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.
Objective: An increasing number of children are socially transitioning to live as their identified genders rather than their assigned sexes, yet little empirical work has examined the decision-making process surrounding social transitions. We aimed to understand (a) why parents and their gender-nonconforming children do and do not consider social transitions and (b) whether families discuss social transitions both before and after initial social transitions. Method: Studies 1 and 2 involved telephone interviews of parents of socially transitioned transgender children (N ϭ 60) and gendernonconforming children who were not socially transitioned (N ϭ 60), respectively. Study 3 involved an online survey of 266 parents of socially transitioned transgender children. Results: Parents of socially transitioned transgender children (Study 1) and parents of gender-nonconforming children who are not socially transitioned (Study 2) often reported that their children had led the decision to transition or not. Most parents of gendernonconforming children who had not transitioned had discussed transitioning (Study 2), and most parents of socially transitioned transgender children reported discussing the option of future retransitions (Study 3). Conclusions: Parents often report that they and their children are discussing social transitions, a process that children are leading. In contrast to possible concerns about discussing transitions, our results suggest that many families openly discuss the possibility of their children transitioning (or retransitioning), yet these discussions do not inevitably lead to an imminent transition. Implications for Impact StatementParents report that they are discussing social transitions and retransitions with their children and that their children are leading the decision-making process. These findings suggest that pediatric psychologists can play a role in facilitating discussions about social transitions and retransitions, knowing such discussions are unlikely to invariably lead to a transition in the short term.
Early in childhood, children already have an awareness of prescriptive stereotypes—or beliefs about what a girl or boy should do (e.g., “girls should play with dolls”). In the present work, we investigate the relation between children’s own prescriptive gender stereotypes and their perceptions of others’ prescriptive gender stereotypes within three groups of children previously shown to differ in their prescriptive stereotyping—6- to 11-year-old transgender children ( N = 93), cisgender siblings of transgender children ( N = 55), and cisgender controls ( N = 93). Cisgender and transgender children did not differ in their prescriptive stereotypes or their perceptions of others’ prescriptive stereotypes, though the relationship between these variables differed by group. The more cisgender control children believed others held prescriptive stereotypes, the more they held those stereotypes, a relation that did not exist for transgender children. Further, all groups perceived the stereotypes of others to be more biased than their own stereotypes.
Children essentialize gender from a young age, viewing it as inborn, biologically based, unchanging, and predictive of preferences and behaviors. Children's gender essentialism appears to be so pervasive that it is found within conservative and liberal communities, and among transgender and cisgender children. However, it remains unclear what aspect of gender the children participating in past studies essentialized. Such studies used labels such as "girl" or "boy" without clarifying how children (or researchers) interpreted them. Are they indicators of the target's biological categorization at birth (sex), the target's sense of their own gender (gender identity), or some third possible interpretation? This distinction becomes particularly relevant when transgender children are concerned, as their sex assigned at birth and gender identity are not aligned. In the present two studies, we discovered that 6-to 11-year-old transgender children, their cisgender siblings, and unrelated cisgender children, all essentialized both sex and gender identity. Moreover, transgender and cisgender children did not differ in their essentialism of sex (i.e., whether body parts would remain stable over time). Importantly, however, transgender children were less likely than unrelated cisgender children to essentialize when hearing an ambiguous gender/sex label ("girl" or "boy"). Finally, the two studies showed mixed findings on whether the participant groups differed in reasoning about the stability of a gender-nonconforming target's gender identity. These findings illustrate that a child's identity can relate to their conceptual development, as well as the importance of diversifying samples to enhance our understanding of social cognitive development.
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