Meet Diane Ehrensaft, PhD

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Meet Diane Ehrensaft, PhD

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I'm Diane Ehrensaft. I'm a Developmental and Clinical Psychologist and I specialize in the area of gender. And, I've been doing that for a very, very long time since I was in graduate school. But, I did my doctoral dissertation on Gender Socialization in Young Children and I never thought then, in the early 1970's that that would include transgender to children. So, many years later, I find myself passionately involved and doing clinical work and advocacy and community work around the needs of gender nonconforming and transgender children. And, I am the Director of Mental Health of Child and Adolescent Gender Center and the author of Gender Born, Gender Made. I am also the parent of a gender nonconforming child. I have 2 children. And, when I raised them in the 1970's, I was going to be a feminist mother that made sure they both had dolls and trucks. I have 1 girl and 1 boy. All the dolls got played with, not one truck ever got played with except when my son turned it in to a cradle. So, I've had a personal experience of raising gender nonconforming son. And, that has also driven me to dedicate my work now to a gender affirmative model for children and supports for their parents. And, also, to stop the harm being done to children who have met up with mental health professionals who wanna fix them and think they have a disease. So, I'm hoping we can transend that and bring gender to all children and supports to their families. And, when I'm not doing that, my other life or my moonlighting activity is I am a glass artist who has a studio and have used glass art.
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Diane Ehrensaft, PhD

Clinical Psychologist

Diane Ehrensaft, PhD is a developmental and clinical psychologist in Oakland, California. She is a parenting expert and also specializes in gender studies and psychotherapy and consultation with gender nonconforming children and their families. She is the author of Gender Born, Gender Made:  Raising Healthy Gender-Nonconforming Children; Mommies Daddies, Donors, Surrogates, Building a Home Within (co-edited with Toni Heineman), Spoiling Childhood, and Parenting Together. Dr. Ehrensaft has made many media appearances, most recently the Anderson Cooper Day show, and has presented and published both nationally and internationally on the subjects of parenting, child development, assisted reproductive technology, and children’s gender development and gender nonconformity.

Dr. Ehrensaft is the Director of Mental Health of the Child and Adolescent Gender Center, a University of California San Francisco-community partnership offering interdisciplinary services to gender conforming children and youth and their families, as well as the psychologist at the UCSF Gender Clinic.

She serves on the faculty of The University of California and is a founding member of A Home Within, a national non-profit organization serving the mental health needs of children and youth in foster care.

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