Emerging Gender Identities: Understanding the Diverse Experiences of Today's Youth

by Mark Yarhouse, Julia Sadusky

Overview

"This inviting text provides a useful framework for Christians to use in approaching what can be difficult conversations around gender identity."—Publishers Weekly

This book offers a measured Christian response to the diverse gender identities that are being embraced by an increasing number of adolescents. Mark Yarhouse and Julia Sadusky offer an honest, scientifically informed, compassionate, and nuanced treatment for all readers who care about or work with gender-diverse youth: pastors, church leaders, parents, family members, youth workers, and counselors.

Yarhouse and Sadusky help readers distinguish between current mental health concerns, such as gender dysphoria, and the emerging gender identities that some young people turn to for a sense of identity and community. Based on the authors' significant clinical and ministry experience, this book casts a vision for practically engaging and ministering to teens navigating diverse gender-identity concerns. It also equips readers to critically engage gender theory based on a Christian view of sex and gender.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781587434341
Publisher:	Baker Publishing Group
Publication date:	08/18/2020
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	358,671
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Mark Yarhouse (PsyD, Wheaton College), a licensed clinical psychologist, is the Dr. Arthur P. Rech and Mrs. Jean May Rech Chair of Psychology in the School of Psychology, Counseling, and Family Therapy at Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois, where he leads the Sexual & Gender Identity Institute. Yarhouse has authored or coauthored several books, including the well-received Understanding Gender Dysphoria.

Julia Sadusky (PsyD, Regent University) works as a clinical psychologist in Denver, Colorado. She also serves as a youth and ministry educator, offering trainings and consultations on the intersection of sexuality, gender, and theology. Her research experiences and clinical training have focused on the study of sexual and gender identity, including providing individual, family, couples, and group therapy for those navigating sexual- and gender-identity concerns. She is an advisor for the Center for Faith, Sexuality & Gender.

Table of Contents

Contents

Part 1: Making Important Distinctions
1. The Transgender Experience and Emerging Gender Identities
2. How Language and Categories Shape Gender Identities
3. Controversies in Care
Part 2: Seeing the Person
4. Foundations for Relationship
5. Locating Your Area of Engagement
6. Locating the Person: A Relational-Narrative Approach
7. Engaging Youth: Looking beneath the Surface
8. Ministry Structures for Youth
9. Recovering a Hermeneutic of Christian Hope

Editorial Reviews

06/01/2020

Christian psychologists Yarhouse (Understanding Gender Dysphoria) and Sadusky team up in this thorough guide for parents and other adults who work with gender-diverse Christian youth to help them understand the current landscape of gender diversity among young people from a cultural, clinical, and theological perspective. The authors provide some basic definitions and a short history of clinical involvement in—and some of the current controversies around treatment for—gender nonconformity. They affirm that atypical gender expression has a long, varied history and should not be understood as pathological, and resist both fully innate and fully social models of gender identity, arguing instead that gender arises from a combination of internal self-knowledge and externally available language and social knowledge. In the book’s second half, they offer specifically Christian guidance for those assisting youth in discerning what their own path forward in relation to gender may be. The authors anticipate a spectrum of possible Christian approaches to gender identity that range from rejection of gender nonconformity to radical welcome and celebration of gender diversity. This inviting text provides a useful framework for Christians to use in approaching what can be difficult conversations around gender identity. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly