Free to Be: Understanding Kids & Gender Identity

An authoritative guide to understanding and navigating gender identity from an acclaimed expert on the mental health of transgender and gender diverse youth.

Kids today are more gender fluent and expansive than ever before. In America, around two percent of teenagers (over 700,000) openly identify as transgender. As it becomes increasingly common for us to encounter and know transgender kids, as well as kids with more expansive notions of gender than past generations, it is vital that we have the tools we need in order to truly see and support them.

Free to Be is an authoritative deep dive by internationally renowned child and adolescent psychiatrist Dr. Jack Turban into the science, medicine, and politics of gender identity. You will be immersed in the lives of three trans and gender diverse youth--Meredith, Kyle, and Sam--as they navigate their gender identities, make decisions around gender-affirming medical and psychological care, and confront an overwhelming political and social terrain.

By combining the latest scientific research, stories of transgender children, and the intricacies of today’s political gender wars, Free to Be gives you the tools to help the kids in your life navigate the complexity of gender identity, while also coming to better understand what the nuances of gender mean to yourself and society at large.

Jack Turban, MD, MHS is a Harvard, Yale, and Stanford-trained child and adolescent psychiatrist and founding director of the Gender Psychiatry Program at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). He is an internationally recognized researcher and clinician whose expertise and research on the mental health of transgender youth have been cited in legislative debates and major federal court cases regarding the civil rights of transgender people in the United States. He is also a frequent contributor to TheNew York Times, CNN, TheWashington Post, Scientific American, and more. He has appeared on numerous programs, including The Daily Show with Trevor Noah and PBS NewsHour.