Research shows that when transgender young people are well‐supported throughout their gender transition they have similar levels of depression to their cisgender counterparts. For transgender young people who wish to transition medically, these support systems may include parents as advocates and healthcare professionals who specialize in transgender services. Decisions about steps throughout transition are made by transgender children, their parents, and their physicians. An examination of gender structure theory and medicalization literature helps to assess how medicine‐on institutional, interactional, and individual levels‐contributes to cisnormativity and enables us to reflect on the relationships among sex, gender, and science. This literature review aims to analyze how cultural ideologies influence medical processes that shape the identity construction of transgender children and it sheds light on parental involvement throughout transitions.
Supportive peers are crucial for transgender children's well‐being. Transgender children who live in their affirmed gender face decisions surrounding concealment and disclosure of their transgender identity. We sought to understand how cisgender (
- PAR ID:
- 10507975
- Publisher / Repository:
- Wiley-Blackwell
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- British Journal of Developmental Psychology
- ISSN:
- 0261-510X
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Abstract -
Gender is one of the central categories organizing children’s social world. Clear patterns of gender development have been well-documented among cisgender children (i.e., children who identify as a gender that is typically associated with their sex assigned at birth). We present a comprehensive study of gender development (e.g., gender identity and gender expression) in a cohort of 3- to 12-y-old transgender children (n = 317) who, in early childhood, are identifying and living as a gender different from their assigned sex. Four primary findings emerged. First, transgender children strongly identify as members of their current gender group and show gender-typed preferences and behaviors that are strongly associated with their current gender, not the gender typically associated with their sex assigned at birth. Second, transgender children’s gender identity (i.e., the gender they feel they are) and gender-typed preferences generally did not differ from 2 comparison groups: cisgender siblings (n = 189) and cisgender controls (n = 316). Third, transgender and cisgender children’s patterns of gender development showed coherence across measures. Finally, we observed minimal or no differences in gender identity or preferences as a function of how long transgender children had lived as their current gender. Our findings suggest that early sex assignment and parental rearing based on that sex assignment do not always define how a child identifies or expresses gender later.more » « less
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Increasing numbers of gender-nonconforming children are socially transitioning—changing pronouns to live as their identified genders. We studied a cohort of gender-nonconforming children ( n = 85) and contacted them again approximately 2 years later. When recontacted, 36 of the children had socially transitioned. We found that stronger cross-sex identification and preferences expressed by gender-nonconforming children at initial testing predicted whether they later socially transitioned. We then compared the gender-nonconforming children with groups of transitioned transgender children ( n = 84) and gender-conforming controls ( n = 85). Children from our longitudinal cohort who would later transition were highly similar to transgender children (children who had already socially transitioned) and to control children of the gender to which they would eventually transition. Gender-nonconforming children who would not go on to transition were different from these groups. These results suggest that (a) social transitions may be predictable from gender identification and preferences and (b) gender identification and preferences may not meaningfully differ before and after social transitions.
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Abstract In the present work, we ask whether socially transitioned, transgender children differ from other children in their endorsement of gender stereotypes and response to others' gender nonconformity. We compare transgender children (
N = 56) to a group of siblings of transgender children (N = 37), and a group of unrelated control participants (N = 56) during middle childhood (ages 6–8 years old). Our results indicate that transgender children and the siblings of transgender children endorse gender stereotypes less than the control group. Further, transgender children see violations of gender stereotypes as more acceptable, and they are more willing to indicate a desire to befriend and attend school with someone who violates gender stereotypes than the control participants. These results held after statistically controlling for demographic differences between families with and without transgender children. We discuss several possible reasons that can explain these differences. -
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Some children socially transition genders by changing their pronouns (and often names, hairstyles, and clothing) from those associated with their assigned sex at birth to those associated with their gender identity. We refer to children who have socially transitioned as transgender children. Using a prospective sample of children who socially transitioned during childhood (at or before the age of 12; age of transition: M = 6.82 years), we tested whether the parent-reported internalizing symptoms of transgender children were different before versus after they socially transitioned. The children were predominantly White (70.6% White) and girls (76.5% transgender girls, 23.5% transgender boys). Their parents tended to have high levels of education (74.5% bachelor’s degree or above) and lived in families with high household incomes (62.7% with household incomes of $75,000 or above). On average, youths showed lower levels of internalizing symptoms after socially transitioning versus before, suggesting a possible mental-health benefit of these transitions.
