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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
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Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
WDYT? Raising kid gender-neutrally
This article was the top story on Yahoo when I signed into my email this morning:
The parents only publicly revealed that their child was a boy when it was time to start school (he is 5). They told close family and friends, but I think not too long ago there was a family who named their kid Storm and the parents weren't going to tell anyone - not even the grandparents.
What do you think?
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Re: WDYT? Raising kid gender-neutrally
What bothers me about this story is that they allowed their child to be put in a pink sparkly swimsuit, but they wouldn't allow "hyper-masculine outfits like skull-print shirts and cargo pants." Um, what? If you're going to allow the kid to be in a hyper-feminine pink sparkly swimsuit, then I think it's not very gender-neutral to not allow a hyper-masculine one. What if Sasha were a girl? Would they allow the skulls and cargo pants but not the pink sparkles? I have a feeling the answer is - exactly. So it seems like the child is only not allowed to express a strong outward form of its own sex, and that seems wrong to me. If you're going to go gender neutral, then you have to accept that your child might just choose to go strongly in the direction of its biological sex (shock!), and that expression shouldn't be forbidden, IMO.
And, the parents fought the private school for him to be able to wear the boy's uniform pants but a girl's blouse. Now, if the child had wanted this, I wouldn't have had a problem with it. However, the parents said that at this point, he doesn't care one way or the other.
I'm all for not being a slave to traditional gender rolls-- letting your little girl play with cars, giving your son a doll, etc. They're kids, they're playing... chill. This actually just came up on my FB when a friend w/ different gender twins was debating letting her 3yo son put clear toe nail polish on (his sister was getting it and he wanted it). I said let him do it... same story happened with friends in VA about 10yrs ago-- guess what, their son lived to tell
. He's turning 14 this month and I'm pretty sure would be classified as 'well-adjusted' despite his father's complete (child-like) meltdown over the nailpolish 10yrs ago.
That said, I'm not so big on the secret identity thing-- seems like you're conducting a social experiment on your own child, and for me personally, that's a bridge too far. I would not do it myself; but more power to the folks who would.
Oh, yeah, I have no problem with boys playing with "girl's" toys and vice versa. When a girlfriend and I painted our toenails when we were younger, my little brother always painted his, too. He's fairly well-adjusted now, and I'm sure the "fairly" qualification has nothing to do with his nail-painting habits as a child and everything to do with his intense relationship to his computer. ;-)
Like I said, what bothers me is that a boy wearing really "masculine" clothes is something these parents wouldn't allow, but they would allow him to dress up in a sparkly pink swimsuit. The swimsuit is fine. Not allowing him to wear cargo pants (if he said he wanted to) is not, IMO.
The whole thing irks me. These parents took it to the extreme and forbid the very masculine clothes and toys, but let him play with and wear very feminine things. It's like they are pushing the gender "roles".
I agree with both of you on this.
I remember reading about Storm awhile ago, I wonder how their experiment will turn out?
I don't have kids, but I wonder if it wouldn't be better to let your child's gender be known, but emphasize to everyone (especially the kid) that gender doesn't mean you have to play with certain toys, plays certain sports, wear certain clothes, or have different desires or aspirations.
There was never a doubt to me or to anyone else that I was a girl. I always knew I was a girl. But it didn't stop me from having boys as friends a well as girls, playing with transformers as well as my little ponies, wanting to be good at math, or deciding to be a military aviator.
It seems like by hiding the gender from everyone, that you accept that girls can only do certain things, and boys can only do certain things, so in order for your kid to be able to do everything you have to erase their gender. Just seems like a backwards approach to me.
I can't follow the link because I'm on my phone, but if they didn't tell anyone the kid's sex until age 5, what pronouns did they use when talking about him? Did they call him "it" or what? That seems like it could cause all sorts of problems!
It seems to me that by allowing feminine stuff and not masculine stuff the parents were forcing a gender on the kid in a way. The fact that he was a boy doesn't make that any better. They did exactly what they were trying to show people shouldn't do.
Is this the one that was in the news a year or so ago? I thought that kid was way younger than 5. But I doubt there's two of these yahoos making the news.
I think the parents are pretty crunchy and silly but if that's what they want to do, as long as they're not harming the child, fine.
The kid is so obviously a boy I'm thinking "eh, your secret isn't exactly a secret to anybody, you're just whoring your child to make whatever statement it is you're trying to make".
ETA: I see there was a Canadian couple who did the same thing last year. Past the infant stage boys look like boys and girls look like girls, generally. I don't think the parents are as clever as they think they are.
I'm reminded of The Rage in Placid Lake, at the very beginning when young Placid's parents make him go to school in a dress even though he doesn't want to.
I bought my daughter a fire truck and a tool set for Christmas. If I had a boy, I'd let him paint his nails. I am fine with not pigeonholing kids based on how they pee. But if you're pushing an agenda rather than actually taking cues from your kid, which I think you're doing if you're forbidding cargo pants (aside: are cargo pants really that effing masculine anyway? I like cargo pants.), then frankly, you suck.
Yeah, Storm (which is the one you're thinking of who was in the news last year) is younger. This is Sasha, who I had never heard of before, so definitely two different kids. And like I mentioned, I think Storm's parents are even more extreme because they didn't want to even tell close family (which makes me wonder if the kid will never have a babysitter? Or will babysitters be forbidden to change diapers??)
And MrsBini - they called Sasha "the infant" instead of a pronoun until he was 3 because he's the youngest child.
I don't agree with the concept at all. I DO agree that it is important to not force your child to adhere to things typically associated with their gender but I feel as though this is way too extreme.
If Chlo? wants to play with GI Joe or Tonka trunks then that is what she'll be getting for her birthday. I got her a tool set and drums for Christmas because, heck, my daughter loves to bang on things. Why not!?
Do I also put her in pink fluffy tutu's? Yes I do. But she wears jeans and t-shirts just the same. I feel that you can avoid cookie-cutter gender stereotypes in a less extreme way. I feel like making such an example of your child and your genderless parenting style is selfish in a way! I feel as though a child could be pressured to even go the other direction of their true gender just because their parents adopted such a parenting method.
To each their own, but I personally am against this.
My friend had someone give them a purple bumbo seat they were no longer using. She went to put her 6 month old son in it and her DH said no, because it is purple. That seems silly to me. But somewhere between purple bumbo and pink tutu I draw the line.
I really really don't like the gender neutral thing. Sure, letting your child figure out what (s)he wants and likes regarding genter-stereotypical stuff is cool, but denying him/her a gender is nuts to me.
My goddaughter is almost 4 now. Total tomboy and loves to wear boys jeans and superhero stuff which is totally cool with me. She can actually explain that she wants that because it's easier to play and climb and do stuff in jeans than in a dress/skirt.
At some point she actually told her mom 'I'm a big boy now', which was fine too, because she knows full well that she's a girl and is cool with that. She just wanted to join the big boys while playing, managed to come along, so she declared, she was a big boy now. That was not gender confusion, that was 'wow mom, look how awesome I am, I accomplished big-boy-stuff and they didn't send me away like a baby'. She also likes helping in the kitchen and has a dollhouse, which is a magic castle of doom where her super-horse (aka my little pony) and batman live together to do 'really cool stuff'.
She might never really choose to wear dresses and do super-girly things, which is fine, as long as she gets the chance to figure it out herself. Her best friend is a very girly-girl and they know they're both girls, just one is really cool like superman and the other is really cool like a princess.
If tomorrow she would decide to wear all pink dresses with sparkly stuff, her mom would love it and be okay with it.
The way my goddaughter is raised, to me, is the way to raise a child to be him/herself; not revealing the gender and (what it looks like here) forcing him/her into the other role, just sounds stupid to me and readies the child for the psych ward, not society!
My food blog
What I'm looking forward to in 2012:
Eating our way through (northern) Italy on vacation
<a href="http://www.thenest.com/?utm_source=ticker&utm_medium=HTML&utm_campaign=tickers" title="Home DThe quote that cracked me up was: "On a macro level she hopes her son sets an example for other parents and makes them reconsider buying their own sons trucks or forcing their daughters into tights. She's seen how those consumer trappings affect how and who kids play with in the sandbox."
I guess she'd be up for the northern Spanish tradition of putting very young boys into tights under shorts.
2012 Reading Challenge
Now Nesting from Chicago, IL My nail blog: