“Is it a boy or a girl?” New parents know this question well. But not all cases can be answered unequivocally. What happens when the child cannot be clearly classified as “girl” or “boy”?
The United Nations estimates that up to 1.7% of children are born intersex. German sociologist Anike Krämer explains what this means for families.
What is intersex?
In biology there are four physical characteristics that are currently used to define gender. They are the chromosomes, the hormones, the gonads and the genitals. If these four characteristics do not point clearly in the direction of “masculine” or “feminine”, we speak of intersex. By the way, intersex has nothing to do with what gender one is sexually attracted to or how one identifies.
When do parents realize their child is intersex, directly after birth or only after several years?
The child’s genitalia may not look as expected after birth. Sometimes things go differently, as I have experienced through interviews with affected parents. There was the case of children who had an inguinal hernia in the first year of life and had to be operated on. And it turned out that the alleged girls had testicles in their abdomens. A second important period is puberty, when it becomes apparent that the child’s body is not developing as expected. Then the supposed girl’s mustaches grow or the supposed man’s breasts grow. It is also possible that people find out about intersex much later or not at all.
When families find out “my child is intersex”, what happens to their parents?
I spoke with parents who received their child’s intersex diagnosis in their first year of life. Many parents assured that they suffered a shock because they did not know what this meant for their lives, for the life of the minor, for their education. This generates a lot of insecurity in the parents.
What are the specific questions that appear at that moment?
Diagnosis usually takes place in a medical setting, so it is often doctors who provide the information. However, if they know their child is healthy, as is the case with many intersex children, parents have only a few medical questions at first. Parents often have more questions about everyday issues. Do we leave the pink color of the walls of the children’s room as it is? Is it okay for my son to wear dresses now? What kind of toys do I buy him? These questions may seem banal, but there is a much bigger problem behind them.
What problem, specifically?
This shows the extent to which we tailor our actions to the gender we believe the other person has. But if these rules are removed – how to treat a girl, how to treat a boy? – parents don’t know what to do. Parents are afraid that this may also embarrass other people and are worried. What does this mean for kindergarten? For the school? For your friendships and your subsequent relationships? What we have planned or simply assumed for our son’s life – in sociology they speak of a “road map of life” – has to be redesigned.
Parents of intersex children also face many questions. What can help parents cope well?
Krämer: The parents I have interviewed have been helped by finding other intersex people or other parents of intersex children. They need role models and want to know how other families with intersex children live. In this way, they can analyze if they want to do it in a similar way or completely differently. This helps parents. Self-help groups are also a good starting point for this. Counseling centers have also dealt with the topic more and more in recent years.
Parents of intersex children have some decisions to make, such as which gender should be registered…
What worries parents about the issue of gender registration in the civil registry –whether it is female, male, diverse or without income– are the consequences that derive from it. Are all preventive exams covered by health insurance, for example, if the intersex person has a prostate, but the registration is “female”? And what about other rights or regulations in which gender plays an important role? Do I have to “out” my child, for example, at school or other registrations?
Anike Krämer currently works in the research area of the Center for Gender Studies at the University of Paderborn (Germany). For her dissertation on the everyday experience of parents of intersex children, Krämer received second prize in the social sciences category of the Körber Foundation German Study Prize 2021.
Source: Eluniverso
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