New gender socializations in childhood. A research with Trans children and adolescents in Mexico

Abstract

The article studies the gender socialization during childhood and the identification process in trans children and adolescents, through concrete processes, through an innovative proposal, based mainly on an ethnographic approach in Mexico. Trans children and adolescents are subject to the sometimes contradictory forces of gender socialization in the network of interdependency relationships between the areas where they develop: school, family (primary socialization spaces traditionally understood as crucial), clinical spaces, peer groups, as well as online spaces. These socializations can compete or complement each other. The position of childhood and the dependence that it means on the family maintain it as an agent that facilitates or significantly constrains the identity development of adolescents. However, new spaces for socialization, such as virtual social networks compete with or may contradict socializations in primary spaces and socializations in other peer groups. The text shows the tensions between the constraints to which children and adolescents are subjected according to how the styles, behaviors and dispositions of the parents socialize their behavior, and how the unexpected behaviors of the children re socialize parents and other social spaces where they develop.