Intersections of age and agency as trans and gender diverse children navigate primary school: listening to children in (re)considering the potential of sexuality education

ABSTRACT

The adult-centric concept of ‘age-appropriateness’ is an arbitrary signifier and yet it commands a powerful common-sense appeal in governing the shape of sexuality education. The visibility of LGBTQ+ lives in primary schools is deeply impacted by the cis-heteronormative ways in which age-appropriateness is commonly understood and mobilised; very often resulting in silence and delay. The concept of age-appropriateness also becomes entangled with moral panics about ‘promoting’ LGBTQ+ lives, or children being somehow ‘recruited’ to identify as LGBTQ+. This paper draws on findings from a study with the parents of eleven trans and gender diverse children (then aged between 5 and 13) conducted in 2017, as well as a follow-up study conducted with seven participants from the same group of parents and children in 2022. The paper explores how the politics of age and agency intersect and become intensified as trans and gender diverse children and their parents navigate and make decisions about their bodies, lives and everyday worlds in primary schools. These stories of trans and gender diverse children provide an arresting invitation to adults to attend closely to the rich stories of children themselves in (re)considering the potential of sexuality education across contexts.

KEYWORDS:

• Primary school
• transgender
• age-appropriate
• sexuality education
• LGBTQ+

Acknowledgments

A thank you goes to the parents and children who gave so generously of their time and energy in taking part in this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. This is a very limited sample of people, accessed through a limited recruitment avenue – a national support organisation. Despite these limitations, these data are rich and instructive about the minutiae of everyday life for trans children and their parents. Furthermore, my analyses of these data read for silences too, for example, the ways in which social class silently shapes parents’ everyday negotiations with their children (Neary 2021a).

Additional information

Funding

Funding was received from the Irish Research Council to complete original study. Seeds funding from the Faculty of Education and Health Sciences at the University of Limerick enabled the follow-up study.