Dear Roe,
My pre-teen daughter has, for the last three years, been having issues in her school and has expressed concerns in relation to her gender identity. She has started to ask in our house for us to call her by a boy's name and has said that she feels that she is non-binary. We have brought her to a counsellor and she has received counselling for about six months. We are very concerned about her. At first we thought that she was just going through a phase. She has said that she wants to take puberty blockers which she has read about online and she is very concerned about reaching puberty and developing in what she says would be the incorrect gender.
My husband refuses to go along with this request and thinks that this would do incredible damage to our daughter. However, I’m sympathetic to my daughter and believe that her concerns should be listened to. If she feels that she is a boy and wants to present as a boy, I want us to support her in this choice. This disagreement has caused lots of strain and tension between myself and my husband. I am trying to communicate and compromise with my husband as well as I can but this issue is causing enormous stress. My overriding concern is for the wellbeing of my daughter.
Puberty blockers, also called hormone blockers, use gonadotropin-releasing hormone analogues to suppress the rise of the natural hormones (oestrogen and testosterone) that accompany puberty. Puberty blockers prevent the development of gendered physical developments such as breast development, facial hair, voice-deepening and hip-widening. They are sometimes prescribed to young trans and non-binary people so they can feel more comfortable in their body; to give them more time to explore whether or how they want to transition; and to make any future gender affirmation procedures easier. Puberty blockers are temporary, with the effects of injections lasting several months and treatment can be stopped at any time.
In Ireland and the UK, puberty blockers were referred to as “fully reversible” until this year, when the NHS changed its language, stating that while puberty blockers are a physically reversible treatment, “it is not known what the psychological effects may be.” Note they do not state that there are any proven psychological effects, they simply leave it open to further research.
It is wonderful that your child has you as their mother. To keep learning, evolving and loving with your child’s changing needs – that’s what good parenting looks like. It’s also wonderful that you haven’t fallen into the trap of many parents of LGBTQI+ children; that of saying you’re putting their happiness first, while prioritising your own. Too often, parents claim “I just want you to be happy” to their children – when they really mean “I want to be happy – and I want you be ‘normal’ so that you don’t disrupt my happiness. I want to be able to imagine a happy future for you and I can only do that by imagining that you are cis, straight, ‘normal’.”
Instead, you are expanding your mind to imagine other possibilities of happiness and you are prepared to do the work to ensure that your child has every shot of being happy in their body, in their gender expression, in the world.
Now, I can’t tell you whether or not to put your child on puberty blockers, and that isn’t what you’re asking. Your question is how to communicate with your husband about this. And I do empathise with your husband. Most parents do not grow up with models of how to react when their child says that they’re non-binary and are not educated on what options are available to them when their child is not cis. To be daunted by that, to be scared of making the wrong choice, is a very understandable emotional process.
But sometimes not making a choice is making a choice. Right now, your husband is vetoing exploring a treatment for your child who has been unhappy for maybe a third of their lifetime, by claiming it will cause “incredible” (yet completely unspecified) “damage”. He’s doing this to prioritise a future, imagined happiness for your child. My question is, in your husband’s view, how does your child get there? This isn’t a rhetorical question.
Puberty blockers are not a requirement for non-binary or trans children, there are other paths. But if your husband is the deciding vote, if he gets to close off one path completely, then it is utterly incumbent on him to not only understand that path completely, but to also be scouting the other paths. It is his responsibility to be the most researched, invested, actively participating parent of a non-binary child that he can possibly be. If he is the one on whom this decision rests, he cannot be complacent.
He should be researching and connecting with non-binary communities. He should be talking to parents of children who have used puberty blockers about their experiences. He should be talking to adult trans and non-binary people who used puberty blockers and those who did not, and listening to them.
And he should not be making a choice out of a desire for this situation to be over, for your child to just get over this “phase”. If your husband is genuinely concerned about the potential damage of puberty blockers, then he should welcome having ongoing conversations about mitigating other potential forms of damage.
What kind of damage is he concerned about and what evidence does he have about the validity of these concerns? If your child cannot use puberty blockers, how is your husband committing to supporting your child’s gender and gender expression in other ways? How is he committed to raising a non-binary child through their teens? Research has shown that trans and non-binary children who go on puberty blockers have much lower rates of depression and suicidal ideation than those who do not, so how is he committed to supporting your child’s mental health in the long-term? If, at a later stage, your child needs gender affirmation procedures and treatment, treatments possibly rendered more complex because they went through puberty, is your husband committed to supporting them and helping finance them if necessary?
These are the conversations you need to be having. And your child should be aware of these conversations, aware of the long-term plan being made about their lives. They should know that their parents fully support them, know their concerns and know what steps will be taken to support them in the future so they don’t feel like their life and body are being controlled by people who are just hoping their gender will eventually go away.
Ask your husband these questions. Ask him to commit to research. Ask him to come up with a plan. This isn’t because he should get to make this decision. It’s because only when he does so will you know what your real options are. If your husband will not have these conversations, if he’s making decisions out of fear and complacency and ignorance rather than real awareness and investment and care then perhaps you need to ask why he gets to be a part of these decisions at all.