FOTF Official Advises Parents on Gender Identity
A Focus on the Family official recently released a book that answers questions regarding gender identity and parenting, including how to raise a child with gender confusion.
Glenn Stanton, director of family formation studies at FOTF, contends in Secure Daughters, Confident Sons that a child's sex impacts how parents interact with him/her. Stanton asks readers to consider the question most commonly asked when a woman is pregnant. Is it a boy or a girl?
"Knowing if we are having a little boy or a little girl means so much more than what color we will paint the nursery. Regardless of our gender, our children's sex determines how we'll interact with them, and how they will understand and identify us," he explains.
Get Our Latest News for FREE
No matter how progressive society becomes, Stanton argues, gender neutrality is a myth. The biology of males and females are different.
These differences are proved by science, he says. The FOTF official pointed to Dr. Louann Bizendine, a neuropsychiatrist at the University of California San Francisco, who wrote in her book The Female Brain:
"More that 99 percent of male and female genetic coding is exactly the same. Out of the thirty thousand genes in the human genome, the less than one percent variation between the sexes is small. But that percentage difference influences every single cell in our bodies from the nerves that register pleasure and pain to the neurons that transmit perception, thoughts, feelings and emotions."
Those differences, Stanton says, means that boys and girls have different emotional needs.
Boys have an inherent need to explore, conquer tasks, find new opportunities, initiate and take chances. Males are prone to be active and aggressive, says the family formation expert.
Girls are inherently caring, protective and receptive. Females tend to seek security, connections and wield a soft power.
While the book specifically labels characteristics as being male or female, Stanton states that both sexes can display a male or female characteristic. However, certain characteristics are projected in one gender more strongly than the other.
The book offers words of advice to parents dealing with possible gender identity confusion. In a question and answer section, a parent asks, "My three-year-old son likes to play dress up with his sisters. But I'm concerned because he likes to dress up in the same dresses his sisters wear. And, he loves wearing their sparkly shoes. How can I stop this?"
According to Stanton, the tendency in boys to dress up in girly clothing at a young age "isn't necessarily concerning."
He recalls his own son's desire to wear girl clothes.
"He was a two-year-old boy with two sisters. He was being a part of the crowd he lived in, joining in on the game, and the game was usually what the girls were doing. He wasn't acting contrary to his sex. His psychological awareness of his maleness hadn't really started in full," Stanton says.
But as children grow pass toddler age, teaching them the distinction between the genders becomes very important, he says. He recommends that parents gently steer their son to gender appropriate costumes.
Cheryl Kilodavis, featured on the "Today Show" last month, said she tried unsuccessfully to redirect her 5-year-old son Dyson's, who likes to wear pink and skirts and dresses, interest in feminine clothes. She shared on television that her son began dressing in feminine clothes at age two. However, after struggling with her son's behavior, Kilodavis began moving toward acceptance. She has since self-published a book about her son entitled, My Princess Boy.
Kilodavis said of her son inclination for girls clothing, "He's able to express his own interests, and so I figured, 'I can't keep it inside the house, so we need to get the world to a place of acceptance.'"
Dyson's father Dean Kilodavis said his son climbs trees and plays outdoors like a boy so his cross-dressing is no big-deal.
However, Stanton encourages mother to correct such behavior in boys and urges fathers to "invite" their sons into "his father's world of manhood."
For "tomboy" daughters, Stanton again tells parents not to be too concerned but still help them find ways to express their femininity in ways that are comfortable.
He also states that there is no one way to be a boy or be a girl.
"There are a zillion and three ways to be a healthy, well-rounded man or woman. But at the same time, there are behaviors, attitudes and perspectives that we universally and specifically understand as masculine or feminine," Stanton writes.
Throughout the book, Stanton relies on the combination of science and the Bible. True parenting, he stresses, must cater to the child's inherent needs as either a boy or a girl, he says. Parenting to suit a child's gender also honors the Bible's call for parents to raise their children in the way he should go.
"God makes everyone of us distinct individuals," he writes. "Our jobs as parents [are] to honor that uniqueness and nurture it."
The book Secure Daughters, Confident Sons also offers advice to single mothers on how to encourage healthy development in their sons or daughters.
