Abstract
Despite growing societal interest in gender-neutral or gender-expansive parenting practices (i.e., practices that actively expand children’s opportunities beyond restrictive gender norms), no validated instruments exist to systematically assess the extent and nature of these practices. This study developed and psychometrically validated a new self-report questionnaire grounded in a scoping review identifying nine theoretically derived dimensions of gender-expansive parenting. The measure was developed through a multi-stage process involving scientific experts, parent focus groups, and pilot testing. Validation data were collected in June 2026 from 478 parents (39.5% men, 59.8% women, 0.6% other gender) of children and adolescents (ages 2–18 years) from the US, UK, Canada, and Australia. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses indicated the measure was highly reliable and essentially unidimensional (omega total = .976; omega hierarchical = .772). Measurement invariance was supported across childhood and adolescence at the metric and scalar level. The measure showed moderate-to-strong correlations in theoretically expected directions with existing measures of gendered parenting and parental gender ideologies (r = .33 to .69), supporting its construct validity. To conclude, the gender-expansive parenting questionnaire (GEP-Q) is a psychometrically sound, reliable tool for assessing gender-expansive parenting, and studying its determinants and developmental consequences across childhood and adolescence.