Book Review: Transgender Children and Youth: Cultivating Pride and Joy With Families in Transition

Transgender Children and Youth: Cultivating Pride and Joy With Families in Transition, by Elijah Nealy,W.W. Norton & Company, New York, NY, ISBN: 978-0393-71139-4, 2017, 423 pages, $27.95.

    Nealy’s book is useful for social work practitioners, social work educators, and social work students.  The organization of the book allows the reader to progress from basic information and appropriate use of language and terms related to transgender youth to specific strategies for working with transgender youth and their families in clinical and school settings. The writing throughout the book is both clear and concise. The case examples throughout are thought-provoking and allow the practitioners, educators, and students to critically reflect on apt intervention strategies, the need for interdisciplinary collaboration, and the necessity of developing a robust bank of trans accepting and trans friendly referral resources.

    Nealy does an excellent job of laying out important issues to consider when trans kids enter therapy, including vital concerns regarding disclosure, social transitions, and medical transitions. Significantly, Nealy looks at trans children and teens in the context of their social environment, providing chapters that focus on families and school, as well as general information on living life as a trans youth. The final chapter of the book provides life-affirming practices that adults can integrate into their everyday interactions with trans youth. These practices are useful and important for the parents of trans kids, as well as for practitioners and educators who will inevitably teach and work with trans children and youth.

    The appendices are a strength of the text. The resource appendix is packed with information on helplines, websites, and professional organizations.

    Practitioners and educators can find support for youth in crisis and those who need healthcare, legal help, and/or advocacy services. Further, the resource appendix includes a list of summer camps for children and teens, as well as reading lists for children, teens, and their families. In addition to the resource appendix is one that provides social workers with templates for letters to support their clients who want to access hormone blockers, hormone therapy, and appropriately-gendered identification documents. These letters provide important support for practitioners working with trans youth.

    Overall, Elijah Nealy’s Transgender Children and Youth: Cultivating Pride and Joy With Families in Transition is useful, if not essential, reading for all who are studying, teaching, or working in the field of social work.

Reviewed by Pamela Viggiani, LMSW, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Greater Rochester Collaborative MSW Program, The College at Brockport.