Hopkins research shows nature, not nurture, determi...( ticles and male hormone levels in utero...)

ticles and male hormone levels in utero had been normal at birth. All but two had been surgically reconstructed as females and raised unequivocally as females. Today, the 12 raised as females are strongly male-typical in their activities, attitudes, friends, and play. Six of them reassigned themselves back to their male gender, at ages 5, 7, 8, 9, 11, and 12 years old. The two who were not reassigned female at birth were developmentally far more like their normal male peers and psychologically better adjusted than the sex-reassigned children, Reiner reports.

In the second study, Reiner followed an additional 12 genetically male children in his Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Clinic for Gender Identity and Psychosexual Disorders, in the Johns Hopkins Children's Center. Referred from outside university centers, all had been born with this same pelvic field defect, and sex-reassigned as females at birth. Eight of the 12 have since sex-reassigned themselves back to male. Three sets of parents plan to tell their children their genetic sex of birth "soon"; all expect their children to switch back to a male gender when they learn their birth gender.

Reiner called for a thorough reexamination of the practice of sex-reassignment of children, and urged extreme caution in surgically reconstructing these children at birth. "These studies indicate that with time and age, children may well know what their gender is, regardless of any and all information and child-rearing to the contrary. They seem to be quite capable of telling us who they are, and we can observe how they act and function even before they can tell us."

He urges parents to get all the data before making surgical or gender decisions. "Children with major, severe genital anomalies -- not necessarily hypospadias or other common anomalies -- but those with severe genital problems need early and full consultation at a medical center where such children are routinely evaluated and foll
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Contact: Wendy Mullins
wmullins@jhmi.edu
410-223-1741
Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions
12-May-2000

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