Gender of rearing is the gender in which parents rear a child. Sex is identified at birth by parents and doctors (based on external genitalia), and coinciding gender behaviors are taught to the child. Aspects of rearing include choosing a name, providing clothes, toys, education, and opportunities which are sex-congruent for their culture. Gender of rearing includes both conscious and unconscious expectations and treatment of the child. Although all cultures rear boys and girls differently, specific differences vary greatly.
Gender identity is nearly always congruent with the gender of rearing.
Transgender refers to the development of a gender identity which is discordant with gender of rearing and genital anatomy (which almost always coincide).
A different, and far rarer, type of discordance occurs if parents raise an anatomically normal boy as if a girl, or vice versa. Other manifestations of psychopathology in the parents are usually apparent; the children have not developed unconflicted gender identities.