to core beliefs about gender and temporality: immutability is seen as a key trait of gender, and the medical model of gender transition incorporated mandatory periods of waiting (Butler 2004, Spade 2006).

We show that in the Israeli case schools’ responses to children coming out as TGD range from immediate acceptance and affirmation to deferral and denial, with notable differences between secular and religious schools. In state-religious schools, gender transition is impossible causing children to leave for other schools. The very notions of transness or gender diversity are not part of the social world of these schools. In state and alternative schools, responses varied between immediate accommodation and deferral. Deferral was variously motivated. At times it stemmed from conflicting constraints and priorities of the school; in other cases it reflected a felt need for time to develop an adequate educational response in the absence of appropriate resources; in yet others it seemed to suggest a notion that trans identity should be put to the test of time.

We found that the imposed delays often conflicted with the parents’ sense of urgency. A child’s coming out in school is  the culmination of a long intra-subjective process followed by a family process. When parents advocate social transition in school they have already overcome their doubts and equate the child’s well-being with their ability to express their authentic gender. The result is a lack of synchrony between parents’ understanding of the temporality of their child’s gender transition and the pace of the school’s response.

Our research is based on 35 semi-structured in-depth interviews with mothers of TGD children in three types of schools in the Jewish sector - state schools, state-religious schools, and independent schools. Five mothers were activists advocating for transgender children in the education system. Five had more than one transgender child. Eight identified as belonging to the LGBTQ community, and nine - as belonging to a religious community. Children’s ages ranged from three to 17 years. Participants were recruited through relevant networks, supplemented by snowball sampling. Given difficulties in reaching religious families, three additional mothers from religious communities whose children were aged 20–21 were included. Altogether, the study encompassed 41 transgender children. Sixteen were described as having a binary gender identity (three transgender girls and 13 transgender boys), 21 identified as non-binary, and five exhibited diverse gender expression with no clear bearings on their gender identity. In addition, we conducted four interviews with key informants: two policymakers from the Ministry of Education working on gender and sexuality issues, and two therapists specializing in TGD children and youth who occcasionally provide guidance to school staff. These interviews provided supplementary insight into school practices andschool-based interactions surrounding students’ coming out, deepening our understanding of the mothers’ experiences. Interviews were conducted face-to-face or via Zoom between January 2020 and March 2024 and lasted 90–120 minutes. Interviews with mothers focused on parenting experiences related to raising a transgender child, while interviews with policymakers and therapists addressed school transition policies, staff training, and relationships with parents. Interviews were recorded and transcribed, coded using the atlas.ti program, and analysed using grounded theory. Grounded theory’s emphasis on meaning without assuming the existence of a unidimensional external reality (Charmaz 2014) particularly fits this project, as we aimed to grasp meaning-making processes. We performed open coding of the transcribed protocols of the interviews to identify key categories emerging from the data. We organised categories into themes to conceptualise how mothers of children and policymakers understand gender transition and their role with gender-diverse children, seeking similarities and differences between interlocutors (Corbin and Strauss 2015). All participants received clear information about the study’s aims, emphasizing that it was not evaluative. Transcripts were anonymized using pseudonyms and removing identifying details. Written informed consent was obtained from all participants, and the study received IRB approval.

A child's coming out as TGD is a significant event, not only for the child but also for those around them. We examined schools’ responses to this event from a temporal perspective. Our findings suggest that temporality is a significant dimension of the parent-school relationship. By focusing on parents’ experiences, we extend previous discussions of the temporality of gender transition. Kennedy (2022) identified two periods of deferral for trans youth, preceding coming out to parents: tacit deferral, when children experience gender dysphoria without the vocabulary to articulate it, and discursive deferral, when they delay coming out, often due to fear of repercussions. Seen in this light, coming out as TGD in school is the culmination of a long intra-subjective process, followed by a family process: by the time parents advocate for social transition in school, they understand the child’s well-being as dependent on the ability to express their authentic gender. Consequently, the coming out process in school is frequently marked by asynchrony between the pace of the school’s response and mothers’ perspectives on the temporality of their child’s gender transition. To conceptualize this asynchrony, we draw on sociological studies that examine the differing rhythms of healthcare systems and the individuals who access them (Goodman and Tal, 2025; Zarchin and Asher 2025). Zarchin and Asher (2025) show how parents of children with autism engage in multidimensional ‘time work’, exercising ‘temporal agency’ to align their child’s rhythms with those of their peer group, or … with the cadence of everyday life (2025, 223). Similarly, mothers in our study exercised temporal agency in attempts to align the rhythm of the school’s response with that of their child’s gender process. The absence of formal guidelines regarding trans children in Israeli schools has enabled them to lead policy processes from the bottom up.

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