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:
“But there, where I have garnered up my heart,
Where either I must live or bear no life;
The fountain from the which my current runs
Or else dries up: to be discarded thence,
Or keep it as a cistern for foul toads
To knot and gender in!”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“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)
“I have come back
but disorder is not what it was.
I have lost the trick of it!
The innocence of it!”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“Your children are not here to fill the void left by marital dissatisfaction and disengagement. They are not to be utilized as a substitute for adult-adult intimacy. They are not in this world in order to satisfy a wife’s or a husband’s need for love, closeness or a sense of worth. A child’s task is to fully develop his/her emerging self. When we place our children in the position of satisfying our needs, we rob them of their childhood.”
—Aaron Hess (20th century)