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F.G. has watched the rise in numbers of transgender young people with a mix of joy and trepidation.

In a video chat this spring, I talked to F.G., the first patient to take puberty suppressants for gender affirmation 35 years ago, when he was 13.

F.G. says he never wanted to have children, though he’s not sure if that’s because he didn’t know if he could.

The medication would pause development of secondary sex characteristics, sparing F.G. the experience of feeling that his body was betraying him, buying time and making it easier for him to go through male puberty later, if he then decided to take testosterone.

“Of course, I wanted that,” F.G. said of puberty suppressants, in an interview in “The Dutch Approach,” a 2020 book about the Amsterdam clinic by the historian Alex Bakker.