Throughout Barbara's childhood, mother had a series of tandem relationships which exposed Barbara to confusing sexual and aggressive experiences. Mother virtually abandoned Barbara to the stepfather and was either out partying with men, engaged in alcoholic binges, or at work (where she was employed as a salesperson). Barbara recalled feeling constantly abandoned by mother, but also feeling the need to cling to her. The stepfather, Alan, became Barbara's core parental object.

Alan, a janitor by trade, was an emotional and physical cripple. He was deaf, alcoholic, impotent, and partially disabled (having sawn off two fingers). Barbara was, however, deeply attached to him. While Alan raised Barbara as his own child, he related to her as a boy, calling her by a male name and referring to her as "my son." He not only encouraged Barbara's masculine strivings, but may have envied them. In spite of his faults Barbara admired and respected him, modeling her "maleness" after the stepfather. It was not until Barbara was 16 that she was told that Alan was not her real father. When Alan died Barbara was suicidally depressed and began to entertain transsexual wishes, which suggested that his death was a major stressor and precipitant of her wishes to become a man.

Barbara's biological father was reportedly a violent, abusive man whom mother despised. Mother either refused to answer Barbara's questions about him (making her feel guilty), or implied that there was a horrible secret about his life which could never be revealed. Mother's behavior increased Barbara's curiosity about her "real" father. While Barbara failed in all of her attempts to locate the father, she never abandoned her psychological quest to know him. Indeed, she over idealized him and became self absorbed in daydreams about him. Once she even "believed" that she saw him on television (in what appeared to be a combination wish fulfillment and delusion). She pictured her father as an omnipotent, loving man who would eventually rescue her from mother. At another juncture, Barbara reported a hypnogogic reverie in which she "saw" and "spoke to" her father. (see TRANSSEX - THE IMPULSIVE PSYCHOPATH: BARBARA/BRIAN PART IV)