What’s So Bad About a Boy Who Wants to Wear a Dress? The impassioned author of that blog, Pink Is for Boys, is careful to conceal her son’s identity, as were the other parents interviewed for this article. As much as these parents want to nurture and defend what makes their children unique and happy, they also fear it will expose their sons to rejection. Some have switched schools, changed churches and even moved to try to shield their children. That tension between yielding to conformity or encouraging self- expression is felt by parents of any child who differs from the norm. ![]() But parents of so- called pink boys feel another layer of anxiety: given how central gender is to identity, they fear the wrong parenting decision could devastate their child’s social or emotional well- being. The fact that there is still substantial disagreement among prominent psychological professionals about whether to squelch unconventional behavior or support it makes those decisions even more wrenching. Many of the parents who allow their children to occupy that “middle space” were socially liberal even before they had a pink boy, quick to defend gay rights and women’s equality and to question the confines of traditional masculinity and femininity. But when their sons upend conventional norms, even they feel disoriented. How could my own child’s play — something ordinarily so joyous to watch — stir up such discomfort? And why does it bother me that he wants to wear a dress? Despite the confident tone of the letter Alex’s parents wrote to the preschool parents, Susan was terrified. She feared Alex’s fascination with femininity would make him a target of bullying, even in the progressive New England town where they live. ![]() Find style and beauty tips, horoscopes, celebrity style, home & garden décor, parenting tips, relationship advice, advice for mindful living, and more.![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() She felt tortured by statistics that indicated gay and transgender teenagers, either of which she figured Alex might become, were much more likely to take drugs and commit suicide. She began having panic attacks. As a parent, it’s really destabilizing when that’s pulled out from under you. Search for showtimes and purchase tickets for The Only Living Boy in New York. See the release date and trailer. The Official Showtimes Destination brought to you by. The official website of the City of New York. Find information about important alerts, 311 services, news, programs, events, government employment, the office of the. Individuals & rescue groups can post animals free." ! The incident unfolded in Morrisania outside of 1138. A nationwide index of haunted places, brief descriptions of ghostly places. New York's guide to theater, restaurants, bars, movies, shopping, fashion, events, activities, things to do, music, art, books, clubs, tours, dance & nightlife. ![]() And I worried that if I was having a hard time wrapping my mind around my kid, and I love him more than life itself, then how would the rest of the world react to him?”Relatively little research on gender- nonconforming children has been conducted, making it impossible to know how many children step outside gender bounds — or even where those bounds begin. Studies estimate that 2 percent to 7 percent of boys under age 1. What this foretells about their future is hard to know. By age 1. 0, most pink boys drop much of their unconventional appearance and activities, either because they outgrow the desire or subsume it. The studies on what happens in adulthood to boys who strayed from gender norms all have methodological limitations, but they suggest that although plenty of gay men don’t start out as pink boys, 6. The rest grow up to either become heterosexual men or become women by taking hormones and maybe having surgery. Gender- nonconforming behavior of girls, however, is rarely studied, in part because departures from traditional femininity are so pervasive and accepted. The studies that do exist indicate that tomboys are somewhat more likely than gender- typical girls to become bisexual, lesbian or male- identified, but most become heterosexual women. Alex was clearly in that small percentage of boys who trample gender barriers. At age 3, he insisted on wearing gowns even after preschool dress- up time ended. He pretended to have long hair and drew pictures of girls with elaborate gowns and flowing tresses. By age 4, he sometimes sobbed when he saw himself in the mirror wearing pants, saying he felt ugly. Worried, his mother scoured the Internet for information. She and Rob found much to support their gut impulse to affirm rather than repress their son’s unconventional gender expression. Only a few years ago, such encouragement would have been hard to find, but the gay rights movement has made a big difference. Moreover, the visibility of transgender people — be it running for office or tangoing on “Dancing With the Stars” — has provided an opening for those who fall between genders. Directed by Marc Webb. With Callum Turner, Kate Beckinsale, Pierce Brosnan, Cynthia Nixon. Adrift in New York City, a recent college graduate's life is upended by his. NYR DAILY Remembering Bob Silvers March 21, 2017. Remembering the longtime editor of The New York Review Rome: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Game. Though acceptance is not yet widespread, many school districts and local governments now ban discrimination based on gender identity or expression. Transgender activists have also pressed for changes in the psychiatric establishment, which still officially considers children’s distress over gender identity a mental illness. Now the American Psychiatric Association is reviewing the diagnosis of “Gender Identity Disorder in Children” for the next edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Critics, though, condemn the association’s choice of Dr. Kenneth Zucker to lead the inquiry. Zucker is the head of a well- known gender- identity clinic in Toronto and the most prominent defender of traditional interventions for gender nonconformity. He urges parents to steer their children toward gender- typical toys, clothes and playmates and advises them to prohibit behaviors associated with the other sex. Zucker’s academic articles assert that while biology may predispose some children to gender nonconformity, other factors — like trauma and emotional disorders — often play a role. Other contributing causes he cites include overprotective mothers, emotionally absent fathers or mothers who are hostile toward men. Transgender advocates and sympathetic clinicians argue that telling children in that middle space to abolish their cross- gender interests makes them more distressed, not less. There is also little to no evidence that therapeutic interventions change the trajectory of a child’s gender identification or sexual orientation. Clinicians who oppose traditional treatments contend that significant gender nonconformity is akin to left- handness: unusual but not unnatural. Rather than urging children to conform, they teach them how to respond to intolerance. They encourage parents to accept their children’s gender expression, especially because studies show that parental support helps to inoculate gender- atypical children against ostracism and deflated self- esteem. Just how many parents choose this approach over the traditional no- tolerance one is unknown. What is clear is that in the last few years, challenges to the conventional model have become increasingly common in the United States and Europe, in medical publications and among professionals and parents themselves. They go to Web sites and listservs, which influence how they think about gender. More parents decide that making their child conform to a gender will damage his self- esteem, and I’d agree. I would argue it’s not even ethical to say to a child, . When Tuerk’s gender- atypical son was a child three decades ago, she consulted a psychiatrist, who told her to keep her son away from girl toys and girl playmates, and to encourage aggressive behavior. So she and her husband signed up their gentle boy for karate and soccer and took him to psychoanalysis four times a week for years. He became sullen and angry. At 2. 1, he told his parents he was gay. In time, she and her husband viewed their efforts as unwitting abuse. Tuerk vowed to help others avoid the same mistakes. Alex’s mother, Susan, found Tuerk in her Internet search when Alex first begged to wear a dress to preschool. After a long phone conversation with Tuerk, Susan bought her son a few dresses. To Alex’s irritation, people on the street often mistook him for a girl. When his parents asked if he wanted them to refer to him as “she,” he said, “No, I’m still a he.”Susan and Rob wondered if Alex would eventually become transgender. They knew more doctors were giving puberty- blocking hormones to pubescent children considering a transition to the other sex. The hormones not only buy time but also spare the young teenagers the angst of developing secondary sex characteristics that feel terribly wrong to them. Even Zucker supports hormones for teenagers who want to become the opposite sex, because mounting evidence indicates it best eliminates their misery. Yet many question whether adolescents are mature enough to make such life- altering decisions, especially when the drugs’ long- term effects are unknown. Though Alex was a long way from facing those decisions, the possibility hovered in Susan’s mind as she watched his emotional upheaval that autumn in preschool. He became obsessed with a particular lavender dress and fell apart whenever it was in the wash. Alarmed, Susan and Rob decided to limit dress days to Tuesdays and Saturdays, telling Alex he couldn’t fairly expect them to launder it more often. Their fuller reason was more complicated. For one thing, they didn’t have the emotional strength to take him out in a dress every day, to deal with the double takes and the implied judgments. For another, they had noticed how, depending on his mood and his clothing, Alex comported himself in very different gendered ways. While they continued to furnish Alex with toys and activities from all across the gender spectrum, they hoped that more time in boy clothes might help him feel more comfortable with society’s expectations for his biological sex, especially given the likelihood that he’d grow into a male- identified adult. Still, it was hard not to wonder what Alex meant when he said he felt like a “boy” or a “girl.” When he acted in stereotypically “girl” ways, was it because he liked “girl” things, so figured he must be a girl? Or did he feel in those moments “like a girl” (whatever that feels like) and then consolidate that identity by choosing toys, clothes and movements culturally ascribed to girls? Whatever the reasoning, was his obsession with particular clothes really any different than that of legions of young girls who insist on dresses even when they’re impractical? Or any different than tomboys who are averse to those same clothes? No one knows why most children ease into their assigned gender roles so effortlessly and others do not. Hormone levels might play a role.
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