Childhood Gender Variance
Multiple studies have suggested a correlation between children who express gender non-conformity and their eventually coming out as gay, bisexual or transgender. In some studies, a majority of those who identify as gay or lesbian self-report gender non-conformity as children. However, the accuracy of these studies have been questioned, especially within the academic community. The therapeutic community is currently divided on the proper response to childhood gender non-conformity. One study suggested that childhood gender non-conformity is heritable. Although it is healily associated with homosexuality gender nonconformity is more likely to predict childhood abuse. A recent study illustrated that heterosexuals and homosexuals alike who do not express their gender roles according to society are more likely to experience abuse physically, sexually, and psychologically.
Read more about this topic: Gender Variance
Famous quotes containing the words childhood, gender and/or variance:
“It is as if, to every period of history, there corresponded a privileged age and a particular division of human life: “youth” is the privileged age of the seventeenth century, childhood of the nineteenth, adolescence of the twentieth.”
—Philippe Ariés (20th century)
“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)
“There is an untroubled harmony in everything, a full consonance in nature; only in our illusory freedom do we feel at variance with it.”
—Fyodor Tyutchev (1803–1873)