Gender Born, Gender Made: Raising Healthy Gender-Nonconforming Children

We are only beginning to understand gender. Is it inborn or learned? Can it be chosen--or even changed? Does it have to be one or the other? These questions may seem abstract--but for parents whose children live outside of gender "norms," they are very real.

No two children who bend the "rules" of gender do so in quite the same way. Felicia threw away her frilly dresses at age three. Sam hid his interest in dolls and "girl things" until high school--when he finally confided his desire to become Sammi. And seven-year-old Maggie, who sports a boys' basketball uniform and a long blond braid, identifies as "a boy in the front, and a girl in the back." But all gender-nonconforming children have one thing in common--they need support to thrive in a society that still subscribes to a binary system of gender.

Dr. Diane Ehrensaft has worked with children like Felicia, Sam, and Maggie for over 30 years. In Gender Born, Gender Made, she offers parents, clinicians, and educators guidance on both the philosophical dilemmas and the practical, daily concerns of working with children who don't fit a "typical" gender mold. She debunks outmoded approaches to gender nonconformity that may actually do children harm. And she offers a new framework for helping each child become his or her own unique, most gender-authentic person.

About the Author
Diane Ehrensaft, PhD, is a developmental and clinical psychologist. At the University of California-San Francisco, she is the cofounder and director of mental health at the Child and Adolescent Gender Center, an associate professor of pediatrics, and an attending psychologist at the Benioff Children's Hospital Child and Adolescent Gender Clinic. Her work with--and advocacy for--gender creative children has been widely covered, including by The New York Times, the Huffington Post, and NPR. She has been featured on the Los Angeles Times online, Wired online, and has appeared on Anderson, The Oprah Winfrey Show, and The Today Show.
EDGARDO J. MENVIELLE, MD, MSHS, is the director of the Gender and Sexuality Development Program and of the Gender and Sexuality Advocacy and Education Program in the Psychiatry Department of the Children's National Medical Center in Washington, D.C. He started a national outreach group for parents of gender-variant children in 1998, and later a gender and sexuality development clinic. He is also an associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at The George Washington University. An internationally recognized authority on childhood and adolescent gender and sexuality, Dr. Menvielle has been quoted in the New York Times and Newsweek. He lives in Washington, D.C