Gender Identity and Adolescence

[Page 668]Gender identity and adolescence are long-studied constructs in the counseling and psychological literature. Early research in this area focused on developmental milestones, as well as biological and psychological changes in adolescents’ experience. More recently, there have been calls for the literature base on gender identity and adolescence to evolve so that gender identity development in adolescence not only accounts for the experiences of cisgender youth but also includes the gender identity development of transgender and gender nonconforming (TGNC) adolescents. Cisgender adolescents are those youth whose sex assigned at birth aligns with the gender identity they assert, while TGNC youth may not experience their sex assigned at birth as in alignment with their gender identity. Sex is assigned at birth, resulting in the binary male ...