to think parental gender disappointment probably plays a big role in the increase of "trans" children?

[Valanice1989]

An FB friend shared this article about "gender disappointment and grief". The author writes about having a baby of the "wrong" sex as though it's on a par with the death of a child, using phrases like "I've just lost my girl" and saying that she's looking forward to finally getting a daughter when she goes to Heaven.

She has a stereotyped, fetishistic idea of girls: "I’ve always dreamt of having a daughter. I fantasized about the pink bows, sheets and nursery walls. I imagined the shopping trips, mani/pedi outings, and the hair braiding. I thought about our heartfelt conversations, her first kiss, first love, and first heartbreak. I imagined the tears we would both shed as she found the perfect wedding dress. I pictured the look on my husband’s face as he walked our baby girl down the aisle. I dreamt of the moment she would become a mom and finally know the depth of my love for her."

It doesn't seem to have entered her head that a daughter might not like pink things or shopping (I'm one of them!), or want to get married, or want to have children. And seriously, who cries when they find their perfect wedding dress?

She criticises the people that she feels weren't sympathetic enough to her and says that she's learned to stop hiding her gender disappointment. She writes that she "lost the one person I cherished most" - more than her sons. And at the end of the article, she includes her real name and a link to her blog. So it's entirely possible that her sons will one day read the article and discover that she loves her fictional daughter more than she loves them.

Is this part of the reason so many children are now being diagnosed with gender dysphoria? Now that it's becoming more socially acceptable for parents to talk openly about gender disappointment, what impact must that have on their children? If you knew that your own mother was so disappointed in you when you were born that she actually spiralled into grief, wouldn't that leave you with very low self-esteem? Wouldn't you want to change yourself?

I think you make a valid point. I was a tomboy until my teens. Keenly feeling my dad's disappointment that I wasn't a son. I still think if we were in the same situation now I would be encouraged to transition.

People are weird.

It's 50/50. You don't 'lose' one by not having it.

If you dislike boys/girls so much then don't have children.

But the child will never know that the mother has 'gender' disappointment?

It's 50/50. You don't 'lose' one by not having it.

Yes, the claim that she "lost" a daughter by having a son makes no sense. By that logic, everyone loses a baby when they give birth unless they have male and female twins.

SauvignonMum, she wrote the article under her own name. And she says she's stopped keeping her gender disappointment a secret, anyway.

'People are weird.'

And selfish. And stupid. And obsessed with stereotypes it seems

Possibly, but in the case of JG and PL, they both had fathers who were extremely hostile to gender non conforming behaviour in their sons, and horrified at the possibility their boy might have been gay.
Both JG and PL were abused by being called "a girl" and had their favourite "girly toys" thrown away.
Both encouraged by their mothers and to be trans, fathers accepted them as "really a girl".

Refusal to accept gender non conformity as just that, nothing else, is mostly to blame for the huge numbers of trans children in our extremely rigid gendered society.

As well as that, huge numbers of young adults are declaring themselves to be trans because it is the coolest and most fashionable trend at the moment.

^encouraged... to be trans

I’ve never understood people who get very disappointed if they have one sex of child over the other. You’ve a 50/50 chance of getting a boy or a girl and surely they must know that.

I think parental influence has a lot to do with some trans kids, and not even necessarily because they didn’t get the sex of child they wanted. I was a classic tomboy and my mother despaired of me. It’s only been in the last few years (I’m 36) that she’s stopped trying to feminise me. She’d always say, ‘when you grow up you’ll find a nice man and het married,’ so I did. Well he was a man anyway, although not a nice one. I was never interested in boys or men though, not in the slightest, I just didn’t see any other path. I think this happens with a lot of kids. Their parents decide what and who they’re going to be and try to create the person they want. Then what happens, which is what happened to me, is the kid can’t see any other way of being, and they only get positivity from their parent/s when they be who the parent/s want them to be. Sadly it all comes crashing down in the end, because you can’t be who someone else wants you to be all your life, and especially when you enter the world as an adult. The weight of trying to maintain that persona is too much to bare and you need to find a way out, and to be yourself. Luckily for me I could just leave my marriage and come out as a lesbian, but many of the kids now are going to find themselves on lifelong medication and their bodyys’ will have been surgically altered, plus sterility and decreased or no sexual function, and of course a much reduced dating pool of potential partners available to them.

We’re headed down a dangerous road by medicalising gender non conforming kids, the vast majority of whom will grow into perfectly healthy gay or lesbian, or just GNC adults. I do fear for them, because it would’ve been me if trans had been a thing 25 years ago. It’s being pushed so aggressively atm that many kids will be swept up by it, and by the time they realise what’s happened and what’s been done to them, it’ll be too late and the damage will be done.

Sorry for errors. DP has just arrived so I can’t go through and correct.

My grandmother made no secret of the fact that she was disappointed I wasn’t a boy. My father, while not openly disappointed, was uncomfortable with having a daughter. He was always quite rough with me and a bit frustrated with me being a delicate flower. He strongly encouraged boyish pursuits, made fun of anything girly like ballgown costumes and dolls and took the mickey out of the idea that I might have a boyfriend.

The older I got the more uncomfortable he became. If I wore a top that made it obvious I had breasts he’d throw a scarf round my neck or just look uncomfortable and avoid eye contact. He told my mother to tell me that I needed to cover up. I had to keep sanitary supplies hidden in my room. On the rare occasion I accidentally left a red mark on the toilet he’d yell at my post-menopausal mother that she needed to clean up, knowing full well it wasn’t her.

I responded by hiding any signs of maturity and wearing boyish clothes, heavy boots with jeans and shirts. I was 20 before I had the confidence to wear revealing female clothes and 30 before he accepted me having a boyfriend without being weird about it. At 35 I was still nervous to tell him I was pregnant and embarrassed to breastfeed in the same room as him.

In the modern era I genuinely think I might have been convinced to transition by about the age of 14.

There was a thread on here by a mum saying how upset she was that her baby wasn't the sex she wanted. Lots of posters shared their same stories. I thought it was really sad.

I'm sorry to read that, Aeonium. Your father's behaviour was very unpleasant.

What an ignorant and ill-informed thread.

I wonder if it's also being unable to accept children not conforming to gender stereotypes or sexuality as they grow up; they are pushed to identify as the opposite sex because they aren't 'normal' boys or girls.

I was told repeatedly as a child that I was a boy because I wasn't petite, into frilly things and delicate. It didn't bother me at the time because I knew I wasn't like all the other girls and got on with boys better (mainly because I would happily climb trees, fall off my bike and talk about Sci-Fi, would spend hours with my brothers repairing motorbikes, and wore hand-me-down jeans and t-shirts from my brothers, rather than have dresses of my own. Oh, and I asked to get my hair cut short when I was 9 because a. I hated the pain of having my hair brushed and b. I harboured a longing to be a Punk, as I'd seen a woman in town with an undercut and bright green mohawk who I thought looked beautiful and strong), and got top marks in assessments where mechanical reasoning was being measured - but as soon as puberty's sledgehammer hit me, everything I had been allowed to do on the grounds that I was more a boy than a girl was out of bounds. Even having a computer was forbidden, because 'Girls don't get computers for Christmas, they get dolls or makeup when they get older'.

Had there been anything about trans kids at the time, I think it is possible I would have been hauled through the process and, in all honesty, what girls were allowed to do was so shit, compared to the boys and periods made me feel so ill, I'd have probably agreed with it.

I wasn't Lesbian, much to the surprise of my mother when I started dating boys, but I also expect that had I been, it would have been used as confirmation that I was in the 'wrong body', just being good at sport would have been just as well I was shit at netball and gymnastics and nobody knew I was actually very good at football, hockey & basketball and enjoy weight training/rowing.

I don't see why boys aren't allowed to be boys who like dolls or pink and girls can't be girls who prefer short hair and playing football - but it seems that some parents and activists refuse to accept they can be in totally the right body if they don't match the societal expectations.

I can’t see how it has anything to do with trans people (would need to see an actual study concluding this, not just some idle speculation based on a single anecdote) but she sounds like a nightmare parent.

It didn’t help that my mother wore no makeup and didn’t pluck her eyebrows or shave. She made me feel uncomfortable and embarrassed about wanting to do those things. When I mentioned it she’d tell me not to. Fairy stories about shaving making the hair grow back thicker ect. Which was another pressure against being feminine. I had to figure that stuff out by myself quite late on and I still felt like I was rebelling. And she enabled my father’s behaviour by telling me to cover up and keep my sanitary supplies hidden.

And to the people who have told me that having boys is better than not having kids: I love you. I know you can’t possibly understand.

Good grief. Is she honestly saying she’d rather not have kids at all than have her sons? Those poor kids

I did know a women who 30 years ago, dressed and treated her son as if he was girl because she only had/wanted one child but had wanted a girl (she had massive mental health problems not withstanding her treatment of him).

Back then, because trans children weren’t a thing, he just rebelled once he hit puberty, is a heterosexual man and now estranged from his mother. I wonder what would have happened if he was born more recently and she had taken him to a gender clinic though.

I had a bit of disappointment because I had a girl preference but she sounds awful.
This:

^^And to the people who have told me that having boys is better than not having kids: I love you. I know you can’t possibly understand.

Made me really angry. She wants to know real grief IMO and then she’ll stop talking rubbish that could really upset people. Some people have real problems.

There was something on the daily mail website earlier about a transwoman who knew they were definitely a girl when they were about 5 and wanted to play with Barbie and make-up.

What SHOULD be happening is that parents bring up their kids to be strong, confident individuals. Teach them that it's fine to be a boy who does stereotypically girly things, or a girl who likes climbing trees or playing rugby. That we're all different and accepting difference is a part of being human.

Not that boys who like pink need to go through surgery to conform to society's stereotypes.

www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-6682329/Transgender-teen-bears-striking-resemblance-Martine-McCutcheon.html

Seriously, the world has GONE MAD. I never wear skirts or make-up. Am I really a man? Am I bollocks.

We’re headed down a dangerous road by medicalising gender non conforming kids, the vast majority of whom will grow into perfectly healthy gay or lesbian, or just GNC adults. I do fear for them, because it would’ve been me if trans had been a thing 25 years ago. It’s being pushed so aggressively atm that many kids will be swept up by it, and by the time they realise what’s happened and what’s been done to them, it’ll be too late and the damage will be done.

This.

I believe this applies to a certain female CEO who now boasts of 'girly chats' with one of her children (who was born a boy and taken to Thailand for surgery).

I don’t think things are ever as simple or as black and white as that.

That is just revolting and insulting on so many levels

And I do actually agree. Gender stereotypes are back in vogue and such a strong preference for one sex over the other (and of course 90% of the time it’s a girl), “gender reveals” etc are just amplifying it.

blimey.
I just think of my dd and thank God she isn't the duaghter of that batshit mother.

Dd has cropped hair, wears DMs and camouflage trousers. She is butch lesbianism personified, and proud of it, she is 13!

She has seent he suit she wants ot wear to her prom. Men's dark green 3 piece suit.
mani/pedi trips and wedding dresses, blimey, that must be where I went wrong!

(she is fab my dd )