The Parentification Of Gender Medicine
Why Allowing Children To Direct Their Own Medical Treatment Is Harmful
It occurred to me while I was reading through hate comments on X that when I say childhood gender transition is child abuse, people who believe it’s not instantly, without asking any questions, assume that I mean sexual abuse.
However, the abuse that I’m talking about goes beyond childhood gender transition and is much more widespread in almost every facet of our modern-day lives. And although I’m not a psychologist, I can’t help but comment on what I, a layperson am seeing.
This type of abuse goes by many names, the most common of which is called parentification. To put it simply, it is when adults treat children as mini-adults. It is when their expectations for the child do not match the child’s developmental abilities, and the child is expected to grow up, quickly.
Emotional parentification is when the child is expected to mediate fights between parents, be their parent's confidant, or even make decisions for themselves that they are simply too young and too immature to be making. Physical parentification takes the form of forcing older siblings to be the primary caregivers for young children.
Both of these forms of parentification involve tasks that simply are not developmentally appropriate, and for the most part, do not benefit the child (such as by teaching them a new skill) but more often benefit the parent.
And I see parentification all the time everywhere I look. Take Chloe Cole’s tragic case as an example. Chloe was diagnosed at Kaiser Permanente at just nine years old with gender dysphoria. Once she turned 13, Chloe was allowed to take Lupron and testosterone, which runs the risk of sterilization, and then she had her breasts removed at 15 years old. She now of course regrets all of these things.
Chloe states the obvious: that she was too young to make these decisions. And people blame her, telling her that “She should have known better.”
I can’t believe I have to say this out loud but children are not mini adults. They cannot fully comprehend and understand their choices, and so no children do not “know better” and even at fifteen years of age, Chloe is a teenager, not an adult. That is why we, as adults, are supposed to protect them from adult situations and adult decision-making.
For the same reasons I am against allowing those under the age of 18 to drop out of high school, get married, get tattoos, and buy property, these are the same reasons why I am against childhood medical transition. Even so, one can get a tattoo covered up (or even lasered off), get their GED, get a divorce, and sell the property they bought.
What they can’t do, is reverse a double mastectomy and put their breasts back on once they are gone. They can’t return to having a feminine voice once they’re done taking testosterone. They can’t reverse a phalloplasty or a vaginoplasty. It’s still unclear whether someone who transitioned as a child with puberty blockers and hormone replacement can one day regain their fertility. These things are incredibly, incredibly permanent, and are completely inappropriate to ask a child under the age of majority to make decisions about.
Parentification regardless of its form, has a lasting damaging effect on children. Children who are parentified often grow into adults who suffer from anxiety, and depression and do not know how to ask for help or assistance in a healthy way. They often struggle in romantic relationships due to trust issues because their needs were not met as children.
Healthy decision-making that is age-appropriate for children helps a child grow into a healthy, responsible adult. For example, presenting to a three-year-old different outfit choices and allowing him or her to choose which outfit to wear. Not whether or not they want to “come out” at school as a boy.
Ruby Frank of the Eight Passengers YouTube channel is another example of parentification when she expected her three-year-old to wake themselves up and get ready for preschool, and her six-year-old to remember to bring their lunch to school every day. The Duggars expected their 6-year-old children to help care for new babies.
Yet the same people who criticize Ruby Frank and the Duggars (and rightfully so) actually believe a child can understand what gender even is, and pick out their so-called gender as young as two years old.
How is “Look Mommy I’m a Girl!” any different from “Look Mommy I’m a dinosaur!”? Who knows? And when you point this out people tell you “Children know who they are.”
Since when? Did you know “who you were” at 5, 10, even 15 years old? What if, hear me out, you, the adult, are projecting your adult-level thinking and reasoning ability onto children, just like Ruby Frank did to her 3-year-old? What if they don’t fully understand what they are saying, and the implications of it?
Multiple studies show that children as young as five years old have very rigid attitudes and beliefs toward what is a “woman’s” activity and what a “man’s” activity is, which expands as children are able to understand more abstract concepts. Could this declaration “I’m a boy” be simply a child saying “I like trucks and sports, this makes me a boy”?
Children also have trouble understanding the difference between reality and fantasy. A child could really believe that they have “become a boy” by simple declaration. Especially if you confuse them and teach them a bunch of abstract concepts they can’t possibly understand, and don’t correct them and say “No, you're not a boy.”
Children need appropriate rules, boundaries, and guidance in order to thrive and grow up with a sense of stability. Forcing children and teenagers into adult situations and adult decision-making is parentification and abusive. And childhood gender medicine is yet another branch of the parentification tree.
Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author's own.
I would add that these parents are also lacking the ability to understand abstract concepts because they are still children themselves...
100% agree. We will look back at this in the future and regret all of the healthy people that were damaged and cannot lead healthy, normal lives.