Diane Ehrensaft - The Gender Creative Child: Pathways for Nurturing and Supporting Children Who Live Outside Gender Boxes

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

DIANE EHRENSAFT, PHD, is a developmental and clinical psychologist who for over thirty years has worked with gender-nonconforming children and their families. Dr. Ehrensaft is the author of numerous books and articles on child development, gender, and parenting. Her previous books include Gender Born, Gender Made; Parenting Together; Spoiling Childhood; Mommies, Daddies, Donors, Surrogates; and Building a Home Within (with Toni Vaughn Heineman). Dr. Ehrensaft is an associate professor of pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco, and the attending psychologist at the UCSF Benioff Childrens Hospital Child and Adolescent Gender Center Clinic. She is a founding member of the Child and Adolescent Gender Center and serves as its director of mental health. She speaks in the United States and abroad on the subject of gender-nonconforming children at both community and professional conferences and is cited frequently in the media. She has appeared in The New York Times and many other media outlets and was featured in National Public Radios landmark 2008 two-part series on gender-nonconforming children. Dr. Ehrensaft is a founding member of A Home Within, a national project focused on the emotional needs of children and youth in foster care, and holds leadership positions with Gender Spectrum, a national organization offering education, training, and advocacy services to promote gender acceptance. She is a mother, a grandmother, and a proud member of PFLAG. Dr. Ehrensaft lives and practices in Oakland, California.

dianeehrensaft.com

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

First and foremost, I want to thank all of the gender creative children and families who have entered my life over these many yearsin my private practice, at the UCSF Benioff Childrens Hospital Child and Adolescent Gender Center Clinic, at workshops and conferences throughout the world, and in my personal life. You have been my guiding light and my mentors in helping me understand just exactly what it means to be a gender creative child, sibling, parent, caregiver, grandparent, aunt, uncle, or cousin.

And next come the people at The Experiment, who have made this book a reality. A very special thanks to Matthew Lore, cofounder and president of The Experiment, for meeting with me for coffee one day in 2008 at Olivetos Caf in Oakland, California, and putting his faith in me to morph into print my ideas and my passion about gender creative children. And without the incredible support of Allie Bochicchio, editor; Jeanne Tao, managing editor; Iris Bass, external editor; Jennifer Hergenroeder, publicity and marketing manager; and Elizabeth Johnson, events manager, those ideas would have remained just that.

I now come to my village of gender specialist colleagues, my midwives in giving birth to The Gender Creative Child. Without a doubt, Stephen Rosenthal has been my closest colleague, friend, and muse in founding the Child and Adolescent Gender Center, making our pediatric gender clinic at UCSF Benioff Childrens Hospital a reality, and just being there. Right alongside him are my other team members at CAGC and the clinicAsaf Orr, Joel Baum, Meredith Russell, Molly Koren, Stanley Vance, Ilana Sherer. And then there is each and every member of Mind the Gap, the ever-growing mental health subgroup of the Child and Adolescent Gender Center. Without you and our monthly Sunday meetings at my house, I would never know what I know today. To Lisa Kenney and Pam Wool at Gender Spectrum, deep gratitude for all that you do and all the support you have given me. And special thanks to some particular colleagues who have come along with me on this gender journey for many years, if not decadesHerb Schreier, Stephanie Brill, Caitlin Ryan, Karisa Barrow, Susanna Moore, Susan Bernstein, Dan Karasic, Jamison Green, Lin Fraser, Susanne Watson, Shawn Giammattei, Lisette Lahana, Joy Johnson, Michelle Jurkewicz. And reaching across the continent: to my close friends and colleagues in the South, that would be Santa Cruz, CaliforniaJennifer Hastings, Shane Hill, and Ben Geilhufe; Los AngelesJoanna Olson and Aydin Kennedy; TexasColt Meier; New MexicoNate Sharon. In the MidwestMarco Hidalgo, Diane Chen, Scott Leibowitz, Rob Garafolo. In the EastAmy Tishelman, Norm Spack, Randi Kaufman, Francie Mandel, Edgardo Menvielle, Catherine Tuerk, Jean Malpas, Aron Janssen, Cathy Renna. North of the borderJake Pyne. And across the globeSam Winter, Thomas Steensma, Annelou de Vries, and Simon Pickstone-Taylor.

A few people, close friends and colleagues, have simply been grounding poles for my whole professional life, not just for my gender explorations, and to them I want to express my deepest gratitude for helping me be the best psychologist, writer, and feminist I could be. That would be Gloria Lawrence, with special thanks for every one of our Thursday lunches for almost twenty-five years now; Toni Heineman for reading, writing, thinking, working, and playing with me and for her endless dedication to children in foster care; my decades-running child consultation groupEileen Keller, Bonnie Rottier, and Stephen Walrodwithout which I could never be the therapist I am today; Marcy Whitebook, for her dedication to the lives of young children and keeping me on track with mine; Nancy Chodorow, for thinking, walking, sharing her mind with me; Barbara Waterman, who has showed undying enthusiasm for my work and has always generously lent me her critical and insightful eye as both a thinker and commenter on my writing.

A person does not live by work alone, and this book could have died on the vine if I had not had the warmth and love of close friends around me. From far awayElli and Robby Meeropol, Mindy Werner-Crohn and Joel Crohn, Stephanie Riger and Dan Lewis, and Cathey Billian. Closer to homeAlan Heineman, Matt Ross. To my communal eating group, I would like to extend the heartiest of thanks, not just for the food we eat but for the years of friendship, intellectual sharing, talking politics, raising families together, and offering the love that feed both my mind and my soulJoanna Levine and Marc Stickgold, Joan Skolnick and Randy Reiter, Nancy Hollander and Stephen Portuges, Anne Bernstein and Ringo Hallinan, Noree Lee and Ron Elson, Yana and Len Goldfine. Everyone should be as lucky as I am to have a chosen family like you.

And last, I want to acknowledge my family, both close in and miles away: my mother and father, Edith and Morris Ehrensaft, for being my role models for living a very long and full life and giving me all the educational opportunities they did not have so I could be here writing these acknowledgements right now; to my brothers, Phil and Rick Ehrensaft, for lovingly showing me about gender across the aislethat would be the world of boys and their toys; to my children, Rebecca Hawley and Jesse Ehrensaft-Hawleywords cant even begin to describe the depth of my gratitude to them for all they have taught me and all they give me; the same goes for my granddaughter, Satya Hawley, who could sing her way into anybodys heart. And always, and forever, I will thank my husband, Jim Hawley, for being the wonderful husband, father, and grandfather he is, for putting up with a sometimes write-aholic partner, for giving me the bandwidth to talk endlessly about gender, and for helping me come up for air, with a glass of wine and a smile on his face.

INDEX

Numbers in parentheses beginning with n refer to notes.

acceptance

apples

See also persisters

See also autism spectrum disorder (ASD)

(n63)

autism spectrum disorder (ASD)

case studies

cross-sex hormones/hormone replacement therapy

(n12)

culture

de-centering

See also oranges

doctors

See also cross-sex hormones/hormone replacement therapy