Resources For Parents
A collection of resources for parents, including some things you might want to share with your child, including helpful websites, writings, books and videos. See the Detransition page for stories from people who transitioned and later regretted doing so or gained new insights into why they had taken that path. See also the Useful Links page for websites and support organisations.
Read the Cass Review Interim Report here.
Books
An essential guide for parents of children who announce they are transgender or non-binary, written by three therapists with expertise in this area: Lisa Marchiano, Stella O’Malley and Sasha Ayad.
No magic, one-size-fits-all solutions, just common-sense and compassion and a deep understanding of child and adolescent development. A timely and important alternative to all the parenting books available which tell you to simply affirm your child as the opposite sex.
Read the review here in the Sunday Times
A collection of accounts by parents of children who have announced a transgender identity. Wide-ranging stories from parents from all walks of life with one thing in common; this anthology encompasses a wide variety of experiences. Any parent with a trans-identified child will find at least one account that resonates here.
For all parents who have felt alone with the struggle to help their child in the best way they can, while society simply celebrates their child’s identity.
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A must-read for parents and carers of tween/teen girls, teachers and youth workers, along with politicians and policy-makers. This is an exhaustively-researched account by journalist Abigail Shrier of the unprecedented modern phenomenon of teenage girls suddenly identifying as transgender.
Relevant for the UK and for every country currently witnessing this explosion in teenage girl referrals to gender clinics, this book asks the question why. Highly recommended.
Available here from Barnes & Noble.
Written by psychanalytic psychotherapist Susan Evans and consultant psychotherapist Marcus Evans, this is essential reading for parents looking for a therapeutic rather than a medical pathway for their children. This book explores a psychoanalytical model for understanding gender dysphoria and the assessment and treatment of trans-identifying children and young people, from two authors with over two decades’ experience in the field. Highly recommended for parents, professionals and anyone seeking to gain more insight into the psychological factors which may underlie individual experiences of gender dysphoria.
Read more details about the book here.
Buy the book here from Phoenix Publishing House
An insider account of the collapse of the Tavistock Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) by Newsnight journalist Hannah Barnes.
Through interviews with clinicians and therapists who were working at the service over a span of decades this is a shocking account of a service in thrall to an ideology, and what happens when evidence-based standards of care are dropped.
Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality by Economist journalist Helen Joyce is an overview of the trans movement and the growth of opposition to it in a mostly UK context.
A must-read if you want to know how the idea of ‘gender identity’ came to be embedded throughout government and institutions, including schools, and the growth of grassroots organisations set up to challenge these ideas and uphold the rights of women and girls and the safeguarding of children.
Buy the book here from Blackwells
Published in 2017, this is a groundbreaking book edited by Heather Brunskell-Evans and Michele Moore.
This book is a collection of essays about the current theory and practice of transgendering children. Essays are written against the grain of the popularised medical definition of ‘the transgender child’ as a young person whose ‘true’ gender lies in the brain, or pre-social ‘identity’. Contributors contest this diagnosis from a range of perspectives, including as social theorists, psychotherapists, persons living as transgender, individuals who have de-transitioned, and parents of adolescents identifying as transgender.
Buy the book here from Cambridge Scholars
The second collection of essays edited by Heather Brunskell-Evans and Michele Moore.
The essays in this volume are written by clinicians, psychologists, sociologists, educators, parents and de-transitioners. Contributors demonstrate how ‘transgender children and young people’ are invented in different medical, social and political contexts: from specialist gender identity development services to lobby groups and their school resources, gender guides and workbooks; from the world of the YouTube vlogger to the consulting rooms of psychiatrists; from the pharmaceutical industry to television documentaries.
Buy the book here from Cambridge Scholars
Material Girls by Kathleen Stock is a philosopher’s view of the trans phenomenon that is accessible to the lay reader.
An essential read if you want to know, in simple terms, the different definitions of the word ‘gender’ so that you know what you are talking about and can be clear about what definitions other people are using! An easy guide to the complicated meanings, interpretations and understandings of the terms that have become embedded in our language.
Articles
A Message for Parents Redux
Ritchie Heron
Advice for Parents whose adult children who identify as Trans
Guidance for Parents of Teens with Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria
From The Jung Soul, website of Jungian Analyst Lisa Marchiano
If you are the parent of a teen who suddenly, out of the blue, announces that they are transgender, this piece by Lisa Marchiano is essential reading. Compassionate and non-judgmental, this is the best advice we have seen about how to respond as a parent to a tween/teen who becomes convinced they are ‘trans.’
“The trend to affirm and transition children and teens with rapid onset dysphoria is not supported by science at this time, however professionals are not offering much in the way of alternative treatment options. Having a teen with rapid onset gender dysphoria can feel like being lost without a map.”
Finding middle ground: the importance of empathy
Written by a 19-year-old woman who identified as transgender for a brief period in her earlier teenage years. “Throughout all of this, my relationship with my parents was vital. My parents never rejected me — they expressed at times they didn’t agree with my self-diagnosis, but at no point did they make my insecurities feel invalid.”
Is My Child Transgender?
From the parenting blog ‘Communicating with Kids.’ Put ‘transgender’ into Search to find all the posts relating to transgender issues. “For children, ‘I’m really a girl’ or ‘I’m really a boy’ is the only language they have to understand and explain their personalities in a world that reinforces the correct gender behaviour everywhere they look. Society does a pretty thorough job of conditioning children into boy and girl roles as it is, can’t at least we parents feel and express confidence in our tough girls and sensitive boys?”
Purple Sage: On Leaving The Trans Cult
A useful personal story from a young lesbian woman who moved from immersion in transgender politics as a social justice cause to a realisation of the harms of the movement for women and, especially, lesbians. This is a helpful synopsis of the two sides of the debate for all young people. “I was taught that transgender people were born in the wrong body and had to change their body to match their internal image of themselves. I am an open-minded person and I had no problem believing this. But a lot of my feminist sisters were not open to it. I started getting into online fights with other feminists.”
To Boys Who Don’t Fit In – A Guest Post by Jesse
An alternative view from a transwoman who challenges the usual mantra ‘transwomen are women.’ “I’m a bit like you. I was a boy who didn’t fit in, who grew into a young man who didn’t fit in, and wanted, and wished, to be a girl.”
Podcasts
Savage Minds Podcasts
Gender: A Wider Lens podcast
Stella O’ Malley and Sasha Ayed discuss issues of gender.
What if we are all wrong – a mother’s regret
What your teen is trying to tell you
Time to think with Hannah Barnes
Affirming reality for kids with Stephanie Davies-Arai
Secrets of the Motherworld
Lisa Marchiano and Stella O’ Malley podcast. Episode 11: It was his Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria that broke me.
Videos
Trans Kids – It’s Time to Talk
Stella O’Malley considers the huge rise in numbers of young people embarking on gender transition, through the prism of the gender identity issues that she experienced when she was a child. The programme aired on Channel 4 on November 21 2018.
Michele Moore
Stephanie Davies-Arai
Lisa Marchiano
Sasha Ayad
Dr Susan Bradley
Peach Yogurt
Magdalen Berns
Doc Amitay
Stephanie Davies-Arai
Analysis
Sex and Gender – A Beginner’s Guide
The most thorough and comprehensive examination of the difference between biological sex and gender, taking in science, social and political meanings, hierarchies of gender, and the implications of ‘gender identity’ as a replacement for biology. By Rebecca Reilly-Cooper.
What is Gender Anyway?
A comprehensive, well-researched analysis of the development of the current belief in the idea of innate ‘gender identity,’ taking in scientific inquiry and political and cultural meanings of the term ‘gender.’ By Sarah Ditum.