Here’s the latest in an occasional series on how Parents magazine, a popular and ostensibly harmless outlet providing child-caring tips, smuggles in ultra-left-wing views inside the diaper bags, views that are harmful to the very children Parents is supposed to be helping. The latest offensive entry, “Medical Experts Continue to Support Gender-Affirming Care for Trans Youth -- It can change and save lives,” was written by Wendy Wisner and posted Wednesday. Read it before it gets flushed down the memory hole as well!
We’re a long way from Peppa Pig and CoComelon:
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently released a review about gender dysphoria and gender-affirming care for youth in America. The review was written following President Trump’s executive order that calls on the federal government to stop supporting gender transitioning for children under the age of 19.
There’s bias by omission here, ignoring the recent pullback on “gender-affirming care” in Europe and especially policy changes in the United Kingdom driven by the comprehensive 2024 Cass Report from the National Health Service:
The Academy of American Pediatrics (AAP) questioned the integrity of the report and its conclusions in their recent statement. “This report misrepresents the current medical consensus and fails to reflect the realities of pediatric care,” Susan Kressly, MD, president of the AAP, commented. “AAP was not consulted in the development of this report, yet our policy and intentions behind our recommendations were cited throughout in inaccurate and misleading ways.”
Never forget that the supposed academic health experts at AAP are in fact Democratic hacks, and the group’s institutional credibility has been on the decline since it recommended masking up toddlers; and contradicting its previous strong call to re-open schools after President Trump called for the same thing in a stunning display of cowardice surely spurred by the powerful left-wing teachers union leadership.
Wisner found a “queer psychotherapist” to spout bad science about “reversible” puberty blockers.
Medical interventions aren’t offered to young trans children, but may be offered closer to puberty. “For adolescents, puberty blockers (which are known to be reversible) may be offered or necessary,” says Prerna Menon, LCSW, a queer psychotherapist at Boundless Therapy, who works with LGBTQ+ teens. Later, hormone replacement therapy may be offered to older teens or young adults. Surgery is rarely—if ever—part of a gender-affirming care plan for a minor, Menon says.
Parents continued to boost the dangerous misnomer “gender-affirming care.”
Gender-affirming care can change lives, says Minor. “I’ve seen kids go from anxious, withdrawn, and depressed to vibrant, engaged, and hopeful -- just because they were finally given the space to be themselves,” she describes. “For many of my clients, it’s not about ‘becoming’ someone else -- it’s about shedding layers of shame, fear, or silence.
Wisner played the discredited suicide card, of course.
Not only can gender-affirming care change lives, it can save them. “Clients of mine have repeatedly stated that gender-affirming care saved their life,” says Rachel D. Miller, PhD, LMFT, founder at Hold The Vision Therapy and a therapist who works with transgender youth.
….
Here’s where the power of gender affirming care can be felt. As Trevor Project’s 2023 Survey on the Mental Health of LBGTQ youth found, trans and non-binary youth who lived with people who affirmed them and respected their pronouns had lower rates of attempted suicide.
(The Trevor Project aggressively pushes so-called “gender-affirming” surgeries onto kids.)
Lastly, there’s a myth that being trans or non-binary is simply a cultural trend -- one that scores of young people seem to be "latching onto." But this is untrue….
“Social contagion” in fact would explain the dramatic rise in transgender diagnoses.
This wasn't the first time Parents delved into the left-wing.
In November 2023, the month after Hamas murdered, raped, and kidnapped thousands of Israeli civilians, Parents was instead telling readers “How To Talk to Kids About Islamophobia.” The sub-head served as a sample of Hamas-denial: “As attacks on Palestine intensify, anti-Muslim rhetoric and violence have increased worldwide….” (Parents eventually took the piece down, which the author blamed on, you guessed it, “Islamophobia.”)
Before that, Parents smeared the conservative activist group Moms for Liberty as “Klanned Karenhood” in an article that has also seemingly vanished from Parents.com, but whose blurb is preserved on the magazine’s Instagram feed.
