A major study carried out in the Netherlands over a 15-year period has found that the majority of children who experience gender dysphoria grow out of it by the time they are adults.
The study saw researchers in the Netherlands track more than 2,700 children aged 11 to their mid-twenties, asking them every three years about the feelings they had towards their gender, and whether they were gender-content or gender non-content. The children were part of the Tracking Adolescents Individual Lives Survey.
The study, published in the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior, found that overall 78 percent of people maintained the same feelings about their gender over the span of 15 years.
Around 19 percent became more content with their gender while a much smaller number – just about 2 percent – became less comfortable.
For the survey, participants had to respond to the statement, “I wish to be of the opposite sex,” at six different points over the course of 15 years. They were provided with a multiple choice of “0-Not True,” 1-Somewhat or Sometimes True,” and “2-Very True or Often True.”
They were prompted to answer the question every two or three years from the start of the study in March 2001 until the end.
In the study, 11 per cent of adolescents reported feeling unhappy with their gender. However, 19 per cent of those who reported unhappiness with their gender as children no longer expressed that same feeling as adults.
Authors from the University of Groningen reported that gender non-contentedness was most prevalent between the ages of 10 and 12, and that the prevalence decreased with age. They also noted that the prevalence was “significantly higher” in girls than boys at ages 13 and 16. The long-term study showed at the start of the research that roughly one in ten children (11 per cent) expressed “gender non-contentedness” to varying degrees.
Authors found that a relatively large percentage (19 per cent) of young adolescents reported gender non-contentedness in adolescence, but not in early adulthood. By the age of 25, just one-in-25 (4 percent) said they ‘often’ or ‘sometimes’ were discontent with their gender.
Authors say that the results of the recent study might help adolescents to “realise that it is normal to have some doubts about one’s identity and one’s gender identity during this age period and that this is also relatively common.”
They also hope that the insight that gender non-contentedness is “relatively common during early adolescence in a general population and youth psychiatric care sample”, might provide some perspective to clinicians “primarily seeing individuals with intense gender dysphoric feelings and give them a more comprehensive view on the range of developmental patterns of gender identity in the general population and in children receiving youth psychiatric care.”
Discussing their findings, researchers said they found that both the increasing and decreasing gender non-contentedness trajectory groups had lower global self-worth at age 11 compared to adolescents without gender non-contentedness.
They also noted how earlier studies also found that children referred to gender identity clinics “have a more negative self-concept compared to a Dutch norm sample, specifically in the physical appearance and global self-worth domains.”
While the study is one of the longest to delve into the issue of gender in children, researchers noted that limitations included the fact it followed a group of children from the general population and those who were receiving mental health care, but not specifically care for anything related to their gender. This, they said, meant it is not necessarily reflective of the attitudes of children diagnosed with gender dysphoria.
Researchers said that the” main limitation” of the current study is that “we could not use a very fine-grained proxy for gender non-contentedness,” adding:
“Although the YSR and ASR are widely used instruments, the item “I wish to be of the opposite sex” is worded in a binary manner, thereby excluding any responses reflecting a non-binary gender identity. In addition, this single item, with only three response options, may not fully capture the broader concept of gender non-contentedness.”
Authors concluded that: “Having the wish to be of the opposite sex is relatively common in this combined general population and clinical sample. Our data indicate associations between experiencing gender non-contentedness and a poorer self-concept and mental health throughout adolescence.”
The study coincides with the landmark decision by NHS England to ban puberty blockers for children, prompting calls from some campaigners and politicians for similar action in Ireland.