| > Not providing a 10 year old with puberty blockers when you suspect that it is because the child has been manipulated into believing that they have gender dysphoria is practicing medicine. So I am not proposing that we deny anyone access to medicine. Of course if there were some specific reason to believe that the child was being manipulated, then it would be medically appropriate not to treat them with puberty blockers. But you said "this is a serious hole in the argument for providing gender affirming care to children" as if you think this should be the overriding concern even when there's no specific evidence that the child is being manipulated. That is what I take issue with. Suppose that we were discussing an influencer parent who was exploiting their child's blindness for social media views. Would you be telling people that it's just as likely as not that the child is just pretending to be blind to satisfy the parent with Munchhausen's? If not, you're special pleading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_pleading. > Parents with Munchausen's manipulating their prepubescent children into socially transitioning is a good explanation for the rise in prepubscent children socially transitioning It's a very poor explanation, because more people of all ages are transitioning more than in the past, not just prepubescent children. It also stands against an obvious and much simpler explanation, which is that children today are more likely to encounter the idea that someone can be trans and much less likely to be told to suppress non-normative gendered behavior. > we must allow ourselves to consider the possibility that it happens a lot, since Munchausen's is at least as common as gender dysphoria. You say that as if it means that a given child presenting with gender dysphoria is just as likely to have Munchausen's by proxy as actual gender dysphoria. But there are tens of thousands of possible conditions someone with Munchausen's might imitate instead. We should expect that the fraction of them that imitate gender dysphoria is dwarfed by the number of people who actually have gender dysphoria. It's telling that your argument is entirely theoretical. If there were a significant number of children manipulated into socially transitioning because of Munchausen's by proxy, there would be actual confirmed examples to refer to. If it were a large-scale social problem, there would be data on its prevalence. But there isn't, because this is a scenario fabricated to apply unjustified scrutiny to children with gender dysphoria. |
I disagree with your apparent assumption that "manipulation" by a parent must not only be a negative thing, but that it must also be a conscious effort made by the parent to affect their child's behavior one way or the other. I put the word "manipulation" in quotes because I believe that for many people the word carries a negative connotation, and I'm attempting to point out that in the context of parenting it absolutely does not have to be negative.
I think it's important to note that when children do things that upset a parent, the parent will naturally react in a way that potentially "manipulates" the child into not acting that way anymore.
For instance, if a child acts out at school and gets suspended for a few days, some parents might frown but then say, "That's okay. We know that this incident doesn't reflect who you are." But then let's imagine that the parent is more distant than usual that night, and doesn't interact with their child as much as they normally do (for instance, they might not ask about the child's day during dinner). Even though the parent may not be intentionally doing this (maybe they're just caught up thinking about their child, and what they can do to help), they are in fact sending signals to their child displaying their displeasure.
Similarly, when a child does something that pleases a parent, the child might discover that the parent is more talkative than usual at the dinner table that night, and more interested in what's going on in the child's life. This rewarding behavior could be explained by a parent simply being excited about their offspring succeeding.
In this way you can see that it doesn't take much to "manipulate" a child's behavior. Some people might refer to "attempting to manipulate the behavior of their children to produce a desired outcome" as "parenting". If a child throws a rock and breaks a neighbors window then a parent might scold the child, and this absolutely counts as "manipulating" the child's behavior.
Getting back to the discussion at hand, when a parent rewards their child for a specific behavior in a manner that suggests that the child is courageous and unique, the child might feel pressured to continue engaging in that behavior. If a child is considered by their parent to be courageous and unique when they engage in a specific type of behavior, what might the parent think if the child suddenly stops this behavior (from the child's perspective)? Instead of courageous and unique, will the child now suspect that their parent views them as a cowardly sheep, or a quitter? Is it so far fetched to imagine a scenario in which a child takes a certain stance as a rebellious gesture, but then finds that it backfires when their parents are thrilled about it and shares it with the world? Can you imagine the potential embarrassment of the child? Adults aren't the only humans who can get embarrassed, afterall.
In summary, even such small things as a frown or a smile (or even talking a little less or more than usual) can serve to manipulate a child's behavior, let alone ecstatically sharing every detail of a kid's behavior to the online world. Creating the equivalent of a reality TV show of a child's life will absolutely impose the unspoken expectations and unconscious biases of the parent, and will in effect manipulate the child's behavior and course of action.
Edit explanation: Clarified a point earlier in my response, and fixed/embellished a few sentences.