From the PITT Substack:
One of the biggest concerns I have with gender ideology is the focus on turning the parent-child relationship upside down, which harms the vital attachment of this bond. Because gender ideology suggests that the child should lead, the parent’s position of authority is usurped. This reversal in the natural order parents guiding their children is disruptive to the psyche of both parent and child. I suspect that many proponents of gender ideology are either not parents themselves or do not understand the value of a parent-led family for the healthy development of a child.
For those who wish to dive into the importance of the parent-child relationship and attachment, I recommend the book Hold On to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers by Gordon Neufeld and Gabor Maté.
Perhaps it begins with the child chatting with their friends about other kids they observe changing their manner of dress and hairstyle or donning a new name and different pronouns. Kids often search their favorite social media platforms, such as Instagram and TikTok, for more information about the trends they see around them. It doesn’t take long before curious kids begin to immerse themselves in internet sites for topics related to “trans” or “gender.”
Girls may initially see shocking photos of scarred mastectomy chests and, out of curiosity, may follow the profile to see what it is all about. Soon, a social media influencer grabs a child’s attention with before-and-after photos from “transitions” to presenting as the opposite sex. The new follower may experience love bombing, which showers them with a feeling of being celebrated for liking their profile. Kids who feel like misfits or have difficulty conforming to in-person social groups may find it comforting to feel welcomed and included within online groups despite their initial discomfort from the photos they see. The idea seed of the possibility of “being born in the wrong body” is planted, and then the influencers water that seed as often as the kid returns to their profile. A social contagion is cultivated, and parental influence may begin to suffer a decline.
Many kids today who feel lost or anxious begin to search privately online for the cause of what feels off to them. They may be drawn to quick-fix solutions. Don’t we all want to feel better fast? After all, children may feel distress in their changing bodies through puberty (or in anticipation of puberty). Furthermore, kids may not conform to sex-based stereotypes, or they may be conflicted in their perception of what is valued in the roles of adult men and women. Add in a growing sense of understanding for who they are attracted to and how their peers or community members feel about that attraction, and it all adds up to multiple ways a kid can feel confusion. Sadly, instead of turning to their parents with questions and conversation, kids often look to their friends, the internet, and social media as their primary sources of information.
At whatever age a kid is introduced to the concept of “gender,” their worlds and their families’ worlds have the potential to fall apart. The normal and very necessary parent-child bond can quickly start derailing the moment a child questions what should never be questioned: whether they are a boy or a girl. Parents may sense that something is amiss with their child, but their son or daughter may keep their parents in the dark as they continue to explore the newfound topic of gender and what it all means. As a result of parents being the last to know after months of peer and social media influence, they are behind and may never catch up on the authority and guidance that is rightfully theirs but has been sabotaged by multiple people and forces.
Fast forward, and a kid finally tells their parents they self-identify with the opposite sex. If this proclamation that their beloved child was born in the wrong body is not welcomed, the kid may retreat to their friends and social influencers for support and reinforcement. Soon, a cascade of forces seems to mount against a parent who doesn’t go along with their child’s self-diagnosis and future plans to present themselves in appearance as the opposite sex. Only parents who affirm and agree are worth anything to the new gender identity doctrine that kids are embracing. Any questioning or concern is labeled transphobic and ignorant. Parents are set up to lose quickly, and they are not prepared for it.
Parents may know that their child is on the autism spectrum or suffers from underlying mental health concerns such as depression, anxiety, and body dysphoria. A parent’s innate sense is to address those issues first, so the parent is incredulous when that request is scoffed at. Parents soon find that strangers are funneling their child into an immediate transgender medicalization pathway, which is now considered the priority in the climate of gender ideology.
Parents can be shocked at how quickly they are devalued, dismissed, minimized, and sometimes verbally abused with slurs if they resist or show concerns about their child’s proclamation that they were born in the wrong body. Moms and dads soon encounter trans activists and zealous medical practitioners who treat them with disdain, as if they are the enemy, if they balk at the “gender-affirming care model” that quickly envelops their child. This care model suggests that medicalizing with drugs to appear as the opposite sex and surgical procedures that remove healthy body parts and reproductive organs are the answers to the child’s feelings of distress or disliking their body. Parents are beside themselves when drastic medical interventions are promoted to fix their child’s discomfort or confusion.
Parents may turn to therapists to see their child, but they quickly find out that safeguards of “therapy first” are gone because trans activists are offended by the thought of requiring therapy or any waiting period for what they deem as medically necessary and a rush. Only a few flimsy questions are asked in order to allow access to body-altering remedies for the complexity of a kid’s displeasure with their natural body. The child might be asked, “Are you sure?” which a simple “yes” satisfies, or a question like, “Why do you want to do this?” and the answers could be as simple as, “I feel like I was born in the wrong body,” or “I don’t feel like being a girl/woman works for me,” and the clinician checks a box to proceed with drastic interventions on the child’s body. Parental protests are dismissed, and in some cases, the parent is never consulted at all, as was the case for me because my daughter was no longer a minor. The result of devaluing parental wishes is that the child’s demands dictate the course of treatment, and the parent’s instincts, beliefs, values, and wisdom are discarded.
The odds seem stacked against parents from every angle, and the parent’s world unravels more and more with each person or influence that corrodes the precious bond that once was. Schools have become another stage in the destruction of the parent-child relationship. Often, schools no longer seem to recognize parental authority. If a student suddenly announces they wish to be called by a new name and be addressed with pronouns that are the opposite of their natal sex, the school staff will accommodate that request and change school records without notifying the parents. Teachers and other staff often tell the “trans” student that their parents might be resistant to these changes and that their parents are unsafe or abusive if they do not use a new name and opposite-sex pronouns when it is finally revealed months after the school changes their records or the parent finds out accidentally.
Medical professionals such as doctors and therapists further the deterioration of the parent-child attachment by using emotional blackmail and saying the child may commit suicide if the parent doesn’t go along with everything the child says and demands.
Next up are social justice warriors, who pop up within one’s social circle and seem to think that “trans” is the new gay. They jump into celebration mode, and they discount the parents’ concerns. They join the parade of people who place or reinforce a wedge between the parent-child relationship by undermining the efforts of the parents to slow things down and explore natural options to their child’s distress. These eager people might be relatives or friends who consider themselves “progressive.” A parent soon realizes that every relationship they have has changed, but the most devastating is the loss of closeness with their precious child.
I chose to be a mom and gave up my career to be a dedicated, stay-at-home mother. I was present for my kids as they were growing up and was viewed as a good mom by all who knew me and by all markers by which most judge parenting—until gender ideology entered our family via my youngest daughter when she was 28 years old. Because I did not believe that rapid medicalization measures would solve the root cause of my daughter’s distress, I was suddenly reclassified as a bad mom by those who believe in gender ideology and the affirmation-only model. I was also labeled as hateful, intolerant, and transphobic by some previous close relatives. A variety of tactics of cancellation were used, such as blocking me from social media and cutting me off from communication. I had established three decades of solid parenting, but in less than a year, gender ideology blew up my family and unraveled all our relationships. I will advocate until the day I die that the root cause of distress must be acknowledged, treated, and healed before young people are ever allowed (or encouraged) to have elective sex trait modification with drugs and surgery. If that makes me a bad mom, then there isn’t much hope left for good mothers like me in the future.
But there is a shred of hope when a few kids somehow keep the instinct that their parents matter. Sometimes, the kids see through the ideology’s sabotage of the family unit and regret subverting the relationship. The child might crave the compass the parent once provided and seek to re-establish the bond they once enjoyed.
Parents like me feel invisible when we are told that we are expendable, obsolete relics of the past that have no use in the progressive world shaped by gender ideology. If you are an outsider looking at a family who is losing a child to this destructive force, do not participate in alienating and devaluing parents or replacing them. Please join me in advocating for parents and helping them reclaim their kids. Our society’s future depends on it.
Learn more about my story in my book The Trans Train: A Parent’s Perspective on Transgender Medicalization and Ideology available on my website or for more on this author.
