Diane Ehrensaft - The Gender Creative Child

“Diane Ehrensaft’s timely book offers parents, practitioners, and community members an invaluable road map for supporting children who are transgender or gender-nonconforming. Highly accessible, Dr. Ehrensaft offers the adults in the lives of transgender children a compelling analysis of the dangers of trying to change a child’s gender expression and/or identity. Dr. Ehrensaft draws on her vast clinical experience and an emerging body of research to argue that we should instead strive to cultivate a child’s gender health by ‘listening and acting.’ The Gender Creative Child should be required reading for anyone wanting to support the well-being of transgender and gender-nonconforming children.”

“Without Dr. Ehrensaft’s willingness to share her knowledge, our family’s journey would have been unimaginable. Dr. Ehrensaft has crafted yet another remarkable tool for the world to understand gender creative children. Using her own professional experience with countless gender-nonconforming individuals, this book will undoubtedly guide more parents to see gender is not as simple as checking a box.”

“Insightful.”

Gender Born, Gender Made: Raising Healthy Gender-Nonconforming Children

Parenting Together: Men and Women Sharing the Care of Their Children

Spoiling Childhood: How Well-Meaning Parents Are Giving Children Too Much—But Not What They Need

Mommies, Daddies, Donors, Surrogates: Answering Tough Questions and Building Strong Families

Building a Home Within: Meeting the Emotional Needs of Children and Youth in Foster Care

Copyright © 2016 by Diane Ehrensaft, PhD

Foreword copyright © 2016 by Norman Spack, MD

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Ehrensaft, Diane, author.

Title: The gender creative child : pathways for nurturing and supporting children who live outside gender boxes / Diane Ehrensaft, PhD ; foreword by Norman Spack, MD.

Description: New York, NY : Experiment, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2015041549| ISBN 9781615193066 (pbk.) | ISBN 9781615193073

(ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Transgender children. | Transgender youth. | Gender identity--Psychological aspects. | Child rearing.

Classification: LCC HQ1075 .E363 2016 | DDC 649.1--dc23

LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015041549

ISBN 978-1-61519-306-6

Ebook ISBN 978-1-61519-307-3

Cover design by Sarah Smith

Cover photograph by Lindsay Morris/INSTITUTE

Author photograph by Jim Hawley

Text design by Sarah Schneider

Manufactured in the United States of America

Distributed by Workman Publishing Company, Inc.

Distributed simultaneously in Canada by Thomas Allen & Son Ltd.

First printing April 2016

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Cheryl Kilodavis, My Princess Boy (New York: Aladdin, 2010); Sarah and Ian Hoffman, Jacob’s New Dress (Park Ridge, IL: Albert Whitman, 2014); Lori Duron, Raising My Rainbow (New York: Broadway Books, 2013).

Jayme Poisson, “Parents Keep Child’s Gender Secret,” Toronto Star , May 21, 2011.

Part of the gender revolution initiated by the young is the insistence on using gender neutral pronouns, rather than the binary “he/she.” Although we diehard feminists of the 1960s thought we had made great inroads in gender equality by insisting on desisting with the use of “he” to refer to everyone, male or female, and substituting “he or she” to be gender-inclusive, we now find ourselves outmoded. The preferred gender neutral pronoun requested by many of the young people in the community is “they” rather than he or she. Although it sounds discordant and grammatically incorrect by adults schooled in American English, it was pointed out to me by an astute, if not brilliant, self-identified agender patient that Shakespeare’s work is replete with the use of “they” in the singular, as this particular youth was asking to be referred to. “Their” message to me and others: “Get over it.” So, in the spirit of letting our young lead the gender revolution, I will be using the pronoun “they” throughout The Gender Creative Child to refer to a singular gender creative child, unless they have indicated that they would like to be referred to as “he” or “she.” This will be part of my effort in getting over it.

Katy Steinmetz, “America’s Transition,” Time , June 9, 2014, 38–46.

Piper Weiss, “Dad Protects Son from Bullies by Wearing a Skirt. Guess What? It Works,” Shine from Yahoo! Canada, August 31, 2012, ca.shine.yahoo.com.

Seth Menachem, “My Son Wears Dresses, and That’s OK with Me,” Huffington Post , July 14, 2014, huffingtonpost.com.

The O’Reilly Factor , May 24, 2012.

Laura Ingraham Show , May 30, 2013.

Laura Ingraham Show , August 8, 2014.

Laura Ingraham Show , August 6, 2014.

For a thorough, scientific description of the gender affirmative model, I would refer you to M. Hidalgo et al., “The Gender Affirmative Model: What We Know and What We Aim to Learn,” Human Development 56 (2013): 285–90.