Gender Identity Disorder In Children
Gender identity disorder in children (GIDC) is the formal diagnosis used by psychologists and physicians to describe children who experience significant gender dysphoria (discontent with their biological sex and/or assigned gender).
The differential diagnosis for children was formalized in the third revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III) in 1980. Children assigned as males are diagnosed with GIDC 5 to 30 times more often than children assigned as females. According to limited studies, the majority of children diagnosed with GID cease to desire to be the other sex by puberty, with most growing up to identify as homosexual with or without therapeutic intervention.
Controversy surrounding the pathologization and treatment of cross-gender identity and behaviors, particularly in children, has been evident in the literature since the 1980s. Proponents argue that therapeutic intervention helps children be more comfortable in their bodies and can prevent adult gender identity disorder. Opponents say that the equivalent therapeutic interventions with gays and lesbians (titled conversion or reparative therapy) have been strongly questioned or declared unethical by the American Psychological Association, American Psychiatric Association, American Association of Social Workers and American Academy of Pediatrics. Indeed the World Professional Association for Transgender Health states that treatment aimed at trying to change a person’s gender identity and expression to become more congruent with sex assigned at birth "is no longer considered ethical." Critics also argue that the GIDC diagnosis and associated therapeutic interventions rely on the assumption that an adult transsexual identity is undesirable, challenging this assumption along with the lack of clinical data to support outcomes and efficacy.
Read more about Gender Identity Disorder In Children: Diagnostic Classification, Alternative Approaches To Gender Diversity in Children
Famous quotes containing the words gender, identity, disorder and/or children:
“Most women of [the WW II] generation have but one image of good motherhood—the one their mothers embodied. . . . Anything done “for the sake of the children” justified, even ennobled the mother’s role. Motherhood was tantamount to martyrdom during that unique era when children were gods. Those who appeared to put their own needs first were castigated and shunned—the ultimate damnation for a gender trained to be wholly dependent on the acceptance and praise of others.”
—Melinda M. Marshall (20th century)
“Let it be an alliance of two large, formidable natures, mutually beheld, mutually feared, before yet they recognize the deep identity which beneath these disparities unites them.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“In a town-meeting, the great secret of political science was uncovered, and the problem solved, how to give every individual his fair weight in the government, without any disorder from numbers. In a town-meeting, the roots of society were reached. Here the rich gave counsel, but the poor also; and moreover, the just and the unjust.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“There are few places outside his own play where a child can contribute to the world in which he finds himself. His world: dominated by adults who tell him what to do and when to do it—benevolent tyrants who dispense gifts to their “good” subjects and punishment to their “bad” ones, who are amused at the “cleverness” of children and annoyed by their “stupidities.””
—Viola Spolin (b. 1911)