“Now I’m actually me,’’ says one child in the trailer for Frontline’sGrowing Up Trans, a documentary that examines the choices and experiences of eight transgender children and their parents.

Caitlyn Jenner’s debut earlier this month brought to the forefront the discussion of what it means to be transgender. But Frontline, which is based at Boston’s WGBH, follows a discussion about children and gender that stretches back years.

In 2013, the Transgender Law Center’s Masen Davis told WBUR’s Here and Now that the previous 15 years saw a “sea change’’ for how average Americans think about transgender people.


Frontline filmmakers Miri Navasky and Karen O’Conner spoke with doctors involved with the gender program at the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital in Chicago. They examine the medical options available to gender non-conforming and transgender children.

“This generation of kids are really — they’re pioneers. They are going to be the ones to teach us,’’ Dr. Courtney Finlayson, pediatric endocrinologist at Lurie Children’s Hospital, told the filmmakers.

Families sharing their stories have helped others in similar situations. In a letter written to her son earlier this year, Mimi Lemay described how the story of another transgender family helped her own.

Growing Up Trans premieres Tuesday at 10 p.m. on WGBH. Watch the trailer:

Related: Caitlyn Jenner’s Vanity Fair Photoshoot