Soacebowl absolutely. and if social science and psychology academia wasn’t currently in the grip of a political orthodoxy that castigates offenders for thought crime, we’d be able to see results of freely-conducted research into these questions and others being done. It is against the interests of children if research that might help professionals understand their situation better is not freely able to be proposed, whatever the end result. But it’s well known in general that narcissistic-inclined parents don’t tend to be very good at meeting the emotional needs of children unless those needs happen to coincide with the adult’s wants and needs.
Also if a very young child is showing distress to the extent of hurting themselves, interventions known to help don’t tend to include giving the child different clothes, telling them their body is some kind of category error (or however else the adults in their life might be ‘explaining’ to the child that a social transition is needed) and talking to the media about it.
I don’t understand why there aren’t press guidelines preventing the media from calling children ‘trans’. I really don’t think it’s responsible reporting for the privacy or long-term wellbeing of the child, whatever a child’s parents are saying about it. They wouldn’t ascribe other political beliefs to a child in this way. Wouldn’t they say instead, ‘child being brought up as..[name of political view/belief]’ or ‘child being raised in a family with a strong belief in [name of political view/belief]..’?
Making it quite clear it’s an adult political agenda they are describing , so whatever the child says about that agenda while they are still a child, has to be viewed in that context?
That’s an area where campaigns and professional practice could really do with being informed by academic research on what long term effect this type of media reporting has had on children. Though hopefully as the media hear more of detransitioners’ experiences, this will encourage the more responsible journalists to be a bit more cautious in how they contextualise children in their reporting around these political beliefs/dogma.