mimi, you surprise me. The man was clearly tortured, and if you start with a lie, the answer is to always come clean. OF course his daughters went through a tough time. But their mortification might have been lessened with family counseling. I get everyone felt betrayed. NO worse than any bad divorce. Much worse if she stayed in a shell her entire life. Parents are human beings. As long as she was meeting their needs- I dunno-what if it had been divorce and admittance of being gay? would the girls have accepted that any better? Our society looks down on transgenders. Seems pretty rational a person would hide and squelch that desire for a long time in many cases. Heck, I squelched my rational self interest until I got some cojones way into my late 30s. I don't know who dinged you, I think this is a good discussion-but the article is suspect

I knew a father like him who had two young girls. He was active in their lives, their friend’s life, doing things like coaching the girl’s softball team, then one day when the girls were entering middle school he decided he needed to be a woman. He started taking the hormones, wearing high heels, asking everyone to start addressing by his feminine name. You talk about the betrayal that parents felt when they showed up at a softball practice finding this clown in a dress and wig. He destroyed his daughters. They were mortified to be seen with him. The older daughter begged me and my daughter to keep their secret that 'she' was really their dad. This happened when ‘she’ insisted on showing up at Back To School night. They introduced her as their nanny.

I think if you make the choice to have children, then you have a responsibility to put their needs first. If you choose to start off by lying to them, your family-- the world, then later, think you can yell, “SURPRISE”, then you should also expect to be shunned by your community and family. It’s the worst kind of betrayal. Iv’e seen the damage. I know what talking about.