Over the past several years I have been watching my daughter Rebe grow and change, and one of the most marked things about her growing up has been her relationship with her gender. Children start to develop gender awareness at around the age of three, when they learn that there is a difference between boys and girls, and between men and women. They learn how to tell the difference between the two, and as they grow older they tend to identify with one or the other. This then becomes their gender identity.
When Rebe first became aware of herself, I noticed that she didn’t have a strong idea of herself as a girl. She chose to play with cars and trains, and the children she gravitated towards were boys. She didn’t like playing with dolls and never wanted to be a princess. She did choose to wear skirts and dresses, but this was more for comfort than appearance. However, as she started primary school I noticed that she began to struggle more and more with her gender. She didn’t identify with girls who loved pink and princesses. She didn’t like playing at mermaids or being rescued, and she certainly had no interest in make-up and clothes.
Looking back on this time, I think she felt that she had to make a choice between being a boy and being a girl. Because she didn’t identify with the societal image of a girl, with all the trappings that entails, she felt she couldn’t be a girl. So she chose to be a boy. She stopped wearing skirts and dresses. She would only wear clothes that would identify her as a boy. She cut her hair short and even asked me to call her Robert if we were out and about and nobody knew her. I had no problem at all with any of this and was happy to help her to explore who she was.
Although she was at times confused by her feelings, we found that talking them out together helped her. As a family we also tried to be as non-judgemental as possible about her choice of clothes, toys and ways of playing and her choice of friends, so there was no pressure from us on her to be anything other than what she was.
However, for other children the journey into exploring their gender identity is less smooth. One study found that children with childhood gender nonconformity (CGN) were at a higher risk of depression and anxiety than children their age who had no gender issues.* CGN has only been recognised in the therapeutic world since the 1980s. The term is used to describe a pre-pubescent child who does not “conform to expected gender-related sociological or psychological patterns, or [who identifies] with the opposite sex/gender. Typical behaviour among those who exhibit the phenomenon includes but is not limited to a propensity to cross-dress, refusal to take part in activities conventionally thought suitable for the gender and the exclusive choice of play-mates of the opposite sex.” (Definition from Wikipedia, June 2016.)
Much of the early work of therapists in this field was to ‘treat’ children and try to help them to revert to typical gender stereotypical behaviours. I imagine that this was extremely distressing for many children and that there was a real danger that it only exacerbated feelings of isolation, difference and confusion. Talking with Lisa Brinkmann, a clinical psychologist and specialist in this field, I discovered that one of the main causes of difficulty around issues of gender is that in our minds it is often linked with sexuality. For example, when our son wants to wear a dress, does the question “Is he gay?” spring immediately to mind? I would argue that for many it does. It would seem to me that problems arise for families of children with CGN when there is a believed link between gender and sexuality, and an underlying fear of homosexuality. Lisa expanded on this, saying that parents who find their child’s CGN a problem often have insecurities around their own gender and sexual identity. She says that sometimes a parent might worry that society will judge them if their child behaves differently from the norm.
Gender in Society
In our society, gender is very much prescribed. It is a solid thing with no grey areas, and there most definitely is a norm. In Western society we have very distinct ways of being a boy or a girl, a man or a woman. When my youngest son was learning to talk, he called everyone ‘him’ whether they were male or female. He hadn’t yet discovered that there was any distinction or difference. Teaching him that there is a difference, that boys and men are him and he, and women and girls are her or she, made me realise that we provide our children with gender clues that help them to identify people as male or female.
For children these clues are things like hair length. In fact this is a big one: girls have long hair, and boys short, right? So what happens when we meet boys who have long hair or girls who have short hair? I remember having a heated debate with 3-year-old Joa about a friend of ours who was a boy with long hair, and Joa was absolutely adamant that he couldn’t be a boy, because boys have short hair and therefore he had to be a girl.
Other gender clues we provide our children with are things like the clothes they wear, the colour they prefer, and the kind of toys they play with. These gender clues are strongly reinforced by society. In our society, men and women dress differently. All department stores have separate men’s and women’s clothing sections. There are very few gender-neutral clothing companies. This separation extends of course to children’s clothes, with certain styles and colours reserved for each gender. Marketing is very gendered: toys, beauty and health products, sporting equipment, household goods – the list goes on and on. It seems that we can shop ourselves male or female! There is also a gender divide in interests, hobbies and employment, for both grown-ups and children: knitting for women, boxing for men – that sort of thing.
Categorisation
I am aware that categorisation is an essential human skill. We need to categorise so that we can filter down and manage the huge amount of information around us. One of the first categories that we use is gender. What happens, however, when we don’t fit into one of these categories? When we defy the gender clues given to us as children? How confusing is it for a boy who likes pink, or a girl who hates dresses? I think in Rebe’s case she felt ‘wrong’ for a long time. As I mentioned before, she felt she had to choose to be either a boy or a girl. Was she a boy in the wrong body?
At times I felt pretty clueless, and I struggled to help her feel less ‘wrong’, but the more I thought about it the more I realised that the problem was not Rebe’s identity, but instead how society markets boy-ness and girl-ness to her (and all of us), and therefore the reaction we have and the importance we place on what society tells us is ‘normal’. So in our house we became aware. We talk about how adverts show boys playing with certain toys, but not girls, and vice versa. We talk about how to follow our hearts and do what feels good and right, rather than doing only what others around us do. We talk about how clothes are just clothes, not who we are. And I just let Rebe be, without judgement. I look for any clues to her identity and I celebrate them all. Because I love ALL of her. I am so glad that we took this approach as a family. It has opened our hearts and minds to everything, for all of us.
Being yourself
A few weeks ago, Joa, my youngest son, now aged 6, came over to me and said casually, “I don’t care about wearing girl’s clothes.” “Oh yes?” said I, giving him the space he needed in the conversation to tell me what he needed to. He then went on to ask me to get him a dress: a pink dress with white butterflies on it, to be exact. I realised, with a giggle in my heart, that there was no dress for him to try on at home because Rebe refuses to wear them, so I promised I would look for one the next time I was scouring the charity shops.
Luck was on our side. The following week we found two butterfly dresses, which he is delighted with. My heart swelled with pride when his older brother saw him in his dress for the first time and casually remarked, “Oh, you look nice, Joa.” Nothing more: no laughing at him or making fun of him. He has worn his dresses at home and out and about. The first time he wore his dress to a community gathering I did feel nervous in case people laughed at him, and about how he would feel if that happened. A few times people asked him why he was wearing a dress. “I just like it!” he called, smiling as he ran off to play. I feel very proud of my family. Everything goes, and we are there for each other.
As for Rebe, she has grown more into herself. She no longer feels that she has to choose either/or. She has realised that she is just her. A girl, yes, and she has long hair now; but a girl who doesn’t like dresses, and has no interest in typical ‘girl toys’ or behaviours. She knows she is growing into a young woman. Her periods have started and her body is changing, and she is OK with that. In fact, she seems more than OK with that: she seems excited, and we marked this excitement and change in little ways like a special bonfire on the beach on her menarche (first period), and choosing cloth pads together. She knows her body is becoming the body of a woman and that one day she will perhaps have babies of her own. But she doesn’t have to like certain things or dress in a certain way for that to happen.
we don’t need to label our girls who like fishing as ‘tomboys’, or call our little boy who is playing with a doll a ‘gentle new man’
For other children who have CGN the transition into puberty is more difficult. Feelings of being in the wrong body can deepen and become more obvious and painful. However, there is increasing awareness and acceptance of this, and more support and help are available, including therapy and hormone blockers. Also, the negative impact that our gendered society is having on our little ones is talked about, and more people are offering alternative approaches. An extreme example of this is a Canadian couple who had a baby and controversially have not revealed its gender to all but a few, leaving the child to grow up free of the confines of gender, or rather of society enforcing a narrow and prescriptive view of gender.
Campaign groups are also emerging, such as the UK-based Let Toys Be Toys, which started as a group of concerned parents calling for toy shops to remove their ‘boy’ and ‘girl’ labels so that children can just select what they want to play with rather than being forcibly guided to choose something from the correctly labelled aisle.
But the fact remains that we live in a gendered society. For whatever reason, that is unlikely to change in a hurry, so what can we do for our children right now?
We can listen to our children, really listen to them with open hearts and minds, and learn who they truly are, what they really like and what really interests them. And then we can support that. We don’t need to make a big deal out of it. We don’t need to label our girls who like fishing as ‘tomboys’, or call our little boy who is playing with a doll a ‘gentle new man’. We can just smile and let them be. And if people poke fun at them we can teach them to answer that it is their interest, nothing bigger, nothing more sinister. It’s just a colour they like, or what they like to wear, or how they like their hair. That is all. We can teach them about safe spaces – places such as home or Granny’s house where it is appropriate to wear what they want and be called what they want.
If we feel uncomfortable with our child’s journey into gender identity perhaps this is a signal for us to look more closely at our relationship with our own gender and sexuality, for only if we can be truly at peace with ourselves will we be truly at peace with our children.
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Laura Whalen lives in a sleepy little fishing village in the south-west of Ireland with her love and five children. She spends her time at home, trying to live as gently and mindfully as possible, along with a little writing, a little sewing and a lot of mothering. She blogs at nestledunderrainbows.blogspot.com
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Reference
* Andrea L. Roberts et al., ‘Childhood Gender nonconformity, bullying, victimization, and depressive symptoms across adolescence and early adulthood: an 11-year longitudinal study’, Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 52(2) (2013), 143–52.
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Find out more
- genderspectrum.org
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lettoysbetoys.org.uk
- The Transgender Child: A Handbook for Families and Professionals by Stephanie Brill and Rachel Pepper, Cleis Press
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Gender Born, Gender Made: Raising Healthy Gender Non-conforming Children by Diane Ehrensaft, The Experiment, LLC
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Published in issue 49. Accurate at the time this issue went to print.
