Gay parents and gender-bending children

Suzannah and Lia sought out family therapy because they were concerned about their youngest son. Kyle is a 5-year-old boy with a gentle, soft nature who scoffs at traditional boys’ toys and games. He spends most of his time in day care playing with girls, and his favorite games involve playing with dolls and dressing up in princess gowns. Suzannah and Lia are progressive parents who have never forced gender-based roles or toys on any of their three children. “Our oldest son also played with ‘girls’ things,’ ” they said, “but never exclusively. Kyle’s behavior stands out, and everyone is commenting on it.”

As Suzannah and Lia talk about Kyle they keep contradicting themselves, saying, “I know that we haven’t done anything to make Kyle this way, but maybe it’s because he has no father?” and “I just want him to be himself, but maybe we shouldn’t let him play with Barbies?”

There is something about transgressing gender boundaries that sends even the most liberal people running to their worn and tattered copies of Freud for explanations. On one hand, most of us believe that gender-based play and clothing is mostly about a social convention that we would rather not enforce. On the other hand, the division of the sexes is deeply embedded in our psyches. We may feel fine about our sons rocking their baby dolls to sleep, but not so fine about them wearing baby-doll pajamas to bed. We may encourage our daughters to play soccer, but bristle when they want to wear slacks and men’s tailored shirts to their sisters’ weddings.

We have all absorbed many social messages about proper gender behavior, and when children exhibit strong and intense aversion to the gender roles of their sex (or passionate desire for those of the “opposite” sex), we fear that something is terribly “wrong.” What, if anything, is wrong with Kyle?

Well, the answer to that question depends on whom you ask. Some child psychologists will tell you that Kyle is confused about his proper gender role and that cross-gender behavior is fundamentally unhealthy (read: pathological, mentally ill, a sign of bad parenting). Many in the field have been especially concerned about boys’ femininity, and gender transgression in boys has been more thoroughly researched and more aggressively treated than similar behavior in girls.

Much of the research describes four general outcomes for cross-gendered children. One, they grow up to be normatively gendered, heterosexual people. Two, they grow up to be feminine men or masculine women. Three, they grow up to be lesbian or gay. Four, they grow up to be transsexual or transgender. [See the note on sexual orientation and gender identity at the end of this story.] The most common outcome seems to be that gender-variant boys grow up to be gay. Treatment—in the form of behavioral modification programs geared at eliminating cross-gender behavior—is the standard recommendation.

Phyllis Burke, in her book Gender Shock, documents these treatments, which consist of encouraging greater father-son interaction, eliminating exclusive cross-gender friendship, forbidding opposite-sex toys and games, and shunning boys when they behave in an overtly feminine way. Marion, whose son Gregory, age 4, was treated for his feminine behavior, says, “When Gregory began to play more roughly with boys, shamefully hid his Barbie dolls, and began to mercilessly tease girls, the therapist thought he was getting better—that’s when we decided to take him out of the program.”

Underlying this treatment philosophy is the belief that cross-gender expression in children is indicative of later homosexuality or transsexualism, and that these are negative outcomes to be avoided at all costs. One author admits that treatment is rarely successful but says that “parents have the legal right to seek treatment to modify their child’s cross-gender behavior to standard boy and girl behavior even if their only motivation is to prevent homosexuality.” I think this should raise our queer eyebrows very high.

Something is very wrong here, but I’m not sure it is Kyle who has the problem. In order to decide if something is “wrong” with Kyle, we need to define what we mean by wrong. Do we think it is wrong to be a sensitive heterosexual man? Do we think it is wrong to be a gay man? I suspect most of us will respond to those questions with a resounding “No!”

We need to ask ourselves, as LGBT parents, what it is that we fear for our children who cross gender boundaries. Cross-gender behavior can be very anxiety provoking for parents; we may be embarrassed or frightened by a son’s overt femininity or a daughter’s masculine expression. Indeed, we also might be more fiercely protective of our children, living as we all do with the ghosts of our own queer childhoods. We are often torn between wanting to give our children room for self-expression and wanting to protect them from being teased. It is a rare LGBT parent that does not succumb, at least sometimes, to the fear that we are hurting our children because we are queer, especially regarding the development of their sexual and gender identities.