The most recent issue of TimeOut Kids features a series of articles on children and sexuality, highlighting the many dilemmas that parents face when educating their children about the realities of sex and gender. Ken Corbett, author of Boyhoods: Rethinking Masculinities, is quoted extensively in a piece on the particularly thorny problem of parenting a gender variant child. Though the repressive desire to force Johnny into playing quarterback when he'd really rather be doing needlepoint has been tempered over the years, Corbett notes that the current model of overencouraging, "free-to-be-you-and-me" parenting can be just as damaging:

“We’re stuck between advocacy and reactive pathologizing,” he says. “We want to be responsive and encouraging, but at the same time, it’s not right—ethically or responsibly—to predict a child’s future. We don’t have an archive of what happens to gender-variant kids. A boy who displays feminine traits as a child may grow up to be transgender, he may be a gay man, he may be a straight man who is a good father, he may become an artist with a sensitive temperament.”

There seems to be no magic model for parenting, regardless of the child's gender identity, but Corbett notes that communication may be the most important element of any healthy relationship. "If your son says he wants to be a girl, Corbett adds, ask him why. 'The answer may not be what you expect.'”

A discussion about the piece continues on the New York Times's Motherlode blog.