What Happens When Kids Fall ‘Far From The Tree’

As the old saying goes, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. In other words, the child takes after the parent; the son is a chip off the old block.

Of course, that’s often not the case. Straight parents have gay children and vice versa; autistic children are born to parents who don’t have autism; and transgender kids are born to parents who are perfectly comfortable with their gender.

That’s the kind of family Andrew Solomon has written about in his new book, Far From the Tree. In it, Solomon chronicles the lives of families in which the kids are, in one way or another, different from their parents. He explores how some of those differences come to be viewed as disabilities, while others are seen as part of that child’s identity.