At age 11, children who question their gender identity and who say they want to change sex enter puberty more quickly, according to a study.
- No genetic predisposition was found to transidentity.
- Minors represent 3.3% of holders of a long-term condition (ALD) for transidentity and nearly 70% of beneficiaries are between 18 and 35 years old, according to the High Authority for Health (HAS).
“In 2003, the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne diagnosed only one child with gender dysphoria, while today it treats nearly 200.”, can we read in a communicated of the National Academy of Medicine entitled “Medicine in the face of gender transidentity in children and adolescents”. In this document, gender transidentity is defined as a feeling, strong and lasting more than 6 months, of identification with a gender different from that assigned at birth. In other words, having a male sex and feeling female, and vice versa.
Transidentity: 5% of 11-year-olds want to change gender
According to a study published in the journal Fertility and Sterility, 11-year-olds who question their gender identity enter puberty earlier than those who do not. For this, researchers from Aarhus Universityin Denmark, used data from a research project that followed 100,000 Danish women from 1996 and the growth and development of their children for more than a decade.
When they were 11 years old, scientists asked them about their possible desire to be of the opposite sex. Result: 5% of them declared a partial or complete desire to change sex. Next, the authors collected data on the stages of puberty from all the children, at six-month intervals. Thus, they concluded that those who had trans-identity questions tended to enter puberty earlier than those who did not want to change sex.
Puberty starts earlier in children who are questioning their gender
“The results show that children who, at age 11, said they wanted to be of the opposite sex tended to enter puberty earlier than children who had not expressed a desire to change sex. explains Anne Hjorth Thomsen, one of the main authors of the study, in a Press release. In the study, boys and girls who had previously expressed a desire to change sex entered puberty around two months earlier than their peers.”.
According to the authors, this study could be of particular use to pediatricians who monitor the development of puberty in a child. However, they point out that further work will be needed to better analyze the consequences of trans identity on puberty.
“It is important that healthcare professionals have basic knowledge of pubertal development in children, so that treatment can be applied at the right time, continues Anne Hjorth Thomsen. In this study, we find earlier development of puberty in children who wish to be of the opposite sex, compared to children who do not wish to be of the opposite sex. But we don’t know if children’s own perception of gender affects their pubertal development or if there may be other explanations. We don’t know the underlying causes”.
