Chicagoans is a first-person account from off the beaten track, as told to Anne Ford. This week’s Chicagoan is Elizabeth Yerkes, pediatric urologist.
“The thing is, you can decide which bathroom the baby uses at school and what clothes you dress them in, but their gender identity is innate, and until they grow up, you don’t know what it is. Gender identity is the feeling that you are a man or a woman—though not everyone has to identify as one of those—and how you identify yourself may not match what’s present on the inside or the outside. We do believe that the amount of testosterone made in the body prenatally and in the early newborn period may have an impact on a baby’s future gender identity.
