Did I Raise My Child to be Transgender?
Parents always ask me whether they had anything to do with their child transgender identity. Expressing guilt for letting their boy play with dolls. Or giving into their daughters protests to have their hair kept long.
Is it nurture or nature, they ask?
These concerns often arise from behaviorist point of view. An idea that many aspects of gender may be linked to socialization and learning. That social environment plays an important role in the development of gender roles.
While there is truth in relation to gender roles, meaning the way we are socialized to view “boy/girl” or “male/female,” there is less value when we start looking at the gender identity.
Gender identity goes beyond just societal gender roles. It bypasses gender expression and is a deep sense of how one sees their sense of Self in relationship to their gender.
To clarify, we are not just talking about gender, a socially constructed concept. We are discussing a dissonance a person experiences in relation to their biological sex.
To have a better understand of whether parenting influences gender identity, lets look at Kohlberg (1996) cognitive developmental theory of gender.
Lawrence Kohlberg, a prominent American psychologist, proposed his theory in 3 stages:
The first stage called Gender Identity, develops at about 2 years of age. At this stage, children are able to label themselves and others as boys or girls. However, keep in mind that this is due to gender physical characteristics such clothing styles or other social gender constructs the child observes.
Gender Stability, the second stage, happens at about 3-4 years of age. During this stage the child gains the understanding that gender remains the same throughout time. Little girls will grow up to be women and little boys will grow up to be men.
By the final third stage, Gender Constancy, reaching at around age 5-6, children understand that gender remains the same throughout time and situation.
It is usually around the age of 3-7 that children begin declaring incongruence about their biological sex. This is also the most frequently reported age range for adults, who are assessed for gender dysphoria.
Thus these children, who are not developing according to the Kohlberg theory, are actually expressing their own innate intelligence about their own gender identity. In other words, it has less to do with social environment and more with innate sense of Self.
In my professional opinion, it is impossible to convert a child innate sense of Self in relationship to gender during this short period of child rearing!
Just think about it. Most kids transgress gender norms regardless of parenting. Most of these children do not express an incongruence in relation to their gender. In fact, many of them go on to grow up in accordance with their biological sex.
Did you raise your child to be a transgender? Absolutely not. But you did raise a child fully cognizant of their own sense of who they are in relationship to gender.
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REFERENCES & SOURCES
Kohlberg, L. (1996). A cognitive-developmental analysis of children’s sex role concepts and attitudes. In E.E. Maccoby (ed.), The Development of sex differences (pp.82-173). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
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Clinical Psychologist specializing in gender issues, writer, speaker & DR Z PHD YouTube creator
