I don't know any transgender people, but I can only imagine how difficult it must be to transition from being a woman to being a man(or vice versa)–especially if you have children. While there are an estimated 750,000 people who identify as transgender in the U.S., it's not really know what percentage of them are parents. A survey of nearly 6,000 respondents done by the National Transgender Discrimination Survey found that about 38 percent were parents and 18 percent had at least one dependent child.
According to a recent report from Good Morning America, while most transgender parents agree that being true to whom they really are can be lifesaving, coming out to their children is extremely difficult to do. Some children accept the transition without a problem, but for some others it's much more difficult. In some cases, the children never accept it and the relationship between parent and child is severed forever.
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I'm one of those firm believers in time healing all wounds. And yet, I can't help but wonder how the children of transgender parents are ever really able to get over such a life-changing event. I totally get that for many transgender people making the transition is a matter of life and death, with so many of them feeling so depressed about having to live a life that's not real. But, can you imagine having a mom for years and years only to be told one day that she's no longer a woman?
I don't know. I can only relate it to my parents' announcement that they were getting divorced after 33 years of marriage because my mom was no longer in love with my dad. I say this because it came as a total surprise and it made me feel like I'd been living a lie myself for years. It just rocked my whole foundation. I started questioning everything about my life.
Unsurprisingly, this is exactly what happens to a lot of children of transgender parents. They immediately want to know what the whole thing means for them. Does it mean they're transgender too? Are they gay? And then there's the whole issue of how they will handle their parent's new identity in public. I'm sure that's probably the hardest thing to have to deal with, especially for teenagers with the constant peer pressure they face.
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I'm all for people being as happy as possible, but it's really hard to support that when happiness come at the expense of others. I can only hope that society becomes more and more understanding of transgender issues and so people will not be forced to live a lie. I think that in an ideal world transgender people should go through their transition before they become parents and a lot of this might be avoided.
What do you think?
Image via Dave Smith/flickr
