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Diane Ehrensaft, Ph.D. is a developmental and clinical psychologist in the San Francisco Bay Area and the Director of Mental Health and founding member of the UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Child and Adolescent Gender Center, a partnership between the University of California San Francisco and community agencies to provide comprehensive interdisciplinary services and advocacy to  transgender/gender diverse children and youth and their families.  She is adjunct professor of pediatrics at the University of California San Francisco where she is involved in two four-site research studies of gender diverse youth. As part of her role as the CAGC Director of Mental Health, Dr. Ehrensaft heads Mind the Gap, the mental health child gender specialist consortium within the center.  Bay Area child, adolescent, and family therapists with specialization or interest in being trained in the gender affirmative model of mental health care can contact Dr. Ehrensaft about joining the Mind the Gap consortium, which meets remotely for training, presentations, and discussions.  Dr. Ehrensaft is also a member of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health and participated as an author of the WPATH Standards of Care version 8.

Dr. Ehrensaft’s research and writing focus on the areas of child development, gender, transgender/gender diverse children and youth, parenting, parent-child relationships, LGBTQI families, and psychological issues for families using assisted reproductive technology.  She has published several books and articles in these areas and lectures, serves as an expert witness, and makes presentations nationally and internationally on these topics.  Dr. Ehrensaft is presently working as a principal investigator on a four-site NIH study of gender development in prepubertal gender diverse children and a co-investigator on a four-site NIH longitudinal study of with Dr. Stephen Rosenthal, the medical director of the UCSF CAGC gender clinic, and three other sites in the U.S. on a five-year study funded by an NIH grant to study the medical and mental health outcomes of transgender and non-binary youth receiving puberty blockers and/or gender affirming hormones as part of their gender affirmative care.

Dr. Ehrensaft has a clinical practice in Oakland, California, where she sees adults, children, and adolescents in individual psychotherapy, both long and short-term. She also does parenting consultation, gender assessments and consultations, co-parenting counseling, and couples therapy related to parenting, gender, or assisted reproductive technology issues.  Her areas of specialization include:  transgender/gender diverse children; families using assisted reproductive technology; divorce issues; children with developmental issues or neurodiversity; parenting.

Dr. Ehrensaft is a senior consultant, founding member, and past board member of A Home Within, a national project focused on the emotional needs of children and youth in foster care and offering pro bono long-term psychotherapy to children in foster care. More information about A Home Within can be obtained at: www.ahomewithin.org.

  • Gender Explained

    2024 Publication  Diane Ehrensaft and Michelle Jurkiewicz:  Gender Explained: A New Understanding of Identity in a Gender Creative World, New York:  The Experiment, with forward by Dr. Stephen Rosenthal.

    Book Cover for Gender Explained

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    This is the book I wish I’d had when my own child told me, at age three, that she wasn’t the gender I believed her to be.  If you’re scared and confused because your child is saying things about gender that you never expected to hear, this is the book for you.”

    — Marlo Mack, author of
    How to Be a Girl

    A thorough, evenhanded illumination of a contentious topic imbued with compassion and cleareyed data.”

    — Kirkus Reviews

    Gender Explained” is the perfect antidote to the current state of widespread confusion about gender.  Ehrensaft and Jurkiewicz’s careful, thoughtful, and well-researched approach to the topic of gender cuts through a sea of misinformation.”

    — Sabra L. Katz-Wise, Ph.D., Associate professor at Boston Children’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School

    In Gender Explained, Ehrensaft and Jurkiewicz have taken a hot button issue and eloquently turned down the heat.”

    —Joel Baum, Director of Education at the Child and Adolescent Gender Center, UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital

    Empathic and accessible, Gender Explained helped me see ‘the other side’ of the gender debate. It acknowledges fear and concern that many people face and helps us expand our view of gender.”

    —Ximena Lopez, MD, pediatric endocrinologist

    Gender Explained reveals how our thinking about gender has changed through the lens and voices of patients, parents, and those who care for gender creative children.”

    —Norman Spack, MD endocrinologist at Boston Children’s Hospital

  • The Gender Creative Child

    Gender Creative Child_cover_FIN

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    Diane Ehrensaft’s publication of The Gender Creative Child: Pathways for Nurturing and Supporting Children who Live outside Gender Boxes, New York: The Experiment, 2016, with a foreword by Dr. Norman Spack.

    “The Gender Creative Child is an invaluable resource for families and practitioners wanting to understand the complexity and beauty of gender development and the value of affirmative care. I’m struck that Dr. Ehrensaft’s most revolutionary idea is also her most straightforward—if we really learn how to listen to our children, they will tell us what they need.”

    —Aron Janssen, MD, director and founder NYU Gender and Sexuality Service

    “The Gender Creative Child should be required reading for all therapists, pediatricians, and K-12 educators and for parents whose children express their gender differently from societal expectations. Diane Ehrensaft deftly shows that many trans and gender-nonconforming children can be identified from a young age and how critical it is to provide support to them.”

    —Genny Beemyn, PhD, trans educator and coauthor of The Lives of Transgender People

    “Dr. Ehrensaft explains gender and children like no one can. She equips adults to understand and support gender-expansive children the way they deserve to be. This book is the newest must-have for every LGBTQ library and a must-read for every adult with a child in their life.”

    —Lori Duron, author of Raising My Rainbow

    Go to “Books” tab to find out more information about The Gender Creative Child.