“Peer Pressure” and Trans Teens

Identity and social connection can look very different from a parent’s perspective versus a teen’s. How can you tell if your child’s newly announced gender identity is real, or the product of social pressure?

For some parents of transgender kids, there is very little element of surprise when their children come out. It’s not unusual for trans kids to express preferences for toys, clothes, and language associated with the “other” gender as young as two or three years old. For many other parents, a child saying that they identify with a different gender than the one assigned to them at birth can seem to come totally out of the blue, in their teen years or later, with no signs that the parent was aware of. If the child you’ve always known as a pink-glitter-and-unicorns girl becomes friends with some LGBTQ kids and comes home a few months later asking you to use “they” or “he” pronouns, you might wonder what you missed, or if what they’re expressing is real and permanent. You might have heard terms like “rapid onset gender dysphoria” and, even if you consider yourself accepting of transgender people, wondered if your child might be responding to peer pressure rather than true misalignment with their gender. 

Understandably, your child telling you that they identify with a group of people who are a target of persecution in the world right now might set off all kinds of alarm bells. How can I protect them? Are they old enough to decide this for themselves? What if they’re just doing this to fit in or seem cool? Love and concern, combined with tremendous pressure to “get it right” in the way you raise your child, can leave parents with a lot of uncertainty.

As an adult trans person who has worked with a number of trans kids and their parents, I want to offer an inside perspective on the situation of a teen joining a peer group that includes LGBQ and trans members, and a short time later, coming out “suddenly” to their family.

When I started high school, I quickly found a friend group that felt like home: quirky, nerdy kids a little outside the mainstream. Most of us were writers or artists or theater kids. Many of us felt passionately about social issues and were beginning to be politically active, working for what we hoped would be a better and gentler world. We all, I think, had a feeling of being a little bit different than others, in ways that we often joked about but couldn’t really define. Most of that group, at some point in high school or later as adults, eventually came out as queer or trans, including me. 

I didn’t feel any pressure around my identity because of my friends. Instead, I can see in hindsight that I gravitated toward that group because of my own feelings of being “different.”

I didn’t feel any pressure around my identity because of my friends. Instead, I can see in hindsight that I gravitated toward that group because of my own feelings of being “different.” When I started to figure out what was going on with my sexuality and gender, my friends provided solid support and a real sense of safety. They celebrated me. I started my first romantic relationship at 15, with a close friend who came out many years later as a trans man. We were together through the first year of my own transition.

During adolescence, young people’s center of attention shifts from family to peers. It’s one of the things that makes adults nervous about the teen years– as our influence wanes, the young people we care about start prioritizing the opinions of other people with hormone-soaked, not-yet-fully-formed brains. This is an unavoidable part of life, a critical step in human transition to adulthood. We can’t keep teens from prioritizing their peers– but we can help them make connections with other teens whose friendships will make a positive difference in their lives. 

When teens have friends who love, support, and affirm them, the primacy of peers can become a superpower of adolescence.

When teens have friends who love, support, and affirm them, the primacy of peers can become a superpower of adolescence. When I transitioned, my sweet network of queer friends created a protective barrier between me and all of the world’s bigotry. Their opinion mattered more to me than anything. At one point, two adults in my community tried to scare me away from transition by suggesting that I might not ever find love or acceptance as a trans person. It stung, but I could shrug off their comments, because I already was loved and accepted, transness and all.

To my parents, it might have looked like I went to high school, made a bunch of queer friends, and all of a sudden began to also identify as queer and trans– though to their credit, they never said anything like that. From my own perspective, my friends held open a space of acceptance and possibility that allowed me to begin to understand what I was feeling, to be seen authentically, and to know that there was a place for me to thrive in the world. 

If you have a child who is telling you they are trans, and they’re in a friend group where that is “cool,” you and they likely have a lot to be grateful for. You can support your child by recognizing that trans people, like all of us, often seek out social connection with people we have things in common with. Labels like “rapid onset gender dysphoria” and “trans contagion” are scare tactics, created by anti-trans activists to make it seem like the perfectly normal phenomenon of trans and gender non-conforming kids having trans and gender non-conforming friends is somehow an indication that something is wrong, and that their expressed identities are less valid. They are not. 

So, how can you tell if what your teen is describing is a real, permanent identity shift? The bad news is, you can’t. The good news is, it doesn’t matter– experts recommend the same steps in either case. Use the name and pronouns your child asks you to use. Affirm your unconditional love and support for them as they figure out their identity. Learn about gender and the experiences of trans youth. Ask open-ended questions. Have their back. Let them lead. Recognize that their gender is theirs to explore and understand. Help them access care from affirming health providers who have experience working with trans youth, and who can answer any questions they have about medical transition. 

Use the name and pronouns your child asks you to use. Affirm your unconditional love and support for them as they figure out their identity. Learn about gender and the experiences of trans youth. Ask open-ended questions. Have their back. Let them lead. Recognize that their gender is theirs to explore and understand.

If you have a kid who is telling you they’re trans, and they DON’T have a safe, supportive friend group who will celebrate their identity with them, I recommend doing whatever you can to help them find those connections. Find a local or online support group, or visit an LGBTQIA+ community center. Check out affirming faith communities in your area with active youth groups. Research summer camps for trans and gender-expansive youth. If it’s possible where you are, ask your child if they are interested in switching schools. 

Trans kids are equally trans whether they know other trans young people or not. But one of the keys to raising a healthy, happy trans kid, with the emotional resilience to face the world as it is right now, is helping make sure they know they are not alone.