deMayo Benjamin E, Gallagher Natalie M, Leshin Rachel A, Olson Kristina R
Department of Psychology, Princeton University.
Monogr Soc Res Child Dev. 2025 Aug;90(1-3):7-172. doi: 10.1111/mono.12479.
As increasing numbers of transgender, gender diverse, and queer youths come out to their friends, families and communities, their rights to express their identities in public life have become the subject of intense media scrutiny and political debate. But for all the attention transgender, gender diverse, and queer youth have received from politicians, journalists, and public intellectuals, basic science research on how these youth actually experience their identities over time remains scarce. In this monograph, we contribute to the emerging knowledge base on this topic by presenting a detailed quantitative description of gender identity and sexual orientation in a sample of over 900 North American transgender, gender diverse, and cisgender youths in the Trans Youth Project (M = 8.1 years at first visit; M = 14.3 at latest visit; 99% living in the United States, 1% in Canada; 69% non-Hispanic white; 73% household income >$75,000). Youths are in one of three groups: (1) a group of early identifying transgender youths, who were supported by their parents in a social gender transition (changing their name, pronouns, hairstyle, and clothing) by age 12 (M = 6.5; N = 317); (2) a group of their siblings, who were cisgender at the beginning of their participation in the study (N = 218); and (3) a group of cisgender youths who were age- and gender-matched to, but not family members of, the early identifying transgender youths (N = 377). Data on the youths' identities have been collected from the youths themselves and their parents between 2013 and 2024. We had two primary research goals. First, we described stability or change in youths' gender identity (Chapter 4) and sexual orientation (Chapter 6). We asked whether transgender youths' rates of change were or were not different from those of cisgender youths. Second, we examined whether measures of gender development earlier in development were related to youths' later gender identity (Chapter 5) or sexual orientation (Chapter 6) trajectories into adolescence. Stability in gender identity was by far the most common pathway for youths in all three groups, with over 80% of youths showing stability throughout their participation in the study. We saw similarity between the three groups of youths, such that the early identifying transgender youths were no more or less likely to show gender change than their siblings or youths in the unrelated comparison sample. Nevertheless, 11.9% of youths who started as cisgender were not so at their most recent report-a much higher proportion than would be predicted based on assumptions held in classic developmental psychology research about gender since the 1950s. When gender change did occur in all three groups, it overwhelmingly involved change to (and, to a lesser extent, from) a nonbinary gender identity. Results were similar regardless of whether youth- or parent-report data were considered, and we found no evidence that youths were more or less likely to change at particular ages. We observed some evidence that more gender nonconformity in childhood (e.g., more femininity in childhood among children living as boys) was related to later gender change, but results were somewhat inconsistent across measures and gender identities. Youths showed diverse sexual orientations, with 60% of binary transgender and 33% of cisgender adolescents expressing queer (i.e., not straight) romantic or sexual interest. A high percentage of youths overall (37%) indicated interest in both boys and girls-a pattern particularly common among nonbinary youths. Finally, more than a third of youths have shown change in their sexual orientation, and childhood gender nonconformity was associated with whether currently binary transgender or cisgender teenagers most recently reported a queer identity. Our results accord with recent evidence indicating that today's youth are defying assumptions about gender and sexual orientation from decades of developmental research, considering gender and sexual orientation to be relatively flexible social identities rather than ones that are fixed, and view gender as having more than two categories. Early identifying transgender children's sense of their own gender was no more or less stable than cisgender children's, suggesting that children who are supported in their transgender identities tend to show developmental patterns that mirror their cisgender peers. Finally, in Chapter 7, we discuss how our findings exemplify and respond to this unique historical moment, the ways in which our findings do and do not align with past work about gender- nonconforming children, and how future research can continue to make strides toward better understanding a wider swath of gender development trajectories.
随着越来越多的跨性别、性别多元和酷儿青年向他们的朋友、家人和社区出柜,他们在公共生活中表达自己身份的权利成为了媒体密切关注和政治辩论的主题。但是,尽管跨性别、性别多元和酷儿青年受到了政治家、记者和公共知识分子的广泛关注,关于这些青年如何随着时间推移实际体验他们的身份的基础科学研究仍然匮乏。在这本专著中,我们通过对跨青年项目中900多名北美跨性别、性别多元和顺性别青年的样本进行详细的定量描述,为这个新兴的知识领域做出了贡献(首次访问时平均年龄为8.1岁;最近一次访问时平均年龄为14.3岁;99%生活在美国,1%生活在加拿大;69%为非西班牙裔白人;73%家庭收入超过75,000美元)。青年分为三组:(1)一组早期认定的跨性别青年,他们在12岁时(平均年龄为6.5岁;N = 317)得到父母支持进行社会性别转变(更改姓名、代词、发型和服装);(2)一组他们的兄弟姐妹,在参与研究开始时为顺性别(N = 218);(3)一组与早期认定的跨性别青年年龄和性别匹配但不是家庭成员的顺性别青年(N = 377)。关于这些青年身份的数据在2013年至2024年期间从青年本人及其父母那里收集。我们有两个主要研究目标。首先,我们描述了青年性别认同(第4章)和性取向(第6章)的稳定性或变化。我们询问跨性别青年的变化率与顺性别青年的变化率是否不同。其次,我们研究了早期发展阶段的性别发展指标是否与青年进入青春期后的性别认同(第5章)或性取向(第6章)轨迹相关。性别认同的稳定性是所有三组青年中最常见的路径,超过80%的青年在整个参与研究过程中表现出稳定性。我们在三组青年中看到了相似性,即早期认定的跨性别青年与他们的兄弟姐妹或无关比较样本中的青年相比,表现出性别变化的可能性并没有更多或更少。然而,11.9%开始时为顺性别的青年在最近一次报告时并非如此——这一比例远高于基于自20世纪50年代以来经典发展心理学研究中关于性别的假设所预测的比例。当所有三组中都发生性别变化时,绝大多数涉及到向非二元性别认同的转变(在较小程度上也涉及从非二元性别认同的转变)。无论考虑的是青年报告数据还是父母报告数据,结果都是相似的,并且我们没有发现证据表明青年在特定年龄更有可能或更不可能发生变化。我们观察到一些证据表明,童年时期更多的性别不一致(例如,作为男孩生活的儿童在童年时期表现出更多女性化特征)与后来的性别变化有关,但不同测量方法和性别认同的结果有些不一致。青年表现出多样的性取向,60%的二元跨性别青少年和33%的顺性别青少年表达了酷儿(即非异性恋)的浪漫或性兴趣。总体而言,相当高比例(37%)的青年表示对男孩和女孩都感兴趣——这种模式在非二元青年中尤为常见。最后,超过三分之一的青年表现出性取向的变化,童年时期的性别不一致与当前二元跨性别或顺性别青少年最近是否报告酷儿身份有关。我们的结果与最近的证据一致,表明当今的青年正在挑战几十年来发展研究中关于性别和性取向的假设,认为性别和性取向是相对灵活的社会身份,而不是固定不变的,并且认为性别不止有两类。早期认定的跨性别儿童对自己性别的认知与顺性别儿童的稳定性并无差异,这表明在跨性别身份上得到支持的儿童往往表现出与他们的顺性别同龄人相似的发展模式。最后,在第7章中,我们讨论了我们的研究结果如何体现并回应这个独特的历史时刻,我们的研究结果与过去关于性别不一致儿童的研究在哪些方面一致和不一致以及未来研究如何能够继续取得进展以更好地理解更广泛的性别发展轨迹。
Monogr Soc Res Child Dev. 2025-8
Autism Adulthood. 2024-12-2
Psychopharmacol Bull. 2024-7-8
Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2008-7-16
Clin Child Psychol Psychiatry. 2025-2-26
Clin Orthop Relat Res. 2024-8-1
Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2015-2-18
J Exp Soc Psychol. 2025-1
JAMA Pediatr. 2024-12-1
Arch Argent Pediatr. 2025-2-1
J Pers. 2025-6
S Afr J Psychiatr. 2024-4-17
Br J Dev Psychol. 2025-6