Dear Mr. Dad: As the parent of a child who identifies as trans, I appreciate your evenhanded approach to talking about sexual identity, gender identity and sexual orientation. My child, who’s 10 and hasn’t started puberty yet, socially transitioned a year or so ago and everyone in the family has gotten used to the idea. But now they want to do a gender-affirming medical transition, starting with hormones. I’m trying to be supportive, but I’ve heard a lot of stories about people who’ve detransitioned and I’m frightened my child won’t be happy with the results of their transition and won’t be able to recover from the effects of the hormones and possible surgery. What do I need to understand?
A: Thanks so much for your question. You’re diving into a complicated topic, so let’s start with some definitions, beginning with the different types of transition. “Social transition” happens when a person takes on the name, pronouns and outward appearance (haircuts, clothing and sometimes behavior) that match their gender identity. “Medical transition” generally happens after social transition and may involve hormone therapy (to create masculine or feminine characteristics) and/or surgery (to reconstruct their body so their sex characteristics align with their gender identity). “Legal transition” involves legal name changes and, depending on what state you’re in, changing sex on official documents like birth certificates, driver’s licenses and passports.
As to your worry about detransitioning — undoing social, medical and/or legal transitions and returning to the sex people were assigned at birth — it does happen. But despite the media hype, it’s pretty rare. How rare? Given that very little research has been done on detransitioning, it’s hard to come up with firm numbers. And the various types of transitioning I outlined above make accurate statistics nearly impossible.
