New research finds that trans teens have high satisfaction with gender care

Updated October 23, 2024 at 12:28 PM ET

A study published Monday in JAMA Pediatrics finds that transgender teens who have undergone medical interventions such as puberty blockers and hormones are very satisfied with their care.

“Regret was very rare,” says lead author Kristina Olson, a professor of psychology at Princeton University.

It’s the latest research from the TransYouth Project, which Olson started in 2013, when transgender youth was a fairly obscure area of ​​research, far from the political spotlight.

At the time, “our team was interested in recruiting a group of children who were in social transition,” he explains, meaning they started using new pronouns and names and clothes during childhood, between the ages of 5 and 12. They found 300 families and have followed. since then, to see “what their lives would be like when they reached adolescence and adulthood.”

Families enrolled in the program have participated in many research projects over the years, from childhood gender development to mental health. The plan is to follow them for a total of 20 years.

The regret and satisfaction study is based on a survey of 220 of these families. By now, the children are teenagers (the average age of the participants was 16) and have been taking puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones for several years.

“What we found was that this group had very high levels of satisfaction,” he says. Olson knew from being in contact with the families that they seemed quite happy with their care, but the results still surprised her. “I was quite surprised at how satisfied they were – over 50% (rated their satisfaction) at a 7 on a 7-point scale.”

Only 4% of participants (nine children) expressed regret about any aspect of their care. When the researchers asked more about these regrets, he says, “often the regrets they expressed had to do with (wishing) they hadn’t taken blockers and gone straight to hormones, or maybe they had a negative side effect related to the blockers.” For example, having an implant that became irritated.

He adds that although repentance was very rare, it is still important and needs to be better understood.

Four children in the study who expressed regret continued their treatments, while four others chose to stop all gender-affirming medical care, and one stated that he was considering stopping.

“I don’t think it’s at all surprising that the researchers found a lower rate of regret,” says Linsdey Dawson, who directs LGBTQ health policy for the nonprofit health research organization KFF. “This aligns with previous findings that gender-affirming attention is associated with low rates of regret in both youth and adults.”

She says the results of Olson’s study are important and notes that she regrets the attention to affirming gender is very low compared to other medical decisions, such as gastric bypass surgery, which is also done in minors.

This new study comes at a time when transgender children and their medical care are a hot topic politically: In former President Trump’s presidential campaign and in several key Senate races, transgender issues are part of candidates’ closing arguments .

Earlier this year, in a campaign video, Trump said that “the left-wing gender insanity being pushed on our children is child abuse, very simple,” and listed the ways in which he would use his executive power to prevent people from transitioning and punish schools and hospitals that support transgender youth.

In recent years there has also been a flurry of legislative action on this issue at the state level. Twenty-six states have enacted laws banning the care the young people in this study received. Legislators often cite the prospect of children’s future regret as the reason these bans are needed.

For example, on the floor of the Wyoming state house in February, Republican Rep. Pepper Ottman explained why she co-sponsored that state’s ban. “We have to protect these kids from the mistakes of a lifetime,” he said. “This is talking about physical changes that are not natural. These things are not good.”

Virtually every major medical organization in the United States, including the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics, supports gender-based access to care for youth.

“The discourse about regret when it comes to gender affirmation has become a big issue because it’s inaccurate,” says Dawson. He points to a recent analysis by KFF that found in September that the narrative lamenting the gender-affirming attention was commonplace was mentioned roughly 41,000 times in posts, articles and comments.

Discussion of regret for trans-related care “has become a common form of misinformation in debate and policy-making and in the courts,” says Dawson.

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