How the Parents of Trans Teens Are Fighting for Their Kids’

Almost a decade ago, Judy Caplan Peters’s
four-year-old made an announcement that
would shake their family’s values to its
core. “Mommy,” the little one said, hand
on chest as if to recite the pledge of
allegiance, “I’m a boy.”
A simple enough statement except that, up
until that moment, her child had been
raised a girl. Sander*, as he’s known now,
had been born with a girl’s anatomy, went
by a girl’s name, and dressed in girls’
clothes.
His mother did not try to argue him out of
it. She’d seen the signs, beginning with the
phone calls from school advising that her
child refused to sit with the girls when the
students were divided by gender. Or
saying that Sander had a headache, a
stomachache, or just wasn’t feeling well
and wanted to come home. She knew
Sander was not happy on some
fundamental level, which, for her, meant
she did not have a choice in the matter.
“You either love your child for who they
are,” she says, “or you don’t. It’s that
simple.”
Simple but not easy. “I had to go through a
grieving process,” Caplan Peters admits,
“because I was losing my daughter, but
then you realize that your child is not dead
or sick or lost, which, God forbid, some
parents have to deal with. Your child is
healthy. There is nothing wrong with
them. This is how they were born.”
For the estimated 150,000 trans teenagers
in America , the threat of death is real. No
fewer than 40 percent of trans adults have
attempted suicide in their lifetimes. Jack
Turban, M.D., a researcher and
psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School,
recalls seeing a transgender girl so
disgusted by her genitals that she refused
to go to the bathroom, causing intestinal
damage severe enough that she needed
surgery. As recently as ten years ago,
Turban explained, it was assumed that the
state of being “misgendered” inevitably
made children miserable and that the only
way for these kids to thrive was to be
somehow “cured.” But faced with the
alarming instances of self-harm among
this population, doctors finally began to
wonder: What if there was nothing
inherently wrong with these kids? What if
the problem was how they were treated by
the world? If these children were accepted
and loved, if their parents helped them to
embrace the gender they felt they were
born to—through either drug therapy or
nonmedical “social transitions”—would
they be happier? Would the suicide rate
drop? The studies were small, but the
message was clear: Acceptance is
protection.
Fourteen years ago, Kerry Murtagh, the 37-
year-old mother of a toddler in upstate
New York was, unbeknownst to her, about
to become a trailblazer in the new world
of transgender acceptance. Her child, now
called Ariel, had always gravitated toward
toys associated with little girls, despite
having a boy’s body. In preschool, Ariel
would run straight to the costume trunk
and put on a sparkly pink princess dress,
which she insisted on wearing all day.
Murtagh assumed it was a phase or that
her very sensitive child might be gay, but
as time went on, the behaviors morphed
into something else. Because Ariel wore
her hair long and favored gender-neutral
clothing like tie-dyed T-shirts, strangers
usually assumed she was a girl; Murtagh
would correct them until one day when
Ariel asked her to stop. She liked it when
people thought she was a girl. It was what
she felt inside.
Murtagh accepted the situation, but Ariel’s
father wasn’t as sanguine. The couple
attempted counseling, but their therapists
were as divided as they were. One
professional sided with her then-husband
when the couple disagreed whether to let
Ariel, who still went by a boy’s name,
paint her fingernails. “Why would you do
that?” the therapist demanded. But a
different, more sympathetic one helped
Murtagh to understand that she could not
deny her child the right to live the way she
wanted. At ten years old, Ariel
transitioned. The marriage did not
survive, but Murtagh saw her previously
anxious child blossom.
Once Murtagh decided to support her
daughter, she threw herself into research.
She eventually discovered Lupron, a
hormone-blocking drug that, when taken
on the cusp of puberty, saves trans girls
from being exposed to testosterone and
trans boys from estrogen. The same year
she transitioned, Ariel began receiving
shots of the drug, which was initially
approved for treating advanced prostate
cancer. Later it was also used to treat
children undergoing premature puberty—
kids, some as young as eight years old, who
were beginning to develop facial hair or
breasts. When it was clear those children
suffered minimal side effects, doctors
became more comfortable prescribing
Lupron for transgender children. But the
drug only blocks the naturally occurring
hormones of the body—in order to exhibit
the characteristics of the opposite sex, you
eventually need supplemental hormones.
Ariel, for instance, began taking estrogen
when she was fourteen. (As with every
child mentioned in this story, discussions
of gender-reassignment surgery are far
down the road, a possibility they will
consider only once they become adults.)
Today, sitting in the living room of her
mother’s suburban home, she is a striking
sixteen-year-old who could be mistaken
for a model. She hasn’t yet started to date,
partly because she understands how
complicated that will be for her. A straight-
A student who plays the bass and considers
herself an activist, Ariel knows how lucky
she has been in the parental dep.
Previous generations of transgender
people look at the children taking
hormone-blocking drugs in awe. When the
writer Andrew Solomon attended a gender
conference to gather research for his
groundbreaking book Far from the Tree:
Parents, Children and the Search for
Identity, he met trans people who openly
wept when they encountered young people
who would never have to go through what
they had: puberty as the wrong sex. “It’s
fantastic,” says novelist and trans activist
Jennifer Finney Boylan about hormone
treatment. “I was OK with my
androgynous body as a child, but when
puberty hit and the girls started going one
way and I had to go with the brutes, I
thought, Oh, no, this is going to be bad.”
Thirty years later she transitioned to
female, becoming one of the movement’s
earliest and most articulate voices.
Ideally, every trans child who needs them
would have access to hormone blockers,
but the price of a monthly shot can be
prohibitive. When Murtagh’s insurance
declined to cover the cost, between $1,500
and $2,000, she got the drug from Canada,
bringing it down to $500 a month; that
was still expensive for her, but once she
saw how happy her daughter became,
forgoing the drug was not an option. If
necessary, Murtagh’s parents would have
mortgaged their house to pay for it. Today
Ariel’s Lupron and estrogen patch are
covered by her employer’s health plan, a
change she attributes to Obamacare.
For families with fewer resources, the
struggle to find acceptance and coverage
can be more challenging. In 2006, when
DeShanna Neal’s three-year-old, now
known as Trinity, began exhibiting the
classic signs of gender dysphoria, the 25-
year-old first-time mother in Wilmington,
Delaware, was mystified. Every day, she
got letters from the school complaining
about Trinity’s behavior. Every day, she
tried to convince Trinity that she was a
boy, but Trinity refused, eventually
retreating into a world of silence
punctuated with acts of violence against
the boys’ jeans her mother gave her to
wear or the bedsheets printed with a
Spider-Man logo. Neal would buy her
trucks to play with, she remembers, “but
then the trucks would have a tea party.”
Neal took her child to doctors who
suspected mental illness, ordering MRIs
and even antipsychotic drugs. One day,
she saw a Barbara Walters special on a kid
from Florida who described herself as a
girl in a boy’s body. “Suddenly,” Neal says
of her first encounter with Jazz Jennings,
“everything clicked.” (Jennings, now
sixteen, has a TLC reality show and is the
coauthor of I Am Jazz , which is among the
Top 10 most controversial books in schools
and libraries.)
With her parents’ support, Trinity socially
transitioned when she was four years old.
Neal was thrilled to see the light return to
her child’s eyes, but the next year, when
Trinity entered kindergarten, her new
school refused to accept her as a girl. “I
went to the teacher and the principal,”
Neal says. “I didn’t know then that I should
have gone to the superintendent, but even
so, there were no laws on the book
protecting transgender rights.” Neal
decided to quit her job at a bank and
homeschool Trinity. The change plunged
her family below the federal poverty line,
but she has no regrets. “Trinity has
humbled me and transformed my family. I
can see her impact on my husband and my
sons. They’re very sensitive and caring of
other people whose stories don’t align with
theirs.”
Seven years later, when puberty loomed,
Trinity became anxious about the
anticipated changes to her body, even
having nightmares about growing a beard.
Neal knew she needed to act. Their doctor
prescribed hormone blockers, but
Medicaid balked at paying. While medical
professionals consider hormone blockers
safe—and for many trans kids
psychologically essential—in practice it
can be exasperatingly difficult for children
to access this kind of care. For eight
months, Neal and her doctor fought to get
coverage. One day, the doctor called with
the good news that Trinity would become
the first trans minor in Delaware whose
hormone therapy was covered by
Medicaid. The doctor was as excited as she
was. “That,” Neal remembers, “was a
wonderful day.”
Next year, when she is fifteen, Trinity will
attend her local high school as a girl. She
has just started taking supplemental
estrogen, and her new school has been
supportive, saying she can use whichever
bathroom she wants, including the nurse’s.
Neal is excited but cautious. “The rates of
violence against trans women of color are
so scary to me,” she says. “The community
is bigger. In the beginning, it was really
lonely, but something is still not working.”
The fear of violence can be strong
motivation for parents who are on the
fence about initiating hormone-blocking
therapy. In Brooklyn, 41-year-old
Francisca Montaña is the kind of mother
who prefers chicken soup over Sudafed. “I
didn’t even want to vaccinate my
children,” she says, though she did. When
her child began identifying strongly as
male, she was initially happy. As a
feminist, Montaña was turned off by
Barbies, princesses, and any
preoccupation with appearance. And when
it became clear during second grade that it
was more than a passing phase, she gladly
helped her child socially transition to male
and his chosen name, Q.
Now eleven, Q is beginning puberty, but
Montaña is struggling with the concept of
hormone-blocking drugs. “It’s a huge
decision, and I need to weigh all the risks.
If he doesn’t get the blockers, he’ll be a boy
with a woman’s body. He’ll endure
bullying and having to explain himself all
the time. My ultimate fear is that someone
will kill him in the street. He’s Latino and
black. Transphobia is real. Racism is real.
On the other hand, am I giving him drugs
because the world cannot understand my
son? Why should he have to change
himself?” Like many of the parents, she
also worries about his ability to one day
have children. “I don’t think he’s old
enough to make these decisions,” Montaña
says. “I can make partial decisions, but
ultimately it’s his body.” For now, Q has
yet to initiate the hormone-blocking
therapy, but the plan is to do so “if that’s
what he decides.”
In a world so filled with firsts and
unknowns, even the most supportive
parents can make an occasional misstep.
When Ariel turned ten, the family moved
from upstate New York to their current
home in northern New Jersey. Murtagh
told the administration of Ariel’s new
school about their situation, but not the
other students. In the trans community, it
is known as going stealth, a decision that
can feel hypocritical to children who have
been told again and again that there is
nothing wrong with them. Initially, Ariel
was careful about finding a safe place to
change her clothes for gym, but as she
became more comfortable with her new
friends, she began staying in the locker
room. One day, she pulled on a tight pair
of leggings that revealed more of her
anatomy than she would have liked. The
girls began to question her aggressively.
“It was traumatic,” Ariel remembers.
“They were bombarding me with
questions. I felt really attacked.”
“It was horrible,” Murtagh confirms.
“I should have just gone in as me,” Ariel
says.
“I wanted them to know her as Ariel
before they knew her as transgender,”
Murtagh says.
In her mother’s defense, the world was a
different place even five years ago.
Laverne Cox had only just appeared on
Orange Is the New Black. Hari Nef had yet
to walk the runway. There was no
Transparent, no Caitlyn Jenner. “Say what
you will about Caitlyn,” says Boylan, who
appeared on I Am Cait as the resident
expert, “visibility brings acceptance. After
she came out, everybody in America could
say they knew a trans person. Our
numbers are so small, so we need to tell
our stories.”
If you don’t know transgender children,
it’s easy to assume they begin life a few
feet behind the starting line. But the more
mothers I encountered, the more I found
something different: Many believed that
having a trans child had made them better
parents. “This is an opportunity for
growth,” insists Jean Malpas, the director
of the Gender & Family Project at the
Ackerman Institute for the Family in New
York City, which runs several support
groups for trans children and their
parents. “It can divide a family, or you can
see parents grow tremendously. I have had
parents say it woke them up. If their child
can be this courageous, then they, too,
were inspired.”
Throughout my conversation with Judy
Caplan Peters, Sander’s mother, she
expressed her opinions in ways that were
thoughtful and complex but also tentative.
She thought she had done the right things
(like Ariel and Trinity, Sander is now on
hormone blockers), she thought her kid
would be OK down the road, but there was
hesitation underneath it all. After all, these
parents are among the first generation to
utilize these practices—there is no
precedent. “I want to protect my child,”
she says. “Does that mean I should be more
vocal? Or less vocal? I just don’t know.”
But the one moment she seemed entirely
unequivocal was when I asked if raising
Sander had made her a better parent.
“Absolutely,” she answered. “Absolutely.
We had to stop and really think about how
to raise our kids and what was important
to us. It changed us like nothing else.”
*The children in this article are referred to
by their preferred names rather than the
ones given to them at birth, which in the
transgender community are often referred
to as “dead” names.

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