A recent Genspect essay recounts a heartbreaking story of a mother, Jeannette, and her daughter, Sophia, whose bond was shattered when ideology and adult interference replaced family love.
Sophia was a bright, gentle girl raised by a progressive, open-minded mom who taught her that womanhood could take many forms — that she didn’t need to become a boy to be free. But when her parents divorced, Sophia’s sense of belonging faltered. During a summer with her father and new stepmother in 2019, she abruptly refused to return home, emailing her mother that she was now “transgender” and needed space to “process.”
Jeannette was stunned. The girl she had raised to resist gender stereotypes now claimed an entirely new identity — one cheered on by her father’s household and a school eager to celebrate its “first trans student.” Overnight, Sophia became a cause célèbre. Teachers and peers praised her courage; administrators turned her transition into a learning moment.
Behind the scenes, the stepmother — a licensed therapist — encouraged Sophia’s defiance, texting her about new names and pronouns while implying that Jeannette’s doubts were bigotry. Courts then intervened: when Sophia mentioned once that she “wished she weren’t alive,” a judge ruled she should stay with her father. Jeannette’s parental rights were effectively erased.
Three years later, she has seen her daughter only twice — once in a mediated therapy session and once at a brief coffee meeting. Sophia, now identifying as “non-binary,” appears to have abandoned the transition path but remains distant. Jeannette blames not her child, but the adults who orchestrated the rupture — the therapist, the school, and the self-appointed “glitter family” that replaced real kinship.
The article ends with her bitter clarity:
“No matter how many tens of thousands of children are afflicted by this madness, the worst of the insanity always can be traced back to the adults—the ones who should know better, but never do.”
We live in a world where a child’s confusion becomes a social victory, and where parental love is recast as an obstacle to liberation.
Read the full story at Genspect: When the Glitter Family Is Already Family
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