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Research suggests that children who doubt their gender identity enter puberty earlier

Children who have expressed a desire at the age of 11 to be a different gender enter puberty earlier than their peers.

Photo by Leyla Kilic from Unsplash.com

A study from Aarhus University shows that children who have expressed a desire at the age of 11 to be a different gender enter puberty earlier than their peers.

As it is, the transition to puberty can be difficult for children who are afflicted by doubt about their own gender identity. But this study – Anne Hjorth Thomsen, Anne Gaml-Sørensen, Nis Brix, Andreas Ernst, Lea L.H. Lunddorf, Katrine Strandberg-Larsen, Astrid Højgaard, and Cecilia H. Ramlau-Hansen that appeared in Fertility and Sterility – suggests that these children also enter puberty earlier than children who are not in doubt about their gender identity.

The study, which is one of the first in the world to examine the correlation between children’s desire to be the opposite gender and their development in puberty, was undertaken as part of the research project “Better Health for Generations” (BSIG), which has monitored 100,000 Danish women’s pregnancies and births, as well as the growth and development of their children, since 1996.

In the study, the children were asked at the age of 11 about a possible desire to be the opposite gender. This information was then combined with data in which, every six months, the children reported their current stage in various puberty milestones. At age 11, around 5% of the children in the study reported either a partial or a full desire to be the opposite gender.

“The results indicate that children who at age 11 reported a desire to be the opposite gender tended to go into puberty before children who had not expressed a desire to change their gender. In the study, both birth-assigned boys and girls with a previous expressed desire to change gender entered puberty around two months earlier than their peers,” says Thomsen.

And so for Thomsen, health professionals may encounter a desire to slow down puberty, because the child may not feel comfortable in their own body, or able to identify with it. “It is therefore important that the healthcare professionals possess basic knowledge about the puberty development of the children, so that treatment can be applied at the right time.”

All the same, “in this study, we see earlier puberty development among children who wish to be the opposite gender, compared to children who do not wish to be the opposite gender. But we do not know whether the children’s own gender perception affects their puberty development, or whether there may be other explanations. We do not know the underlying causes,” says Thomsen.

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