Truth and Belonging Are Not Enemies: Raising Gender Confident Kids
Sometimes a basketball game stops being about basketball. Recently, a professional women’s basketball game became part of a much larger public disagreement over sex, gender identity, belonging, and women’s sports. The signs, shirts, protests, and public statements received most of the attention, but I think parents have to look beneath the noise. There are children listening. Girls are wondering what it means to be female. And children wrestling with their bodies or gender are hearing adults argue about them in ways that can make them feel more like symbols in a cultural fight than people who need to be known and loved.
That is why I do not think our first parenting strategy should be to wait for the next headline and then explain why our side is right. Formation needs to begin much earlier. Dr. Kathy Koch often reminds parents to use words like "created" and "C natur” naturally in everyday life. “God gave you the ability to run.” “I love the way God made you notice people.” We are not only giving compliments. We are helping children develop a larger understanding of themselves: I am not an accident. I am a whole person, created intentionally by a good God.
Security Has to Come Before Identity
This is where Dr. Kathy’s Five Core Needs become particularly important. Security asks, “Who can I trust?” Identity asks, “Who am I?” Belonging asks, “Who wants me?” Purpose asks, “Why am I alive?” Competence asks, “What do I do well?” Our culture often tries to begin with identity: decide who you are and then find people who will affirm that identity. But children need something underneath identity. They need a trustworthy source outside themselves. Christian parents can say, “You can trust us to love you and tell you the truth. More importantly, we trust God because He created you and knows you completely.”
Scripture therefore cannot function merely as ammunition for an argument. It forms the foundation on which children learn to interpret themselves. Psalm 139 describes a God intimately involved in our creation. Isaiah 64 pictures God as the potter and us as the work of His hand. Ephesians 2:10 describes believers as God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works. Esther 4 reminds us that human lives occupy real moments and purposes within God’s providence. The repeated message is not “figure yourself out and then ask God to approve.” It is that God knows, creates, calls, redeems, and gives His people an identity deeper than whatever cultural category currently feels most urgent.
Gender Matters, but It Is Not the Whole Identity
This is also where parents need precision. Christian confidence about being male or female should not reduce children to stereotypes. A girl does not prove she is female by loving pink or dresses. A boy does not become more male because he enjoys football or fixing things. Children have many gifts, personalities, interests, weaknesses, and ways of expressing themselves. From a historic Christian understanding, being male or female is part of the embodied life God gives us, but it is not the only thing true about us. Our deepest identity is ultimately found in belonging to Christ.
That broader identity matters because thin identities are fragile. If a girl concludes, “I do not like the things girls around me like, so perhaps I am not really a girl,” she needs adults who can widen the picture rather than panic. “You are a girl, and there are countless ways girls can think, create, move, lead, work, and serve.” The same is true for boys. Gender confidence should create freedom from stereotypes, not more pressure to conform to them. We help children receive their bodies without forcing their personalities into culturally manufactured boxes.
People Are More Than the Labels in an Argument
Christians also need to be extremely careful with how we talk about people who experience gender dysphoria or identify as transgender. Whatever conclusions we reach about gender, the person standing in front of us is real. They bear God’s image. They have a history we may not know, fears we have not heard, relationships we cannot see, and questions that may be far more complicated than the slogan being debated online. We can disagree with a claim about identity without treating the person making that claim as an enemy.
That means belonging and truth cannot be separated. “You belong” should never mean “every conclusion you reach about yourself must therefore be true.” None of us would want love to operate that way. Good parents challenge children precisely because they love them. Good friends sometimes say what is difficult. Christian love does not require affirmation of every belief; neither does Christian conviction permit contempt. First Corinthians 13 tells us that love “rejoices with the truth.” Truth without love becomes a weapon. Love without truth becomes sentimentality. Christian formation requires both.
The Sports Argument Reveals a Deeper Fear
The public disagreement over women’s sports also exposes competing fears. Some people fear that if biological sex ceases to matter in female athletic categories, girls and women may lose opportunities, records, roster spots, or competitive fairness. Others fear that refusing to recognize a person’s stated gender identity communicates rejection or exclusion. Those concerns come from different understandings of the human person, but parents should help children learn to identify the fear beneath an argument rather than simply shouting louder than the person across from them.
That skill will serve children far beyond this issue. Public controversies become less dehumanizing when we can say, “I understand what you are afraid of losing, even though I disagree with the conclusion you reached.” Compassion does not erase conviction. It allows us to speak from conviction without needing to caricature someone else. Our children need to see adults strong enough to hold a belief and gentle enough to remain curious about the person who disagrees.
The Lost Sheep Is Still a Sheep Worth Finding
Luke 15 gives us another important posture. Jesus describes a shepherd who leaves the ninety nine to pursue one lost sheep. The lostness matters because the sheep matters. The shepherd does not stand at a distance and yell that the sheep made a foolish navigational decision. He goes after it and brings it home. The picture is not permission for parents to force every cultural question into one simplistic analogy, but it does reveal something about the heart of God: lost people are pursued, not discarded.
That changes the posture we bring to a child experiencing profound confusion about identity. Our first task is not to turn that child into an argument for a political position. We listen and ask what is underneath the statement. Is there fear? Shame? Rejection? A desire to belong? Discomfort with puberty? Social pressure? A painful experience? We do not assume one universal story. We love enough to understand the actual child. And for Christian families, we continue pointing toward the God who knows them more completely than they know themselves.
Build Confidence Before the Crisis
The best time to teach children that their bodies are good is not after they begin questioning whether they are. The best time to communicate, “You can tell me anything, and I will not stop loving you,” is long before the difficult disclosure. Ordinary parenting lays the groundwork children stand on when difficult questions arise.
So speak over children what is true. Celebrate their embodied life without making appearance the center of their worth. Let boys be gentle. Let girls be strong. Let artistic boys create, and athletic girls compete without suggesting that interests determine sex. Teach children that God’s creativity is much larger than stereotypes. Anchor them in Christ strongly enough that they do not need every passing cultural category to explain who they are.
Our children are entering a culture that will make enormous promises about identity. Some voices will be loud and confident. Parents cannot control all those voices. We can become trustworthy ones. We can build homes where children know, “My parents delight in me. They will listen to me. They will not panic when I struggle. They believe God created me intentionally. They will tell me the truth, and they will stay close while I wrestle with it.” That combination of security and truth is one of the strongest gifts we can give.
Engaging Gender Confidence Through the 8 Great Smarts
Word Smart: Read and discuss passages such as Psalm 139:13–14, Isaiah 64:8, and Ephesians 2:10. Give children language for describing themselves that is broader than appearance, popularity, or stereotypes.
Logic Smart: Help children distinguish between feelings, claims, bodies, identities, and conclusions. Encourage questions without treating questioning itself as rebellion.
Picture Smart: Look at family photographs across generations and talk about embodied continuity, growth, resemblance, uniqueness, and the many different ways men and women look and express personality.
Music Smart: Notice the wide variety of male and female musicians, composers, worship leaders, and performers. Use music to demonstrate that gifts and interests are not confined to narrow gender stereotypes.
Body Smart: Celebrate what the body can do rather than focusing primarily on appearance. Run, build, dance, work, play sports, cook, create, and serve while reinforcing gratitude for embodied life.
Nature Smart: Observe the embodied order and diversity of creation. Allow the natural world to inspire conversations about both meaningful distinctions and extraordinary variety.
People Smart: Teach children to treat people with dignity even in disagreement. Practice responding graciously when a friend believes something your family does not.
Self Smart: Give reflective children room to ask difficult questions privately and honestly. Remind them that feelings deserve attention but do not have to become immediate conclusions about identity.
Remember: However your child is smart, give them something sturdier than a cultural slogan: You are known by God, created intentionally, loved deeply, and safe enough here to ask hard questions.