If You're Mothering a Gender Nonconforming Child...

Congrats! And be careful.

Creative commons/pixabay

Sometimes I get notes from parents telling me their daughter wants short hair and trucks and to wear boys’ clothes, or their son likes dresses and dolls and nail polish. They want to know what they should do.

Clothes, toys, colors and nail polish have no sex, I remind them. They’re for anyone. We don’t have to reinforce and play by our society’s rules about what’s for boys and what’s for girls. And we don’t have to create meaning, or forecast the future, when a child naturally flouts those rules.

But I do think there are two things parents of organically gender nonconforming children should do. First: We have to accept and facilitate our kids’ nonconformity, allowing them to present as they please, and not shame them for their natural proclivities—while keeping them rooted in the reality of biological sex. It takes about eight years for kids to understand gender constancy, that their body is what makes them a boy or a girl, not what they like to wear or do or play with. [I have a post coming soon about parenting kids with DSDs.] Before that, they don’t always understand the difference between sex and sex stereotypes. Keep talking about those differences, which will normalize their non-adherence to stereotypes.

The other thing we have to do is fortify our children to navigate a world that doesn’t understand them. Though many feel the current gender revolution makes room for organically gender nonconforming kids, I’d argue it actually pathologizes them. Telling a stereotypically boyish girl that she can be or is a boy doesn’t manifest a liminal space for her to occupy. Telling a feminine boy that his mannerisms and tendencies make him a girl, or affirming his fantasy that he is one, tells him he’s doing boy wrong, that there’s not room for him in the category he naturally, biologically belongs to. I think this not only creates more shame, but can lead to very serious medical interventions.

I spent the afternoon yesterday with a lovely young man who had emerged as extremely feminine at a young age. By 14, he was convinced he was really a girl. At 18, he medically transitioned, eventually having full bottom surgery, which has led him to be a permanent medical patient. Last year, he realized he was a gay man. He detransitioned, but he can never get his body parts back. He will be on hormones for the rest of his life. These stories are increasingly common. How many of them do we need before we adjust the messages we’re sending to kids?

While social transition may bring relief to extremely gender dysphoric children, recent research suggests it extends gender dysphoria and greatly increases the likelihood of later medicalization. If gender dysphoric children aren’t socially transitioned, they have a high tendency to desist, and the majority later come out as gay, under the previously preferred model of treating gender dysphoria, watchful waiting.

That is, when we don’t immediately make meaning out of not just nonconformity but gender dysphoria (obviously, they are not the same thing), we leave room for exploration, for growing understandings, for shifts and changes, for a child to become a person. When we can’t handle the ambiguity, we cement what might have been a transient phase.

Many parents want to know what their child’s gender nonconformity signifies, if they have a child who is trans, or a child who will be gay later. They’re eager to slap a label on. I was very confused when my child acted so differently than all the other girls we knew. And not a single professional around us—teachers, doctors—understood it either. They made assumptions. They couldn’t handle the ambiguity. And they missed the miracle of a child like this: a child so secure in themselves that they march against the grain, no matter how it unsettles the adults around them. All they needed to say was, “Congratulations on having a kid who is immune to stereotypes! Let’s check in down the line and see what happens.” Gender nonconformity in children is not predictive of any one outcome. Neither is gender dysphoria.

There’s research showing that the more a child rejects strict gender roles, the better they do academically and in other areas of life. Many women who were serious tomboys got better jobs later, because their comfort with men and masculinity allowed them to pursue male-dominated fields. Gender nonconformity is a gift. If your child is this way, you don’t need to fix them. Let’s try to make room for them, and in the meantime, let’s make them resilient with our love and understanding. They are perfect, just as they are.

PS: For Mothers’ Day, I would like more paid subscribers so I can keep doing this!