Children’s Evaluation and Categorization of Transgender Children

ABSTRACT

Despite extant evidence of negative peer treatment of transgender adolescents and adults, little is known about how young children perceive transgender peers, particularly those who have socially transitioned or are living in line with their gender rather than sex at birth. Whereas children have been shown to be averse to gender nonconformity in peers, because many transgender children appear and behave in ways consistent with their expressed gender (but not their sex at birth), it is unclear how children evaluate these identities. In 2 studies, we investigated 5- to 10-year-old children’s (N_total = 113) preferences for transgender versus gender-“typical” peers who either shared their gender identity or did not. We also examined whether children categorized transgender peers by their sex or expressed gender, as it might inform their evaluations. Children preferred cisgender peers over transgender peers; however, they also liked peers of their own gender rather than the other gender (e.g., female participants preferred girls over boys), demonstrating that the oft-documented own-gender bias plays an important role even when children are reasoning about transgender peers. Children did not reliably categorize transgender peers by sex or gender; yet those who categorized transgender peers by their sex showed greater dislike of transgender peers. The current studies are the first to investigate cisgender children’s attitudes toward transgender children and suggest that perceptions of gender categorization and conformity play a role in children’s evaluations of transgender peers.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Ashley Nowain, Dayna Bennett, and Debbie Bitran for their assistance in data collection and Georgia Judd for creating the stimuli for Study 2.

Notes

¹ In addition to the studies reported here, we ran one preliminary study that assessed evaluations and categorization of gender-nonconforming targets (i.e., targets who had not socially transitioned but showed preferences associated with the other sex). However, the study had counterbalancing problems that prohibited comparisons by target gender. Further, the targets were not described as having socially transitioned, a common definition of transgender used here and elsewhere (e.g., Olson et al., 2015). These issues were resolved in the two current studies. However, to be maximally transparent, we made the initial study available in the online supplemental material. In addition, in the supplement, we report a meta-analysis of all three studies showing that the overall effects discussed in this study hold even if that study is included.

² Participants in this study completed one additional task that was not central to the purposes of the current study. The results from this task are reported in the online supplemental materials for full transparency.

Additional information

Funding

The current studies were supported by the National Science Foundation [grant numbers 1715068 and 1523632], the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development [grant number 5RO1HD092347], and the Arcus Foundation.