Saturday, December 02, 2006
Square Pegs in a Round Childhood
I was struck by today's NYT article today on childhood gender non-conformity, and growing support among psychologists for allowing these children to be themselves, even to the point of allowing children to cross-dress when they seem strongly inclined to do so. This is a dilemma even for enlightened parents, who don't want to suppress their childrens' true selves, but worry about cruelty and non-acceptance from the outside world. The article points to high depression and suicide rates among these children as a reason to shift tactics, and suggests that 3/4 of these children turn out gay, most of the rest straight, and a small fraction become transsexuals. Personally, I certainly found growing up gay difficult in my generation, though the difficulties hit in adolescence, not childhood. While I seldom fit in as a child, this rarely played out as a gender issue, as I avoided both typically male and female activities, choosing to collect maps and take a neighborhood census...this entry's permalink
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