Born in the Wrong Body: My Transgender Kid, review: Sensitively handled and heartbreaking

Strangely it was the parents, not the children, who made this documentary

(Channel 4)

In title, Born in the Wrong Body harked back to Channel 4’s Bodyshock days of babies born with two heads and men living with 10 stone testicles. Luckily, that’s where the comparisons ended. This was a sensitively handled documentary following two transgender seven-year-olds, giving an empathetic insight into the children’s lives, and the hurdles their parents faced in supporting them.

Four times more children have identified as transgender in the past five years, but for anyone who thinks this shift has been encouraged by parents or a more liberal approach to sexuality, Born in the Wrong Body sought to put that stereotype squarely to bed. In the words of transgender girl Paddy’s mother: “No one in their right mind would choose a life like that for their child.”

While male-born Paddy seemed happy in her skin as a girl, dancing around in sparkly pink dresses and getting her Dad to paint her nails, transgender boy George, formerly Georgia, was noticeably withdrawn and troubled, not helped by his identical twin Jasmine, who served as an everyday reminder that he was born a girl.

Strangely it was the parents, not the children, who made this documentary. Their willingness to talk so lucidly about their emotions surrounding their children’s gender changes was deeply admirable, and often heart-breaking. This Channel 4 show was inevitably preaching to the already converted liberal minded, but if modern parenting can help children to live out their true identities rather then bottling up their feelings, surely it is for the better. So long to the British stiff upper lip.