Four years old is not too young for a child to learn about gender confusion and transgender identity, according to a Planned Parenthood guidance for parents of preschoolers. The nation’s largest abortion provider encourages parents to teach their preschoolers about gender identity in ways that encourage a rejection of their birth sex.
If preschoolers ask questions about genitals, Planned Parenthood encourages parents to get nuanced from the start. “While the most simple answer is that girls have vulvas and boys have penises/testicles, that answer isn’t true for every boy or girl,” explains the website in a section on “How do I talk with my preschooler about their body?”
“Boy, girl, man, and woman are words that describe gender identity, and some people with the gender identities ‘boy’ or ‘man’ have vulvas, and some with the gender identity ‘girl’ or ‘woman’ have penises/testicles. Your genitals don’t make you a boy or a girl,” the guidance states.
Planned Parenthood goes on to encourage parents to tell their four-year-old children “that it doesn’t matter too much what parts someone has — that doesn’t tell you much about them.”
Only after all this does the nation’s largest abortion provider add in a caveat: “But you can make that decision based on your values and how you plan to talk with your kid about gender as they grow up.”
Naturally, Planned Parenthood isn’t shy about what they mean by “your values.” The section “How do I talk with my preschooler about identity?” reads, “If you think your child might be transgender but don’t know what to do, talking with a counselor or therapist who’s familiar and supportive of LGBTQ identities is a good idea” (emphasis added). Subtle.
The nation’s largest abortion provider also suggested that “talking with other families with trans or gender nonconforming kids can be helpful, too,” and promoted “community groups” like the LGBT activist group PFLAG (Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays).
Planned Parenthood was not afraid to advocate openness to homosexuality among preschool kids as well. “Your kid may notice another kid on the playground or in their preschool has a different kind of family than them — a family with a different number of parents, or with grandparents raising kids, or with two moms or two dads, or any number of other situations.”
“Take a minute and explain to your kid that they’re right — what they’re noticing is different from your family — but that there’s nothing wrong with it, and that we can always be friends with people who are different from us,” the guidance explains. This push is much more subtle, but it shows Planned Parenthood’s agenda to normalize homosexuality at the earliest possible age.
“It will also one day help them figure out the kind of family they want to build for themselves.” Wow.
Finally, the nation’s largest abortion provider warned that encouraging “a more typical gender expression” might not be healthy:
Trying to steer your kid toward a more typical gender expression if that’s not their instinct does more harm than good. Being told that it’s bad for boys to play with dolls or do ballet, for example, can make your kid feel ashamed and rejected. Over time, LGBTQ children who aren’t supported by their parents tend to take greater risks with their health and suffer from mental health conditions at higher rates than children of supportive parents.
To some extent, Planned Parenthood is right about this. Parents should let their kids play with what they want to play with, and not force a boy who likes dolls, for instance, to think of himself as a girl. Gender stereotypes do not cover everyone — many guys aren’t into sports, and many girls are.
But Planned Parenthood’s suggestion that parents who don’t support transgender identity are harming their kids has no scientific support. Because parental support for transgender identity is such a new thing, there is no clear psychological data to support Planned Parenthood’s claim.
Some studies suggest that transgender children with parents who encouraged their identities have better mental health, but there is a basic problem with how the question itself is asked. If a 4-year-old girl persistently tells her parents she is really a boy, and they are “not supportive,” i.e. they tell her she is really a girl, she may grow out of this “identity.” In later statistics, she would not be considered transgender, and therefore if she had better mental health, it would not be considered for this kind of research.
Consequently, older kids or adults who identify as transgender and whose parents did not encourage the change may struggle with worse mental health. But in many such cases, the parents might have been overly harsh and done something like disowning their child, which will have negative effects on mental health.
There is no clear link between parents who are not “supportive” of transgender identity and a child’s long-term poor mental health. The very term “supportive” here could be misleading — as all parents should support their children, whether or not they encourage an identity many consider harmful.
A recent study from Johns Hopkins University found that there is no concrete evidence that “gender identity is a fixed, innate, and biological trait.” The study concluded that “neurological differences in transgender adults might be the consequence of biological factors such as genes or prenatal hormone exposure, or of psychological and environmental factors such as childhood abuse.”
There is good reason to doubt the health benefits of encouraging transgenderism in children. The American College of Pediatricians, an organization of child health professionals, condemned transgender identity as a form of “child abuse.”
At least two women who thought they were men and even had hormones and surgeries to “affirm” their gender identity later regret their actions, explaining the long-term scars and damage of transgender identity in videos on YouTube.
Contrary to Planned Parenthood, the science on this is not settled, and parents should not feel pressured to tell their kids about gender identity when they are four years old. Childhood should be blissfully innocent of such complicated topics, and parents should not feel pressured to adopt the LGBT agenda if these kinds of conversations do come up.
But the LGBT movement will continue to try to foist their ideas on all parts of society. Just this past week, Lena Dunham reported two American Airlines flight attendants for engaging in “transphobic talk” amongst themselves. The implication? Any discussion of LGBT issues, from a questioning standpoint, could get people fired.
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