In recent discussions of transgenderism in adolescence, a controversial issue had been made on how legitimate it is to label a child transgender before gender roles are defined through puberty. Also, how strong is the influence of parents/society in enforcing gender roles on children? In the article “A Boy’s Life,” written by Hanna Rosin, it focuses on the story of a boy named Brandon who insists that he was meant to be a girl. The work mainly discusses the journey that Brandon faces in believing that he was born in the wrong body, along with the challenges that he and other children face in being labeled transgender before reaching the age of puberty. The issue with this diagnosis is that puberty is normally when gender becomes less flexible,…show more content… It also introduces Brandon’s mother, Tina, who is dealing with her own struggles of living in a small town where she has never even heard of the word “transgender.” In the beginning, Tina believed that her son was simply “going through a phase” as many children often do when they are young. Tina also believed that Brandon’s behaviors could be helped through methods such as therapy and rewards for when Brandon behaved more like the gender he was born as. As Tina began to see that her child was not responding as well as she would like, she finally began to accept he son for what he wanted to be, which was a ‘she’. Tina and Brandon then attended the Trans-Health Conference in Philadelphia where both began to see that Brandon’s case was not as uncommon as they originally thought. Along with meeting other children who were considered transgender, Brandon and Tina were introduced to “puberty blockers,” drugs that are intended to halt puberty development in order for transgender children to grow as the gender they are meant to…show more content… What this means is that, while a child may believe that they are in the wrong body, their minds have not fully developed, and so they may come to a different conclusion about their gender later on. This is one of the reasons for why parents should not turn to blockers immediately. It is stated by Dr. Norman Spack, that “if a girl starts to experience breast budding and feels like cutting herself, then she’s probably transgendered. If she feels immediate relief on the puberty-blocking drugs, that confirms the diagnosis” (9). Spack, like most of the other parents who turn to blockers, believes that the drugs will prevent future trauma that children might face if they were to grow up without them, but the problem with Spack’s argument is what blockers are meant to prevent, and that is puberty. It is true that blockers are reversible and that puberty will resume once a child has stopped taking the drugs, however, this inherently shows children that they can make life changing decisions with a drop of a hat and disregard the consequences. And doctors need to re-evaluate if they should be diagnosing children with transgenderism. This situation can be compared to how many
