Parenting Gender-Nonconforming Children
When our first child was born, we were filled with wonder and curiosity and love for this newest member of the family who had taken up residence in our hearts long before we knew any details of identity. Personality, voice, talents and challenges were all unknown to us, all seeds just taking root in our new baby, all blossoms in waiting.
Over the years, we learned that gender too was one of the seeds that would only emerge in time. How beautiful it has been to watch as our beloved child has bloomed, in gender and identity and expression.
“The great end in religious instruction,” [and in parenting, I would add] “is not to stamp our minds upon the young, but to stir up their own; not to make them see with our eyes, but to look inquiringly with their own . . . not to form an outward regularity [or conformity], but to touch inward springs.”
—William Ellery Channing
With these words, 19th-century Unitarian minister William Ellery Channing reminded us that our young ones come into this world with their own inward springs, their own deep wells of selfhood providing a source of both identity and personal strength. Our role, as parents and as teachers, is to guide our children lovingly as they draw from this well, helping them to discover their own identity and to safely share it with others.
For the child whose gender identity does not match the labels assigned by body, birth certificate or name, it can be difficult to touch their inward springs, to draw from their own inner well. One of the blessings of loving, healthy families and communities of faith is that they can help us to see and know who we really are.
At their best, our loved ones serve as mirrors, shaping not only who we understand ourselves to be but also how we feel about who we are. In Unitarian Universalism, we aspire to see—and to reflect back lovingly—each person’s inner identity as a spark of the divine.
Personal Story
Months before our child was born, an ultrasound technician was the first to tell us we would have a baby boy. We hadn’t actually asked. Nor did we feel a need to know. We continued decorating the baby’s room in pinks and blues both, and when my mother asked if she shouldn’t leave the pink out of the quilt she was sewing for the crib, I said “Definitely not!”
In many simple ways, my husband David and I followed traditional gender stereotypes in our activities and preferences. In our home, however, we had significantly reshuffled the deck of gender roles when David became our family’s stay-at-home parent, and I became our breadwinner. We didn’t believe in letting gender have the last word in who we were and what we did.
Still, as our beloved son Charlie grew from an infant to toddler, he displayed an increasing number of gender stereotypes, and almost all of them were feminine. He showed no interest in balls or trucks or rough-housing of almost any kind. He preferred books and dolls, his toy kitchen and his peer girlfriends.
At age 4, he was posing coquettishly in dance class photos and sashaying through the house in a pair of ruby slippers he’d asked for one Christmas. An articulate, early reader, he made up stories about boys and girls who switched identities and wrote sweet little notes to us, signing them with his self-chosen pseudonym, Rose.
David and I knew almost nothing about transgender identity at the time. But, in general, we tried to make room for our son to show us who he was, and at almost every turn he showed us a very feminine way of being Charlie.
Today, we are the proud parents of a senior in college who goes by the name of Cat and walks the middle of the road when it comes to gender, with a decided leaning toward the feminine. Our language’s impoverishment of pronouns makes it difficult to write about Cat without invoking the gender on his driver’s license, but in person he’s as beautiful in a dress and high heels as he is attractive in jeans and sneakers. And this seems true to the person our child has always been.
Of course, it hasn’t been easy. Bucking, or even just bending, the gender rules of our society can be challenging.
Early on, we sought the help of a carefully chosen counselor and the support of a religious community that both provided safe space for our child’s true self to emerge. Still, Cat would be first to acknowledge that living outside the two-party system of gender can be, at times, lonely and terrifying and exhausting.
Nothing is given and few things are simple—in pronouns, in fashion, in restrooms, in personal safety. In a society where the language, customs and rules are largely constructed for two gender options, no more and no less, finding one’s way in less categorical living can be profoundly difficult.
Fortunately, for the many challenges Cat has faced in finding and declaring who s/he is, we have all discovered that “touching the inward springs” of one’s own identity is indisputably worth it. It is, perhaps, the most basic task we have as humans.
I’ve come to believe it’s also one of our most significant tasks, and not just for the person doing it, but for the rest of us as well. For each transgendered person who dares to model a new way of wearing the robes of gender, the heart of possibilities for all of us is opened and widened. And what could be more important, more honorable, more satisfying than that?
A Prayer
Holy One, Source of All Being and Promise of All Becoming,
Open my eyes to see the true self my child carries within;
Open my arms to offer encouragement and blessing as my child goes into the world;
And open my heart to be a safe and loving harbor whenever my child comes home.
Blessed be, in a love that holds us all. Amen.
A Spiritual Practice
Think of a time when you observed your child, at any age, blossoming into their true self, touching their “inward springs” and joyfully, without self-consciousness, drawing from their inner well and bringing their true colors up into the light of day. Remember what you saw on your child’s face, in their eyes, in their body. Remember what they were doing and how they were moving.
If you could write a brief letter to your child in that moment, expressing your love for who your child is and your encouragement for their continued blossoming, what might you say? Take out a piece a paper, and write your letter down. If you wish, you might write the letter starting each sentence or paragraph with the words, “What I love about you is . . .”
For all children bringing their true light into the world, and for all parents whose hearts shine back in radiant love, may all be safe, may all be happy, may all be held in lovingkindness, may all be filled with peace.
- Imagining a Way - September 1, 2020
- Welcoming What We Do Not Want - February 1, 2016
- Where it Starts - January 1, 2014
