By, Ruel Nolledo | Freelance Writer
August 24, 2026
In observance of Transgender History Month, First 5 LA is shining a spotlight on transgender parents who are working to build the best possible future for their families. Even in today’s difficult sociopolitical climate, they’re going above and beyond to secure the care and services their families need to thrive.
Healthy babies begin with healthy and supported parents. That’s why finding quality perinatal care is one of the top priorities during pregnancy. The right health team can reduce the risk of complications, making the experience safer for both parent and baby.
For many transgender parents, access to the right kind of perinatal care requires an extra measure of work. During a discussion with author and parenting specialist Britta Bushnell on her podcast, transgender dad Herbie Huff talked about his own pregnancy experience. One of the most important choices, he noted, had to do with prioritizing his pregnancy over trans advocacy and education.
That’s a sentiment many transgender parents would understand, says Abbie Goldberg, a professor of psychology at Clark University and distinguished affiliated scholar at the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law.
“It’s exhausting,” Goldberg says. “No one wants to have to be the primary source of information on being a trans person for their providers.”
Goldberg is one of the authors of a 2026 Williams Institute report that surveyed 108 transgender and nonbinary parents — half of whom had a child age 5 or younger — about their journey to becoming parents. The results were disturbing: 3 in 10 parents said they couldn’t find parenting support that included them, and roughly 4 in 10 expressed fears that their children’s schools or daycares, their neighbors or their health care providers might report them to child welfare agencies because of their gender identity.
Those fears, adds Goldberg, only increased when other personal characteristics or circumstances were taken into account. For expecting transgender parents, the task of educating their own health care providers adds another layer atop the work all expecting parents must do in acting as their own advocate.
“Most of us don’t inhabit just one identity,” says Goldberg. “So there may be other forms of [provider] education that they’re managing around any complexity of their family, whether it’s their child’s special needs, their racial, ethnic, cultural background, or something else. It could be so many different things.”
In some cases, the lack of transgender- and gender-diverse affirming care has led some trans parents to step in and fill the gap. That was the case with Tecpaxochitl Mireya González, a first-generation, intersex, Two-Spirit, transmasculine parent of two who searched for trans-inclusive perinatal resources during their first pregnancy — and came up empty.
“I started looking for my own groups, and I could not find any,” recalls González. “It led me to enter the field of perinatal health care, so I could be something that I hadn’t seen before. Because many things I was going through were never really tailored to my lived experience.”
Today, González is a board-certified lactation consultant, doula and Medi-Cal provider — one of too few, they note, in a field with a shortage of trans and nonbinary providers. And to help other families find a safe space, they started free monthly perinatal workshops at a community garden in East Hollywood, where families learn about chest- and breastfeeding, nourishment during pregnancy and making baby food with produce grown on-site.
In Huff’s case, the answer meant doubling down on his search for a provider who had already done the learning. Eventually, his efforts paid off when he found Megan, an OB midwife who, while new, was intent on learning how to better serve the needs of transgender parents.
“She is someone who listened to trans patients who were saying: This care is not good enough,” Huff said. “And she learned how to do better. She didn’t start off amazing. She’s grown. She actually said to me: ‘I’ve learned, and I’m very grateful for what I learned … I’m changing how I do things because of what I learned.'”
That willingness in providers to learn and change is crucial, says Maternal Mental Health Now’s Alex Villalba, who runs a weekly queer parenting peer-support group as well as trainings where providers learn how to be trans-affirming in terms of their practice, communication and physical space.
“Being queer- and trans-affirming is a preventative measure,” says Villalba. “Educating yourself — staying open to learning and growing when you make mistakes, being open to move on, and learning and applying those lessons — is essential.
“Providers have a lot of opportunities to create huge change with small acts,” they add.
Goldberg encourages providers in every field to examine how they react to and treat transgender parents and their children — because those reactions can have serious consequences.
“People feel that they need to choose between their safety and getting the services that they need,” she says. “So, if a parent chooses not to go to a food pantry or access certain benefits because they’re afraid of bringing attention to their family, that should make us really pause and think: How is this good for families? How is this good for kids?”
Parents like Huff and González aren’t waiting for answers to those questions. Instead, they’re taking action now by looking for providers who meet their needs, or by filling that need themselves. Their experiences underscore why families shouldn’t have to shoulder that responsibility alone.
This August, First 5 LA joins Angelenos in celebrating Transgender History Month. We stand with L.A.’s transgender parents in building a future where their families have the resources, care and community they need so that their children can thrive.
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