In April, Hilary Cass’s medical review of the care that transgender-identified adolescents receive via the U.K’s National Health Service revealed what many already suspected: children don’t have the capacity to make responsible long-term decisions, and no high-quality evidence supports the effectiveness of gender transition. The “research” that has propped up the gender industry’s claims seems to be nothing more than a precarious house of cards constructed out of faulty reasoning and deceptive data.
This is welcome news to many parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, siblings, and pastors who knew something was wrong with the transgender debate but were told their questions and objections were at best outdated and at worst deadly.
It turns out that objecting to allowing children or young people to make irrevocable medical changes to their bodies was exactly the right decision. In her report, Cass put research behind what many already knew to be true.
Adolescence Isn’t Forever
Her conclusion is plain: “[Gender dysphoria in childhood] is not reliably predictive of whether that young person will have longstanding gender incongruence in the future, or whether medical intervention will be the best option for them.”
Objecting to allowing children or young people to make irrevocable medical changes to their bodies was exactly the right decision.
Adolescence marks the period of life when identity formation becomes a primary concern. Teens try on different personas—Athlete? Bookworm? Fashionista? Artist?—to discover and settle into the combination of characteristics that feels most comfortable and authentic. Every generation of parents has observed their children pass through various phases of self-presentation.
Over the last decade, a transgender persona has been a new and increasingly popular option, and it’s one that often asks for permanent alterations—puberty blockers, hormone therapy, or surgery—to satisfy it.
Outside Influence Can Be Potent
This hasn’t been helped by our highly-online culture. “Gender-questioning young people and their parents [say] online information . . . describes normal adolescent discomfort as a possible sign of being trans and . . . particular influencers have had a substantial impact on their child’s beliefs and understanding of their gender,” says Cass.
As the internet’s reach has grown, so has our (and our children’s) exposure to all manner of influences, both good and bad. Some social media influencers have outright pressured children to adopt trans identities. Other forms of influence, from movies to television shows, have normalized a range of sexualities.
Outside the media, organizations from the American Academy of Pediatrics to the American School Counselor Association have rewritten policies to affirm and encourage children’s decisions to transition. Many public schools have hung gender and sexuality posters on doors and walls, providing constant suggestions of alternative sexualities to students.
Children Need Adults
In this environment, children need trustworthy adults to help them navigate which messages are true. The last part of a child’s brain to complete development, reaching maturation around 25 years of age, is responsible for planning, decision-making, and weighing consequences. An immature prefrontal cortex is why auto insurance rates are significantly higher for teens and young adults than for people in their 30s and beyond.
Children need parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, pastors, and friends to steady them, guide them, and remind them of the truth. God put children under parental care for their well-being and protection: “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. ‘Honor your father and mother’ (this is the first commandment with a promise), ‘that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land’” (Eph. 6:1–3).
Consequences
Sometimes, when adults don’t offer good guidance or children disobey, the consequences can be devastating. In this case, unnecessary medicalization given by the gender industry can destroy children’s fertility or even shorten their lives.
For years, some schools, doctors, and therapists told parents that if their suddenly gender-confused child doesn’t immediately start puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones in an attempt to impersonate the opposite sex, that child will commit suicide. This kind of widespread emotional blackmail prevailed de rigueur, despite the lack of evidence to support such claims. By refusing to send a child on the path to lifelong medicalization, parents put themselves at odds with their child as well as with his or her school, therapist, and pediatrician and an army of influencers who vilified those parents as bigots, haters, and transphobes.
Unnecessary medicalization given by the gender industry can destroy children’s fertility or even shorten their lives.
But Cass’s research confirms the cautious and skeptical were right. “The evidence base . . . [has] already been shown to be weak,” she wrote. “There was, and remains, a lot of misinformation.”
Many medical, psychological, and educational industries have failed children and also their families and society. The effects of these missteps are a clear reminder that only God’s Word is true, infallible, and timeless. His laws are perfect, and following them is always the right choice—even in the face of weeping, ridicule, or threats. To follow our own paths will always lead to heartache, for us and for our children.
Speaking to transgender-identified children and youth, Cass writes, “I have been disappointed by the lack of evidence on the long-term impact of taking hormones from an early age; research has let us all down, most importantly you.”
The Gospel Coalition