Allowing Children to Choose Gender Is Slippery Slope

Parents' inclination to let children decide what's best raises all sorts of questions

By Lev Weinstein, Newser Staff

Posted Oct 17, 2008 7:43 PM CDT

(Newser) – For parents raising boys who profess to be girls and vice versa, puberty blockers may seem a godsend, writes Hanna Rosin in a look at gender—and transgender children—in the Atlantic. Boys will emerge from their teens with no Adam's apple, girls will bypass menstruation, allowing them to live inconspicuously as transgender adults. But has the growing acceptance of nature versus nurture gone too far?

Some worry about forcing parents to make such a weighty decision when kids are so young; one study found that only 20-25% of youngsters with gender-identity disorder still wanted to switch gender as teens. One gay-rights advocate thinks parents embrace the transgender label as a more palatable alternative to admitting their child might be gay: “When people think about being gay, they think about sex—and thinking about sex and kids is taboo.”

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"We used to get calls mostly from parents ... concerned about their children being gay,%u201D says one support-group leader. %u201CNow about 90% are from parents ... that their child may be transgender.%u201D (Shutterstock)

(Shutterstock)

Puberty blockers must be started by age 10-12 for girls, 12-14 for boys, forcing parents to make big decisions while their child is still young. (Shutterstock)

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If a 5-year-old black kid ... said he wanted to be white, would we endorse that? I don’t think so. What we would want to do is say, ‘What’s going on with this kid that’s making him feel that it would be better to be white?' - Dr. Kenneth Zucker

Sexual orientation is probably much more hardwired than gender identity. I’m not saying [gender identity is] entirely determined by the social environment. I’m just saying that it’s much more malleable. - Dr. Eric Vilain

If everyone is caught up in facilitating the thing, then there may be a hell of a lot of pressure to remain that way, regardless of how strongly the kid still feels gender-dysphoric. - Dr. Richard Green

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Allowing Children to Choose Gender Is Slippery Slope