Trans youth as consistent in their identity as cis youth, study shows

Transgender youth are as consistent in their identity as cisgender youth, a new study shows.

A study for the Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD) revealed that, for an overwhelming majority of youngsters in North America, gender identity and sexuality remain a largely “stable trait“.

Published last month, the research looked at the gender identity and sexuality of more than 900 cisgender and trans young people between 2013 and 2024.

More than 80 per cent remained consistently comfortable in their expressed gender identity, including those who had transitioned during childhood, and trans children were shown to be “no more or less likely” to show or express regret than their cisgender peers.

When there was a wish to change, it was more often than not to identifying as non-binary, rather than back to the gender assigned at birth. Almost 12 per cent of those who did change gender were documented as cisgender at the beginning of the study, but later identified as trans.

The study also observed “high rates” of youngsters self-reporting as having LGBTQ+ sexual orientation, which implied a “substantial shift toward flexibility in thinking about gender and sexuality among today’s youth”.

The results suggest, researchers said, that stability in gender expression among young people today is consistent whether they are transgender or not and that all youngsters “can and do change how they think about their identities,” which was contrary to a “major assumption present in decades of classic research in developmental psychology”.

The researchers concluded: “We hope these results will not only refine our field’s theories about how youth conceptualise the social identities of gender and sexual orientation but also inform broader societal understanding toward, and support of, gender-diverse and sexual-minority children and adolescents.”

The belief that transgender children are persuaded to transition by societal “trend”, often referred to as Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria (ROGD), is particularly prominent within anti-trans groups.

ROGD is a discredited theory that claims a sub-section of those with gender dysphoria begin to express symptoms through “social contagion“.

First published in 2016, physician Lisa Littman’s theory has been dismissed by more than 60 major medical organisations, including the American Psychological Association, which called for it to be eliminated from clinical settings.

Littman later issued a correction, saying ROGD was not a formal diagnosis.

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