On today’s episode, we’re going to discuss how a biblical worldview clarifies what gender is and how it offers a flourishing identity for our kids today. Dr. Jeff Myers, president of Summit Ministries, joins us to share what the biblical metanarrative has to say about identity, gender, and so much more. Let’s journey together!
Dr. Jeff and Dr. Kathy’s newest book, Raising Gender-Confident Kids, is written to come alongside parents with biblical wisdom, practical guidance, and real-life examples. It isn’t a book just for families in crisis—it’s for every mom and dad who wants their children to embrace God’s good design with joy and courage. Get your free copy at genderconfidentkids.com.
For more practical, biblically based resources for parents, check out Summit.org/parents.
Episode 3: Summary & Transcript
Disclaimer: Please note that this is an automatically generated transcript. Although the transcription is largely accurate, it may be incomplete or inaccurate in some cases due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.
Episode Summary
In this episode of the Upside Down Parenting Podcast, Arlene Pellicane interviews Dr. Jeff Myers, who discusses his book Raising Gender Confident Kids. Dr. Jeff addresses how parents can navigate conversations with children experiencing gender confusion, emphasizing four key approaches: listening with empathy, asking questions to understand their “guidebook” of influences, offering hope by reassuring them they’re not alone, and helping children feel confident in how God designed them. He distinguishes that gender confusion is primarily an identity issue rather than a sexuality question, often beginning as early as age seven. Dr. Jeff encourages parents to shift their children’s focus from “Who am I?” to “Whose am I?” – helping them understand their purpose and design. He cautions against medical interventions for gender dysphoria, noting they can create irreversible changes without resolving underlying issues. Instead, he advises parents to support their children’s natural interests while developing character, maintaining open communication, and demonstrating unconditional love even amid disagreements.
Episode Transcript
Aaron Atwood (00:00):
Welcome to the Upside Down Parenting Podcast from Summit Ministries. As parents, life can feel sometimes just overwhelming, like upside down. We’re here to journey with you as you parent your kids to embrace God’s countercultural truth and champion a biblical worldview. On today’s episode, we’re going to discuss how a biblical worldview clarifies what gender is and how it offers a flourishing identity for our kids today. But let me first bring in my fellow cohost, Arlene. Arlene, tell us a little about yourself.
Arlene Pellicane (00:33):
It’s so good to be here. My name is Arlene Pellicane. My kids, two out of the three, have gone to Summit, and the last one who’s in high school will be headed there as well. I write books about technology, about having a happier marriage, about being a happier, more effective parent with books like Parents Rising, Screen Kids, and Making Marriage Easier, and my podcast is called The Happy Home Podcast, which I have had Dr. Jeff on, which has been a pleasure.
Aaron Atwood (00:57):
Dr. Jeff, thanks for being with us as well. You’re president of Summit Ministries. For those who may not know, tell us a little bit about what Summit is. What do we do here at Summit?
Dr. Jeff Myers (01:07):
It’s a privilege to be the president of Summit Ministries because there’s a legacy behind this ministry. Since 1962, this ministry has equipped and supported the rising generation, baby boomers, then Gen X, then millennials, then gen Z to embrace God’s truth and to champion a biblical worldview. So we do that through in-person programs where students come and study with us. Two of Arlene’s kids have come to that. They’re amazing kids. By the way, Arlene, I love getting to meet them and they study with the top Christian thought leaders in apologetics, theology, economics, sexuality, culture, all these different areas so they can be confident of biblical truth and then learn how to communicate it relationally to a world that’s desperately in need of the truth.
Aaron Atwood (02:00):
Arlene, I’m going to hand it over to you to start this conversation and probably mostly just out of the way, so run with it.
Arlene Pellicane (02:08):
When you even said that list, when we as parents hear sexuality, we’re kind of like, oh, how do we talk about that? So let’s start with some terms, with biblical worldview. It’s something we talk about a lot. Help us, give us just that working definition of biblical worldview and gender confidence. What do you mean, Dr. Jeff, when we talk about these things?
Dr. Jeff Myers (02:30):
Arlene, when I use the term worldview, I’m thinking of a pattern. People in various areas of their life want to figure out how to win. If you’re an athlete, you want to figure out how to prevail in the competitions. If you like to play games, you like to figure out how to prevail over your friends and family in the game, we are naturally wired to want to prevail.
What does it look like to prevail in life? Well, you’re not really trying to win over other people. You’re trying to win other people over, and you have a very different approach from a biblical perspective. So a biblical worldview is a pattern of ideas that’s based on God and what scripture tells us about the nature of humanity and our relationship with God and how we might be redeemed. You can see an actual flow of it just the way you would in a good movie or a play where there’s the creation narrative, what God made, the mess that we made of it, what it’s like living in that mess and how we might be redeemed.
John 8:32 features Jesus saying, if you follow my teachings, you’ll be my disciples, and you will know the truth and the truth will set you free. So a Christian worldview isn’t just about going to church, it’s an actual belief that Jesus opens up reality itself for us, enabling us to fulfill our destiny, what we were designed for, but also to be those who bring flourishing and blessing to others.
Arlene Pellicane (03:59):
And we hear that we think, yes, I want my children to have that kind of relationship. What about gender confidence? I think maybe 10, 15 years ago we would not be having this conversation. Every single person would be gender confident. They might be not confident about other areas of their life, but they knew their gender. What is this gender confidence? Why do kids need it right now?
Dr. Jeff Myers (04:19):
We live in an age of gender confusion. 39% of young adults in the United States of America say they identify as L-G-B-T-Q, 30% in the church. So for three out of 10 families listening or watching this podcast right now, this is something very personal. You’ve got a child who’s gender confused. For others though, they might say, well, that’s not our issue. We have other things, but that’s not the one.
Keep in mind that it’s always important in every generation to help boys understand the path to godly manhood and help girls understand the path to godly womanhood. So gender is a term that’s been, a lot of people have tried to co-opt it. When we wrote this book, Raising Gender Confident Kids, Dr. Kathy Koch and I, we had to debate about that. What’s the proper term? Gender is the proper one because a gender goes back to gen and not to get too nerdy in the biology here.
Arlene Pellicane (05:22):
Let’s get nerdy. I like it when you get nerdy.
Dr. Jeff Myers (05:24):
Okay, then here we go. So what’s the genus of a cat? Well, the genus of a cat could be the different kinds of cats. You have tigers, you have lions, you have bobcats. There are different kinds of cats, and in Genesis chapter one in the creation account, scripture says that God made the birds of the air and according to their kind, he made the fish of the sea according to their kind. And so each creature in creation has a kind. Then the account comes to the creation of the man and the woman. It says God made the man the human to bear his image. Male and female, he made them.
So what is the genesis of humanity? It’s male or female. It’s not black or white or Asian or Hispanic. It is male or female. Those are the two kinds of humans that there are. So when we talk about gender, that’s what we’re referring to. Now from a biblical perspective, and I know that you’re going to get to this in some of your questions. From a biblical perspective, male and female is something that is both physiological and psychological, that it is skin deep for sure, but it’s also soul deep.
Arlene Pellicane (06:41):
I was recently on an airplane and there was a young boy, or let me restate that. It was young man, I should say I should call him a boy, but he had a sweatshirt on and it had a name tag as if it was part of the sweatshirt, and it was, hello, my name is, and then it said created, and I was like, that is the coolest sweatshirt. Tell us more about this creation because this is the root of it that we’re trying to teach our kids that you are created in God’s image and how does that help them have that biblical worldview about gender help us connect those dots if they will believe they are created? How does that solve this gender issue?
Dr. Jeff Myers (07:21):
Well, it solves it in a number of ways. There are a handful that I want to mention right now because they’re so foundational. Every human being bears God’s image. Scripture teaches this and it teaches it beginning in Genesis chapter one, and then all the way through the rest of its pages. To bear God’s image means that I don’t give another person dignity. They don’t give me dignity. The dignity is something that I have because of the way God made me. Maleness or femaleness is also something that God gave me. You do not have to become a male or a female. You were designed that way. By God.
There are 6,500 biological differences that have been cataloged between males and females. There are vast differences, but God designed them differently from each other in order to harmonize. That’s something that I want young adults to know because confusion is horrible in a society, but it also presents an opportunity. Every confusion is also an opportunity, and the opportunity in this case is what is the path to godly manhood and womanhood, and how do we help our kids navigate it differently because of the confusing times in which they live that I might not understand because it wasn’t that way when I was growing up?
Arlene Pellicane (08:46):
That’s such a good way to put it because out of that confusion then comes this clarity like, oh, let’s find out. It’s an opportunity. Let’s say you have a child and they are not following the Lord right now. They’ve been raised in a Christian home, but they’re not following the Lord. They reject the truth of the Bible so that you, mom or dad can talk about the Bible all day long, but they say, that’s nice. That’s for you, but I do not see the Bible as truth. How can you as a parent still approach gender and talking, keeping that line open even if your kid is resistant to, well, the Bible says, and God is your creator.
Dr. Jeff Myers (09:25):
Arlene, as I think about answering this question, which is super important, I think about, how do I approach any confusion? What should my posture be? And in our book, Raising Gender Confident Kids, Dr. Kathy Koch and I talk about having a forward leaning posture, how to lean in rather than away from, because when I was growing up, and I shared this in a previous episode of this podcast, I always got the impression that if I just got out of line that the adults in my life would either say or give me a facial expression that said, I’m ashamed of you, or you were raised better than that.
What we want to do, I think, instead is lean in rather than away. Look, it doesn’t repel me. What you’re going through does not repel me. At first, I’m going to have compassion, which means that I realize, wow, you’re experiencing this confusion. The way I in my life have experienced various confusions, and I can feel it, I can feel it. I want to have that as a basis.
(10:29):
Second of all is truth. I want to recognize there is such a thing as truth. Just because someone is not following the Lord does not mean they don’t have a guidebook. They’ve rejected God’s guidebook, but they have picked up another guidebook. So I’ve got to try to, in my questions, discern what the guidebook is. Who are you listening to? Why do you believe them? Why do you believe that they love you and care for you more than God does? What is happening here? So I wanted to try to get at that a little bit.
A third is hope. One of the key things I communicate to young adults who are in the midst of any kind of confusion is, you’re not crazy and you’re not alone. You’re going to be okay. Alright, let’s stop worrying about that. You’re going to be okay.
(11:16):
And then finally, I want to communicate kind of a hope that I want them to feel confident in the way God made them. If you move away from the Lord, the very one who designed you had made you on purpose for a great purpose, if you move away from him, you might experience confusion. It might not be general confusion, but it’s going to be some kind of confusion. You can medicate that. You could get a job and work very, very hard, and then you forget that you’re confused because you’re so focused on something or you could get a hobby or cheer for a sports team. People do all kinds of things to distract themselves from that sort of confusion.
So I don’t even necessarily look for someone to admit, oh yeah, I’m confused. I really need some help. That script never plays out like that in actual conversations. Instead, it might play out like this. Can you share with me what happened to you that causes you to see yourself the way you do as a parent? It takes some courage to ask this because you might be part of the problem. Now, you might not be part of the problem, but you might get blamed for it. That happens with kids a lot too. Who’s watching this podcast to not blame their parents for the problems that they have brought upon themselves at some point in time.
Arlene Pellicane (12:30):
It’s part of the deal. Yeah.
Dr. Jeff Myers (12:32):
Right? Yes. Yeah. So as a parent, you have to simultaneously ask, put the defensiveness at bay, put the feelings of guilt and shame aside, that’s not relevant. We are responsible for what we know at the time. If we know something new now, we can’t go back and change the past. Our children, especially when they grow up, they are responsible for their lives, and we believe with all of our heart that God has given them what they need to be whole and healthy if they will accept it.
So we approach them with that sense of, can you help me understand what happened? Well, I wasn’t really paying attention at that moment and I need to ask your forgiveness because I just didn’t see it. I didn’t see it, and I’m guessing that you kind of felt alone and maybe a little nervous to even talk with me about it, and I’m sorry that I was that way.
(13:26):
I really would like to be a different person. I really like to learn and grow, and I’d really like to have an openness in our communication. Now, if that’s okay with you, you start the conversation moving in that direction, and as your son or daughter begins to feel, okay, I think I’m safe with them. We might agree on everything, but at least I can talk with them and I’m not going to get blasted. I’m not going to walk away feeling like I’m horrible. Instead, I’m going to walk away feeling like, you know what? My mom has hope for me. We disagree on 10 out of every 11 items, but she is not giving up on me.
Arlene Pellicane (14:07):
That’s right.
Dr. Jeff Myers (14:09):
And you can never know how those seeds planted at that moment can eventually bear fruit.
Arlene Pellicane (14:15):
That leaning in instead of leaning back away, that look of love instead of the look of disdain and just, the being there safe. That’s so, so important. Many kids, they’re asking, who am I? And then they’re getting on social media, and social media is telling them, it’s pouring them into a mold like Romans 12. It’s the world. How can we help kids? You say a better question than who am I is, whose am I? Talk to us about why that is a more important question.
Dr. Jeff Myers (14:47):
Yeah, Arlene, I’m glad you brought up the identity issue. I want to just quickly circle back to the idea of transgender non-binary because that’s kind of the direction that we’re going and what we’re ultimately talking about with this raising gender confident kids book. For most young adults, this is not a question of sexual activity. It strikes them.
If they’re gender confused, they might look back and say, I think I was seven when I first started wondering if I was born in the wrong body. That’s a very common thing for young people. This is way before they’re talking about who they want to be intimate with. It is not primarily a question of sexuality. It is primarily a question of identity. Who am I? And as you pointed out, what Dr. Kathy Koch and I are trying to do is encourage parents to help their kids ask, whose am I?
(15:43):
Who was I made by, for forever and a day? When people have talked about philosophy, they say, well, you can only really understand a situation if you understand what it is for. You can understand a hammer if you know that there’s such a thing as a nail that needs to be used as a fastener. You understand what something is for, then you can know how to properly use it. What are we human beings for? What were we made for? What were we personally made for? So answering that question is going to go back to having a strong basis of security.
My parents have guided me as best they know how and I believe that they love me and that they want what is best for me. I can be relatively sure that the people on TikTok do not love me. They don’t know anything about me. They don’t know anything about my circumstances. What they’re telling me I should do isn’t necessarily something that I need to do. That’s part of an identity question. Another aspect of an identity question is what does it mean that I was made male or female? Because we’re going to see the world differently. Approach the world differently as male or female. That’s an aspect of our design. What nationality am I? You can’t change the country of your birth.
(17:02):
How many siblings do I have and are they boys or girls? We can’t change our siblings. There are a lot of those kinds of things about us that God is intentionally allowed to be in our life so that we can depend on him and recognize that we were intentionally made. Psalm 139 is a great place to go with kids who might be struggling with their identity, where the psalmist says, you knew me. You knit me together in my mother’s womb. You knew all of my days before I lived a single one of them. I’m fearfully and wonderfully made. That’s a good thing to hang onto, especially when your peers are trying to define you so that they can have power over you.
Arlene Pellicane (17:45):
I want to go back to something you said earlier about the 7-year-old who says, maybe I’m trapped in my own body. How do we as parents help? Because people are told, oh, you like cars? You must be a boy. You like fashion. You must be a girl if you’re a boy. And it’s like, no, those are just interests that you can have. So how can we help peel that back and help kids understand that’s not about your gender, that’s about your interests.
Dr. Jeff Myers (18:15):
Dr. Kathy and I use a term in the book that hasn’t been used before that we can see. We talk about imago types instead of stereotypes, and imago type is who we are based on who God designed us to be. What does it mean to bear his image? What I would do with a child who’s struggling saying, well, I think I have interests that don’t match. I’m a boy, but I don’t have interests that match what other boys are interested in at this time. So maybe I’m actually a girl trapped in the wrong body.
Arlene Pellicane (18:44):
Yeah.
Dr. Jeff Myers (18:45):
Yeah. Well, that’s what the culture is going to tell you. So what you do is draw out the way the culture works on this, which is called the gender spectrum. And on one end you have the perfect female. You have Barbie. On the other end, you have the perfect male, which is GI Joe, and since neither one of us are either one of those, then we’re all more toward the middle. So the culture says we’re all kind of transgender to a certain extent because we’re not those extremes.
And then just say, this is how the culture creates confusion, because it makes you wonder, well, am I just over the line on this side because maybe I was given the wrong body, or am I just over the line on this side? Maybe I was given the wrong body. And then you draw two lines. You say, here’s the male masculinity line, here’s the female masculinity line.
There are some girls who are very feminine, and there are some girls who are more tomboyish. More girls identify with being tomboyish than you would think. Dr. Kathy was speaking to an audience, asked for a show of hands, 80% of the girls raised their hands and said, I’m tomboyish. I like playing in the dirt. I like playing baseball. I like climbing trees or whatever.
Arlene Pellicane (20:02):
I’m not going to get a manicure then going shopping eight hours a day.
Dr. Jeff Myers (20:05):
Exactly, that’s right. But you see from a biological as well as a theological perspective, the most tomboyish girl has more in common with the most feminine girl than she does with the most eminent boy. It isn’t a gender spectrum. There are two different lines. So a girl can be anywhere along here. She can be a pilot. I have a daughter who’s a helicopter pilot, undoubtedly, if she was in school now, she would be told, you must be a boy trapped in a girl’s body. She’s not. She’s all girl. And she is all pilot.
Arlene Pellicane (20:38):
All pilot. That’s right.
Dr. Jeff Myers (20:39):
Yeah. And I have two brothers who are musicians. One’s an orchestra conductor, one is a worship leader. They are highly emotionally intelligent. They would undoubtedly be told today that you must be girls trapped in boys’ bodies because you are interested in music when everybody else, all the other boys are interested in hunting and football.
Fortunately, they recognized that this was God’s design, and they were encouraged in both situations to pursue the thing that they found fascinating, and just to pursue it as far as it goes, if you end up getting to the end and say, okay, that’s enough. I’m done with that. I’m going to go on to something else, totally fine, because you’re a much different, much better person for having made a pursuit. So I like the way you state that about interests.
If we stop thinking about the stereotypes and start thinking about imago types, then we can move away from this blue basket or this pink basket. That culture not only seems to instinctively support, but actually raises up for the purpose of tearing it down so that transgenderism seems like the new norm.
Arlene Pellicane (21:45):
And this way is more freeing, like, oh, I’m a girl and I can do all these things, or I’m a boy and I can do all these things. The other side is more limiting, like, oh, you like this. You must be this. So it’s funny. It’s the other side that’s putting you into a box.
Dr. Jeff Myers (21:58):
That’s right. And think of how horrible it is to say, to imply to someone they’ve been born in the wrong body. That’s not something you can fix. If there’s something wrong with your body, then it might be able to be fixed. But if your body itself is wrong, as the philosophers say, as an ontological object, there’s nothing you can do. You’re literally trapped. But nobody ever says, oh, I guess you’ve been trapped in the wrong soul. Nobody ever says that. It’s always about the body. It’s why, because we have this fascination with only material things. It’s sort of the residue of a secularized culture.
Arlene Pellicane (22:37):
As we wrap up, Dr. Jeff, one last question, and it has to do with the soul that it’s very popular now to say, well, just follow your heart, honey. So if your heart says you’re a boy and you’re a girl, then follow that. Or why is this? It sounds nice, right? It sounds like a nice sentiment. Why is this a dangerous thing for Christians to embrace? Yes, honey, follow your heart.
Dr. Jeff Myers (22:59):
Yeah. Well, there are two dangers, and some people end up embracing them both, even though they seem contradictory. One is, well, it’s just my body, so who cares? And the other one, it’s my soul. It’s only, I am who I feel. Well, you do have a soul. Your soul is what it’s like to be you and your soul has desires, and it has purposes. It has a conscience. That’s part of it, and your soul works in cooperation with your body.
If how you feel about yourself is at odds with how your body is, then you’ll always feel incongruent. The goal is to feel the congruence because you realize that God created your body on purpose, that interacts with your soul in such a way that you can carry out his purposes. That’s really what we’re looking for. So when someone says, this is just the way I feel and it’s at odds with my body, that person will be anxious, depressed, probably engaged in suicidal ideation, which can be a very scary thing for parents to have to deal with those young adults.
(24:14):
Usually, it’s young adults in that situation, may feel that I’ve been born in the wrong body is the best explanation, and that therefore using some medicine to try to create a more feminine or a more masculine body might be helpful, and that always ends up being a trap and for a number of reasons. But one of the main reasons is as soon as you do those interventions, then it is what you are then is your new normal. And if you still feel at odds with yourself, now you’re really in trouble because you’ve made irreversible changes to your body and the problem did not go away. This is what we want to avoid, and I think it is most helpful if we just continue to encourage our young children.
I know you are interested in the things that other boys your age are interested in. You know what I care about? I care about you, honey. I want to know, what are you fascinated by? What are the things that you get so excited about? You just totally lose track of time. I’m going to walk alongside of you and discover your interest in those things, and then you just pursue that and then allow that to be the platform from which you help your child develop the character necessary to treat others with kindness, to do the right thing, to look for ways to be helpful in different situations, and so forth.
Arlene Pellicane (25:30):
Dr. Jeff, you have given us so many things to think about. You’ve brought clarity to this gender confusion for us, and you’ve helped us to lean forward. People that are listening, sweet parents, go get this book because it will have so much more that we were not able to get into today on the podcast. Thanks so much, Dr. Jeff.
Dr. Jeff Myers (25:49):
Thank you, Arlene.
Aaron Atwood (25:50):
Yeah, Arlene, thank you for being with us as a co-host on the Upside Down Parenting podcast. Dr. Jeff, thanks again. If you want to get a copy of the book, you can go to genderconfidentkids.com and get a free copy, and we want to get as many copies as we can in the hands of the people who will use it, so genderconfidentkids.com. Thanks for listening to the Upside Down Parenting Podcast. If you would give us a review, like it, subscribe it, and share it with your friends. Thanks so much for listening today. We’ll see you next time.