Overview

For some people, the wish to have children is what ends a transition. It can come as a sudden longing in the late twenties or thirties, a new relationship that makes a shared future feel real, the sight of a friend breastfeeding, or an unplanned pregnancy after years on testosterone. For men it can be the realisation that they want to be a father, and that this means being a man. For others, becoming a parent after stopping hormones changes how they see their own body.

This page looks at that thread in detransition accounts: why the wish for a family so often arrives later than the decision to transition, how it acts as a reason to stop, what pregnancy and parenthood do to people's sense of themselves, and the grief of those whose fertility is gone. The medical facts about how blockers, hormones and surgery affect fertility are covered in fertility and transition, and breastfeeding after surgery in mastectomy. This page is not medical advice.

How often it comes up

detrans.ai statistics

The detrans.ai statistics page uses an AI model to extract features from about 3,094 r/detrans users' accounts of transitioning in some form. These are self-selected stories, and the labels are the model's reading of what each person wrote. They are not rates for detransitioners in general, and they miss anything a person did not mention.

The model picks one main reason per person, so children rarely "win" against reasons like trauma or accepting one's body, even where they played a part, as in many accounts quoted below (detrans.ai stats).

Published surveys

Surveys of detransitioners mostly ask about health in general, not children in particular. In an online survey of 237 detransitioners, 62% gave health concerns as a reason for stopping. Among the women, 58% cited concern about possible medical complications (Vandenbussche 2022). In a UK interview study of six detransitioned women, long-term health worries about testosterone were part of the reason most of them stopped (Lomax & Butler 2025). Neither study separates out the wish for children, so they cannot show how often it was the deciding factor.

A detrans man who wanted a demographic survey of the subreddit to ask about it explained why:

A lot of detrans I’ve talked to say they now feel a very strong urge to have children after detransitioning. I think becoming aligned with your biological sex and reproductive functions is part of the detrans journey and I’d be curious how many others went through this. —verytiredcatto, detrans male

"I never wanted kids"

A teenager's certainty

A theme that keeps coming up is the person who, as a teenager or young adult, was sure they never wanted children. For some girls, rejecting motherhood was bound up with rejecting womanhood itself. One woman described it as part rebellion, part defence against teasing:

as a teenager I pretended to hate kids, I think in response to how adults would tease me for being "clucky", and there was also that desire to rebel. What could be worse than growing up to be someone's mum? Ew, so uncool, lol. … I guess you could say I stopped being scared of my own body. —neongrayjoy, detrans female

For a girl distressed by her female body, pregnancy can look like the worst possible thing that body could do. So "I don't want children" may partly be a symptom of the distress being treated, and that symptom can fade. One woman explained that her disgust at pregnancy had been tied to stereotypes, not to pregnancy itself:

i used to associate pregnancy with objectification, hyperfeminization, and hyperfeminine stereotypes. … something just clicked in my head that being a woman isnt any certain appearance. —Chelstrawberrymuffin, detrans female

She added that she still does not want children. Losing the disgust did not create a desire. It only made pregnancy a neutral possibility instead of a horror.

What the research shows about changing minds

The best data come from Amsterdam, where people who started medical treatment as adolescents (before 2014 Dutch law required sterilisation for a legal change of sex) were surveyed years later as adults. The share who wanted children, now or in future, rose from 34% when they started treatment to 56% at follow-up. Looking back, 44% of the female participants and 35% of the male participants said that, knowing what they know now, they would have preserved their fertility (de Nie et al. 2023). Participants came from the clinic's own treated cohort, not from detransition communities, so the shift is not simply a detransition effect.

A follow-up interview study of 21 of these adults, all infertile from treatment, recorded how one 28-year-old trans man saw his teenage decision:

I think I only ever saw it from one perspective. And that is not the children perspective, but the perspective of: this is the consequence of the choice to be happy yourself. — (Asseler et al. 2024)

Psychologists have a name for the blind spot this shows. In the end of history illusion, people of all ages admit they changed a lot over the past decade but expect to change little over the next one (Quoidbach, Gilbert & Wilson 2013). The finding has been criticised for relying on memories of past selves (British Psychological Society 2013), but the point stands: a 16-year-old is badly placed to predict what a 30-year-old will want. A detrans woman put it more simply:

I know a lot of people hate hearing "you'll change your mind when you're older" but it really does happen quite a bit. That's one of the reasons I think it's so messed up to push transition on kids. —novaskyd, desisted female

Age, partners and timing

The late twenties and thirties

The wish for children often appears around the age most people in wealthy countries start families. Across the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), a group of 38 mostly high-income countries, the average age of women at their first birth rose from 26.4 in 2000 to 29.5 in 2022 (OECD 2024). Transition, by contrast, often starts in the teens or early twenties. The gap between the two is where many of these stories happen.

I passed as a man well enough that no one had any idea I was trans and I detransitioned because I started getting baby fever (among many other indicators that I had made a mistake) in my early 30's. —SavemesomeDMT, detrans female

Men describe the same delay. One wrote that he was surprised to learn "how often women only start to feel this way in their late 20s, and apparently men (like myself at 28) can have the same delayed desire for wanting to raise a family" (echo_prie, desisted male).

The psychoanalyst Erik Erikson described a stage of adulthood centred on generativity: the need to care for and guide the next generation, with stagnation as the alternative (Malone et al. 2016). It is a framework, not a measured law, but it fits these accounts. The question "who am I?" that dominated adolescence gives way to "who will I care for?". See growing older for more on how maturity changes the way people see their transition.

A partner and a shared future

In many accounts the desire takes shape inside a relationship. A future with a particular person makes the roles of mother, father, wife and husband concrete in a way they were not before:

6 months after falling in love with my sweet boyfriend I started to really think about my future, and found I did not want to be called or seen as a husband or dad. I wanted to be a wife and mom. Following that realization the tower crumbled. —corvusmagic, detrans female

Sometimes the plan for children is simply where questioning begins. One woman stopped testosterone only to recover her fertility, and found the question opened up much more:

Basically the initial detransition was because my husband and I were considered our options for having kids. I stopped T to try to regain fertility, thinking it'd be temporary, but the more I tried to figure out how much T had affected my fertility the more I became aware that I actually had no idea what I was doing to my body long-term. —Miseracordiae, detrans female

She went on to describe learning about female anatomy, reconnecting with her body, and coming to see her transition as driven by self-hatred. In her account the wish for a child did not replace the other reasons. It made room for them.

Seeing other women become mothers

Watching another woman become a mother is a common turning point in detrans women's accounts.

I remember crying seeing my best friend breast feed while the men were in the other room. I was a "trans man" crying and getting emotional about seeing my best friend enter a right of passage as a mother. I realized around that time that I could never relate to the men in the living room. I was a woman crying with my best friend proud of her becoming a mother. —feed_me_see_more, detrans female

Seeing masculine mothers matters too. Some women transitioned partly because they could not picture themselves in the feminine role they thought motherhood required. Learning that butch women carry and raise children removes that conflict:

I wanted to be a "father figure" for my future children and now I understand that I don't need to be a man at all to parent the way I want to —Material_Juice5369, detrans female

This links to a broader theme on this site: that gender non-conformity without labels is a real option. A woman who works with her hands, keeps her hair short and disciplines her children firmly is still a mother.

Men who want to be fathers

Fatherhood as a reason to stop

Male detransitioners talk about children less often in these accounts, but when they do, fatherhood is often bound up with accepting manhood itself. For some, the wish for a conventional family life was the clearest sign that the trans path was not theirs:

I want so much more then a lifetime of surgery and medications trying to fix something that isn’t truly broken I want kids someday I want to get married fall in love with a woman someday as in me in a suit and see her in a white dress. That is why I decided to Detransition the moment I realized I didn’t have to live that way anymore —David43432, detrans male

Others describe the moment as hope coming back. One man who lost access to hormones in 2020 wrote: "my wife is pregnant with me as the father, something I thought would be impossible 8 years ago when I decided to start transitioning at the risk of being sterile" (chrisbostrowski, detrans male). His detransition started from outside pressure, not a change of mind, which is a reminder that the reasons people stop are often mixed (see external pressures).

For men who have become fathers, parenthood can feel like the end of a long detour:

I never needed to transition; there were plenty of other factors at play. I’m now pushing 50 and am quite happy as the husband, father, and man I was always supposed to be. —OtterWithKids, detrans male

Some men report sperm production returning after stopping estrogen; others do not. The fertility page covers why.

Motherhood that cannot be reached

Some males who transitioned wanted, in part, to be mothers: to carry a child or take the maternal role. For a few, seeing that this was impossible helped them stop:

One of the reasons I detransitioned was because I know the technology just doesn't exist. —SennaLuna, questioning own transgender status

Detrans women answering men in this position are often blunt. One wrote that "There’s a huge difference between wanting to be and being. You can have a husband and kids, a family, but you can never actually become a woman or a mother" (thisonesathrowawway, detrans female). Others point out that the caring side of parenthood is open to men too: a gentle, hands-on father is still a father.

Unplanned pregnancies

Testosterone is not contraception

A common belief among women taking testosterone is that stopping periods means they cannot get pregnant. Clinical guidance says otherwise: testosterone "is not a form of contraception, even in patients who are amenorrheic", and because it can harm a developing female fetus it should not be taken during pregnancy (Canadian Medical Association Journal 2021). A Japanese case report describes a 25-year-old trans man, three years on testosterone, who became pregnant during a break in treatment, did not realise it, and restarted testosterone until the pregnancy was confirmed (Yoshida et al. 2022). In a 2014 US survey of 41 trans men who had given birth after transitioning, 61% had used testosterone before the pregnancy (Light et al. 2014).

Pregnancy soon after stopping

Detrans women often describe getting pregnant much sooner than they expected after stopping testosterone, sometimes after being told they were probably infertile:

I got pregnant the week I had it removed. I thought it would take much longer than that and that I was possibly infertile, but nope. Currently 8 months pregnant. —MADder0x, detrans female

These are self-selected stories, and people who did not conceive are less likely to post updates. They show that pregnancy after testosterone happens, not how likely it is.

Pregnancy as a turning point

An unplanned pregnancy forces a pause in testosterone and often a long one, through pregnancy and after. In some accounts that pause becomes a detransition. The body changes back, people see themselves differently, and the role of mother arrives before any decision about identity has been made:

I don’t look male, I look female again after being off hormones for so long to have my baby. The older she gets the more I just want to be her mom. —RRSholar, FTM currently questioning gender

When a woman whose trans-identified husband was pregnant asked for advice, one detrans woman predicted this kind of shift:

Your husband, like it or not, is going to start ‘showing’ and will soon experience the dissonance of being a pregnant ‘man’ in a culture that will neither expect nor understand it- and at that point, his feelings about being perceived as male instead of female may change entirely. —L82Desist, detrans female

How parenthood reframes the body

From appearance to function

The change most often described by detrans mothers is a shift in how they judge their bodies. During transition the body is judged by how it looks: too curved, too soft, too female. Pregnancy and nursing make it something that does things:

I came to appreciate certain aspects of my body more (like breasts) once I came to see them as things with a purpose, rather than sexualized objects. The fact that I can sustain a whole infant life with just my body is crazy. —novaskyd, desisted female

Philosophers in the phenomenological tradition, which studies how experience feels from the inside, distinguish the body seen as an object from the body lived as the means through which we act in the world (see embodiment). Gender dysphoria often locks a person into the first view, watching and judging their body from outside. Pregnancy and caring for an infant push strongly towards the second.

Matrescence

The anthropologist Dana Raphael coined the word matrescence in 1973 for the process of becoming a mother, a word deliberately echoing adolescence. The psychologist Aurélie Athan later developed it into a model of a developmental passage that includes adoption as well as birth (Athan, matrescence.com). There is a biological side as well. Brain scans of first-time mothers before and after pregnancy found consistent reductions in grey matter that lasted at least two years and overlapped with brain regions that responded to the mothers' own babies (Hoekzema et al. 2017). That study says nothing about gender identity, and it would be wrong to claim pregnancy "cures" dysphoria. But it fits what mothers describe: parenthood reorganises priorities from the inside.

Accounts from detrans parents

Some describe dysphoria dissolving not through any change to the body but through a change of focus. "I had a child and when she was about a year old suddenly my dysphoria felt really fucking stupid," wrote one woman who had socially transitioned and later identified as genderqueer (even_so). Another said her self-consciousness "lessened a lot after I had a child. The focus was taken away from myself and onto my child" (Yeah_yah_ya, desisted female).

Raising a daughter can carry particular weight, because the parent becomes the child's first model of what it means to be female. A woman who had lived stealth as a man for over 20 years, and adopted a baby girl at 40, wrote:

As a parent of a girl child, I didn’t feel like I could look her in the eye and instill in her that being a woman is a wonderful, powerful thing while I still found reasons to resist and separate myself from that part of me. So instead, I decided it was time to accept and reunify with being female. —L82Desist, detrans female

She did not give birth. Her account suggests that what changes people is caring for a child, not only pregnancy.

Motherhood is not an answer to everything

Not every account is positive. One woman who desisted described how motherhood made her feel her individuality vanish, while her husband was praised for the basics:

Who I was as an individual seemed to disappear when I had kids. It was all anyone wanted to talk to me about. I now realise it wasn't the case for my husband. … I love my kids, but I wish I got the advantages of being their dad instead. —Luck_Unlucky, desisted

Her point is important. The unequal social weight placed on mothers is real, and for some girls it is part of what makes a male identity attractive. Many feminists have long argued that the problem lies in those expectations, not in women's bodies (see internalised misogyny).

Breastfeeding after mastectomy

For women who had a mastectomy, pregnancy can bring a second loss, because the surgery usually makes nursing impossible. The first published case report of a detransitioned mother grieving her inability to breastfeed noted that breastfeeding is largely missing from surgical consent guidance (Gribble et al. 2023).

I have two children, currently pregnant with my second and the fact I will never breastfeed genuinely destroys me all the time. —inspireddelusion, detrans female

Grief where fertility was lost

The weight of an active choice

Where hormones or surgery have ended fertility, the wish for children turns into grief. What makes it distinct from other infertility, commenters say, is that it came from a decision they made, often as teenagers:

it’s a doubled layered pain, because not only are you dealing with infertility but you’re dealing with the concept that this was an active choice you made, very different to people who just have it naturally or from chemo. —[deleted]

i don’t know how to cope with the probability that i will never be a mom because of something that happened to me when i was 14 years old. —weary-doves, detrans female

The same feelings appear among men. One wrote that he "went sterile from transitioning young and then having surgery as soon as I reached adulthood" and that adoption and surrogacy were not realistic options for him (paixamore, detrans male).

Infertility often hurts most in relation to a partner. One woman described feeling "unlovable and useless for not being able to have kids, especially when it’s important for a partner" (knology, detrans female). See partners and spouses for more on how detransition affects relationships.

Living with the loss

Commenters who have been through this tend to say the grief must be felt, not argued away:

You need to go through a grieving process. It lives in your body, your whole body needs to experience it. —HazyInBlue, detrans female

Common sources of support in these threads include specialist therapy, infertility support groups, honest conversations with partners, and in time other forms of family: adoption, fostering, step-parenting, or being an aunt, uncle or mentor. Many also say they are tired of being told to "just adopt" as if it were easy. The fertility page and healing and recovery cover this process in more depth, and the support directory lists detrans support groups.

Trans perspectives

Wanting children does not lead everyone to detransition. Some trans men (trans-identified females) carry pregnancies and keep a trans identity afterwards, accepting the dysphoria it brings:

I carried my child, and yes, it did make me incredibly dysphoric, but my daughter was worth it. … I am still trans. —AlphaErebus, trans man (FTM)

Trans forums also show how hard fertility preservation is. Egg freezing means stopping testosterone, daily injections, internal ultrasounds and a retrieval procedure. One trans man who went through it wrote simply, "I could never do it again" (Cosmo_Creations, trans man (FTM)). Some trans women (trans-identified males) bank sperm out of caution about their future selves:

I just don’t know if I will down the line get the intense urge for a biological child. I’ve just heard of a couple trans-woman who had that happen to them and were depressed that they didn’t save it. —FocusBro2024, trans woman (MTF)

These comments show that the risk of a later wish for children is recognised in trans communities too. The difference is in how they respond to it: by preserving fertility and continuing to transition, by accepting the loss, or, for those who later detransition, by stopping.

Cautions and counterpoints

• Wanting children does not define sex. Women who never want children are no less women, and infertile men are no less men. One woman pointed out that "Developing the desire to have children DOES NOT mean you have to follow that desire" (freshanthony, desisted female).
• A child is not a cure. Commenters warn against treating a baby as the fix for unresolved distress or a struggling relationship.
• Hindsight and sampling. Parents may look back on their transition differently from how they lived it, and these accounts come from a moderated forum where about three-quarters of the site's dataset is female. People who stopped quietly are missing.

What this means for consent

These accounts point to a problem of time. Decisions affecting fertility are often made in adolescence, when the wish for children may be absent, suppressed by distress or years away. Counselling on fertility is now routine in guidelines, and England's independent Cass Review recommended that it be offered before any medical pathway (Cass 2024). But being told about a risk at 16 is not the same as being able to weigh what it will mean at 30. Some detrans women describe their worries being brushed aside with reassurances that a future partner could carry the child (throwawayforthebestk, detrans female). See the critique of informed consent and, for parents, when a child says they are trans.

Summary

• The wish for children is a recurring reason for detransition, though rarely the only one; in the site's data it is the main reason in only a small share of accounts (detrans.ai stats).
• It often appears in the late twenties and thirties, in a committed relationship, or after seeing a friend become a mother, frequently in people once sure they never wanted children.
• For men, fatherhood is often part of accepting themselves as men.
• Unplanned pregnancies during or after testosterone happen, and the pause they force can become a detransition.
• Detrans parents often describe valuing their bodies for what they do rather than how they look. Where fertility is lost, the grief is heavier for having come from a choice made young.

References

• Asseler, J. D., de Nie, I., van Rooij, F. B., Steensma, T. D., Mosterd, D., Verhoeven, M. O., Goddijn, M., Huirne, J. A. F. & van Mello, N. M. (2024). Transgender persons' view on previous fertility decision-making and current infertility: a qualitative study. Human Reproduction 39(9), 2032–2042. source.
• Athan, A. What is matrescence? (working definition, building on Raphael 1973). source.
• British Psychological Society Research Digest (2013). "The end of history illusion" illusion. source.
• Canadian Medical Association Journal (2021). Pregnancy in transgender men. CMAJ 193(33), E1303. source.
• Cass, H. (2024). Independent review of gender identity services for children and young people: Final report. study page.
• de Nie, I., Asseler, J. D., Arnoldussen, M., Baas, S., de Vries, A. L. C., Huirne, J. A. F., Steensma, T. D., den Heijer, M. & van Mello, N. M. (2023). Reflecting on the importance of family building and fertility preservation: transgender people's experiences with starting gender-affirming treatment as an adolescent. Transgender Health 9(4). source.
• Gribble, K. D., Bewley, S. & Dahlen, H. G. (2023). Breastfeeding grief after chest masculinisation mastectomy and detransition: A case report with lessons about unanticipated harm. Frontiers in Global Women's Health. study page, source.
• Hoekzema, E. et al. (2017). Pregnancy leads to long-lasting changes in human brain structure. Nature Neuroscience 20(2), 287–296. source.
• Light, A. D., Obedin-Maliver, J., Sevelius, J. M. & Kerns, J. L. (2014). Transgender men who experienced pregnancy after female-to-male gender transitioning. Obstetrics & Gynecology 124(6), 1120–1127. source.
• Lomax, J. & Butler, C. (2025). Narratives of adults registered female at birth who started a medical transition and later detransitioned. Archives of Sexual Behavior. study page, source.
• Malone, J. C., Liu, S. R., Vaillant, G. E., Rentz, D. M. & Waldinger, R. J. (2016). Midlife Eriksonian psychosocial development: setting the stage for cognitive and emotional health in late life. Developmental Psychology 52(3), 496–508. source.
• OECD (2024). Society at a Glance 2024: OECD Social Indicators, chapter on fertility. source.
• Quoidbach, J., Gilbert, D. T. & Wilson, T. D. (2013). The end of history illusion. Science 339, 96–98. source.
• Vandenbussche, E. (2022). Detransition-related needs and support: a cross-sectional online survey. Journal of Homosexuality. study page, source.
• Yoshida, et al. (2022). Transgender man receiving testosterone treatment became pregnant and delivered a girl: A case report. Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology Research. source.
• detrans.ai (2026). r/detrans user detransition statistics. statistics page.