<p>Why stop at gender? Why not keep your child guessing if they were adopted or not, which race, ethnicity or nationality they are. Free them from all of those restrictions on identity.
/sarcasm</p>
<p>I’m truly perplexed by the anger and sarcasm this story is bringing up in people. What possible harm could come from not telling strangers the gender of ones child? Strangers addressed my baby/toddler as a girl and who cares? </p>
<p>The bottom line is, what harm is this doing to the child? To compare it to Skinner’s monkey? Based on what?</p>
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<p>That is funny. Someone got my son a gift of a castle for his third birthday, complete with little cannons he could shoot and a round table/chairs. My husband and I loved the little cannons, I don’t think my son ever touched them. Instead, the knights (or as he called them, “the guys”) would meet for lunch at the round table and talk about trains or whatever my son was currently interested in. He would also serve them imaginary food on little plates. It was so darn cute!</p>
<p>MrsWeasley, That is interesting.</p>
<p>I think what people are objecting to is this excessive need to pretend that there is no such thing as physical gender. I’m all for broadening gender roles and recognizing that there are rare cases in which physical gender and mental gender don’t match. I think it would be great if boys could play with dolls without their dads getting nervous - tomboy girls have become more accepted since women’s lib, but there is still a perjorative connotation to being a “girly” boy. </p>
<p>Be that as it may, the vast majority of people are born with an identifiable biological sex. The vast majority of these people will have no inclination to change that gender, whether or not they conform to gender stereotypes. So I see no need to deny clear physical fact of gender just because there are occasional exceptions that defy the norm. It is just as silly as refusing to acknowledge that someone is black or asian or short or tall.</p>
<p>Even if we accept as valid - which I do in part - the notion that gender expectations are harmful to children, given the world we actually live in (as opposed to the one we’d perhaps like to live in), I fail to see how this child will be less damaged by this totally bizarre effort to conceal his gender. This leads me to teh conclusion that they aren’t doing this for the child’s benefit, they’re doing it to make a point - which smacks of exploitation. Child-rearing decisions should not be based on a political agenda.</p>
<p>How are these people pretending there is no such thing as physical gender? They are not claiming their child is genderless. </p>
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<p>His gender? Is that a guess or just using the default gender? Why not “their gender.” </p>
<p>I’m kidding a bit but it does highlight yet again how important our society thinks it is to know the gender of the baby/toddler we are discussing. </p>
<p>Someone already mentioned the studies where strangers go to great lengths to find out a baby/toddler’s gender. There are also studies that show that when people are told a baby in a diaper is a boy, they attribute the boys behavior to things that we think of as male and vise versa when told the baby is a girl. </p>
<p>Is forcing people to deal with a child simply as a child going to damage that child? I fail to see how that would be damaging. I’ve had an infant/toddler. I don’t remember any discussions on gender theory with him. </p>
<p>For me there are two main points. One, I’ve seen no evidence that it would damage a child for the world not to know their gender and two, I don’t see this as bizarre. </p>
<p>Frankly, in my opinion, it’s no less bizarre to dress an infant head to toe in pink, put them in a pram with pink lining, then into a pink carseat and decorate their nursery in a pink theme. Or do the same in blue. I mean, godforbid anyone miss the fact that one’s six month old has a ***** (or not.)</p>
<p>But I want to be perfectly clear that while I do not think the head to toe pink or blue damages a baby/toddler in and of itself nor do I think it’s inherently “normal” or somehow healthy for a child. And I know a lot of new parents who went a little crazy with the pink or blue who mellowed out as their kid aged. </p>
<p>We go along with so many gendered expectations. It’s just interesting to me to see how strongly people react when one set of parents decides to keep that one piece of information about their child private.</p>
<p>I asked:
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<p>pugmadkate replied:
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<p>Thanks, but back to my question, HOW does one choose to be gender neutral as a teen? Is it as simple as what the he/she wears? Hair style? A box to check on a form? Which bathroom/lockerroom do they use at school? Do they have to fight for special permissions on anything? </p>
<p>I think it’s kinda interesting, too. I just can’t get my head around the practical steps it takes to achieve gender neutrality when one is old enough to know the difference between boys and girls.</p>
<p>I have two Ds. We always had “boy” toys and “girl” toys…dolls, trucks, balls, building blocks, tea sets, doctor kits. Both Ds grew up to be tough athletes that like to look like girls when they are not on a court/field.</p>
<p>Someone gave my nephew a set of Tinker Toys on his second birthday. We showed D1 (then 2.5 yrs old) and nephew how the Tinker Toys fit together and set them loose to build things. We gave no prompts about what to build. After a few minutes I looked over…D1 built a row of flowers, nephew built a gun. Inate tendencies or learned behavior?</p>
<p>^by that age, unless they’ve been sheltered from TV and popular culture entirely, impossible to know.</p>
<p>(I mean, connecting flowers to women is a cultural thing to begin with, and guns do not exist in nature, so choosing to build them also reflects cultural bias). </p>
<p>And that’s beyond the commercials, tv shows, etc, which will happily show your average 1 or 2 year old what they’re supposed to want.</p>
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<p>I work with a woman who is that person.</p>
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<p>That happened to me. When D was about 8 months old, I had her at a public swimming pool…she was in a pink, flowered one piece suit with a ruffle around it…but her hair was short and white, so several people commented on our cute boy. ???</p>
<p>Have we all read the book Middlesex?</p>
<p>missypie, Middlesex is on my list of books I must read. It sounds fascinating.</p>
<p>I don’t see the point of hiding the gender of any person. I guess it’s an interesting experiment, but I’m not sure it’s fair to the child, who has no say in the matter. '</p>
<p>And what is so wrong with having an identifiable gender? Every characteristic a person exhibits can be a source of discrimination, so doesn’t it make more sense to just learn to be who we are and be happy with whatever that is?</p>
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<p>This story really bothers me, because I think the premise is stupid and wrong. Unless Sweden has not evolved socially like the U.S., where do we have “specific gender molds” anymore?</p>
<p>My girls are elite athletes and wear pants most of the time, and my son’s favorite shirt is pink and he loves to cook. I can’t think of anything my kids have not tried because it might be outside their assigned “gender mold.”</p>
<p>This approach also bothers me because women in my generation fought for, and won the right to do everything a man does, so I literally get p***ed-off when I come across a woman who feels like she can’t be womanly if she wants to achieve the same as a man.</p>
<p>Bring on the pink, frills and tears if you want to. So what if you do?</p>
<p>I never dressed my daughter in pastel colors, because they are just not my thing. I guess I was imposing my own social construct on her, but honestly, with the different range of colors and prints out there, it didn’t seem like a big deal. She happily wore whatever color I put her in, and once she was old enough to choose, tended to like some colors more than others - even if they weren’t my own preference. She latched onto pumpkin orange in a big bad way when she was about three. </p>
<p>It would have been a bigger deal to ask people to suspend reality and guess or just not know what her gender was for years. If my extended family and friends didn’t know the gender of my kids, they would have thought I had a screw loose and recommended me for psychiatric counseling. I would think the same about any parent imposing this social experiment on their kids for the long term. </p>
<p>It may be an interesting experiment to see how people respond to your kids for a while, no doubt. But if you give your kids the opportunity to explore everything, while still telling them (and everyone else) who they are, I think that is far better for a child’s self-esteem and self-image, than not discussing gender. </p>
<p>It becomes the elephant in the room. It is “Pat” from SNL, and most people think it is odd or weird and would rather ignore the ambiguity, then try to figure it out, after a while. It can make a work or social environment very awkward. In these situations, it is the not knowing that makes it that much harder to know how to interact with them. We don’t want to offend. We aren’t trying to put a social construct on them - just know which pronouns to use, so we don’t say or do something that would hurt their feelings. Most people don’t care how a person acts, or dresses or talks, but they don’t want to intentionally (or unintentionally) offend a colleague or acquaintance. </p>
<p>If that is what an adult (or a teen) chooses to do, that is fine with me. I just don’t think that is fair to do this to a young child…or children.</p>
<p>missypie, considering the dress and bow on my friend’s baby and the bathing suit on yours, it sounds like clothing and accessories doesn’t really make a difference when strangers label a young child by gender. I wonder what the couple in the original post are doing about their child’s hair?</p>
<p>Middlesex is on my “to read” list as well…I’m going to have to bump it up the list.</p>
<p>The idea that a girl is girly because she plays with dolls – or a boy ‘manly’ because he likes cars, trucks and things that make ‘explosions’ – is restrictive in itself. </p>
<p>My D played with dolls, liked pink, and playing dress up. She also was physically fearless, a jock, and physically/mentally tough. My son, the cars/dozers/trucks fanatic, is sensitive, gentle and not terribly athletic. </p>
<p>Maybe that’s what teens are rebelling against: the assumptions that if you like x, then you must be y.</p>
<p>One kid in D1’s preschool class who was a girl, but had a boy’s haircut and wore boy’s clothing. The child had a unisex name, and I was privately puzzled for the first few months of preschool if the child was a boy or a girl. This wasn’t parent-driven, but was the child’s wishes. It didn’t seem to rattle the parents. No idea what the kid is like now, if this was a passing phase (though it lasted at least two years) or was tied to a more significant gender identity issue.</p>
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That’s great, mrsref! For Older Son’s 3rd birthday, my friend gave him a doll and a train set. He unwrapped the doll halfway, and then threw it over his shoulder and never picked it up again. The train set was his favorite toy until it fell apart.</p>
<p>I never allowed toy guns or any other kind of weapons in the house, nor violent TV or even Power Rangers. Still, I don’t know how they learned this, but my boys made guns out of Lego, sticks, or even their fingers going “pow pow pow”.</p>
<p>I also got that “they’re too pretty to be boys” thing (and people still say that :)), despite that they went out bristling with Brio tool belts, sticks, and toy cars. My daughter was always mistaken for a boy in Latin America, “que cosa mas lindo” they would say, because her ears weren’t pierced! This despite that she was girly girly with her lavender flouncy dresses (lavender, always lavender), tutus, Polly Pocket, and My Little Pony.</p>
<p>Awww, now I’m all nostalgic. (of course I’ve kept all their stuff). </p>
<p>Anyway, I was surprised at how much of this was innate. And even though I was adamantly against it, the boys still wanted the guns. So good luck to that family in Sweden, right?</p>
<p>With 2 older sisters, my son was surrounded by Barbie Dolls from infancy. Not once did he touch them, other than to “take aim” at his sisters. :)</p>
<p>I never allowed toy guns or any other kind of weapons in the house, nor violent TV or even Power Rangers. Still, I don’t know how they learned this, but my boys made guns out of Lego, sticks, or even their fingers going “pow pow pow”.</p>
<p>Same here, but the then 18 month old son bit his PB&J sandwich half into an ‘L’, held it like a pistol and said, ‘pow’!!</p>
<p>“Why stop at gender? Why not keep your child guessing if they were adopted or not, which race, ethnicity or nationality they are. Free them from all of those restrictions on identity.
/sarcasm”</p>
<p>broetchen, you make a great point. As a matter of fact, I have a son who is adopted and biracial (Caucasian/African American). When he was young, people would ask me if we were going to tell him if he was adopted. Seriously. And since his ethnicity is not easily identifiable, friends and family would say “Can’t he just be Italian?” or “Why don’t we say he is Samoan?” It was ridiculous! So we redoubled our efforts to raise him to be proud and secure in his identity (both racial and adopted) just to combat such silly notions.</p>
<p>These parents, though possibly well-intentioned, are very misguided. What a ridiculous,foolish experiment to do on your own child. To me, it’s unforgiveable. </p>
<p>There is absolutely nothing wrong with strangers wanting to know how best to identify your child. Humans have language. Humans identify things. And if the parents do not act to condition or restrict the child (either gender) in gender-specific ways, the child will grow to expect unlimited potential. </p>
<p>On every single form one has to fill out, the question of gender is asked. “Pops” will only be deprived of knowing his/her gender for so long. And then what? S/he will think it’s some little dirty secret? Good grief.</p>
<p>I think that parents who bring extreme views/agendas/biases to the raising of their kids do much more harm than good. Many parents have felt “damaged” by events in their pasts, so they not only compensate but overcompensate for what they feel happened to them. And many of these parents do much more damage to their kids than what was ever done to them. Good intentions do not necessarily have good results. </p>
<p>These parents are whack jobs, imho, and I suspect that Pops will have many, many problems later in life for having been raised by these misguided people.</p>