Transgender Children

Transgender children present a growing area of interest for public audiences as well as for mental health professionals and researchers in the social sciences. Transgender is an umbrella term that refers to the phenomenon when a person’s assigned gender—the gender one is typically declared at birth—differs from an individual’s gender identity or felt sense of gender. Children living under the term transgender may not identify as such, however, and may refer to themselves as gender fluid, gender nonconforming, gender creative, or gender expansive; other children self-identity in other ways. It is important to recognize and respect that transgender children may claim that they are or desire to be a boy or a girl at very young ages. The anxiety over gender nonconformity in younger-age children, ...