If I ever become a parent, I’d look to this couple for a bit of inspiration. Judging from the public reaction to the Swedish parents’ story, I’d probably be accused of everything from child abuse to conducting a cruel social experiment… for not revealing the child’s biological sex to the world. Aside from hir mom and dad and folks who’ve changed hir diaper, nobody knows whether little “Pop” is male or female.
“We want Pop to grow up more freely and avoid being forced into a specific gender mould from the outset,” Pop’s mother said. “It’s cruel to bring a child into the world with a blue or pink stamp on their forehead.”
“Amen,” I say. Others, however, have reacted with horror and amazement. Even some commenters on this post at Feministe are aghast. Holly supports these parents’ decision and offers compelling reasons why.
Commenting on the story, writer and psychologist Susan Pinker said, “Ignoring children’s natures simply doesn’t work… Child-rearing should not be about providing an opportunity to prove an ideological point, but about responding to each child’s needs as an individual.” That makes no sense at all. Responding to Pop’s needs as an individual – rather than as a gender – is exactly what hir parents are doing. In what way are these parents ignoring Pop’s nature? They are not stifling the child, but leaving all doors open to hir. But accusations that the parents are keeping something important from Pop run rampant, as though zie is being deprived of the joy of sexist pigeonholing. Conflation of “sex” and “gender” is commonplace as well.
The parents are not withholding the child’s gender from hir. That is not something parents can tell a child in the first place; that is for Pop to discover and reveal if zie wishes. I’m sure zie knows what’s between hir legs. But that’s not the same as gender. What Pop’s parents are doing is keeping hir sex a secret from others, presumably because they (rightly) predict people will treat hir differently according to hir sex.
Eventually Pop will probably gravitate towards a gender, like hir peers. Hir body and hir gender may not “match up.” Zie could be trans or intersex or genderqueer. Eventually zie will probably let hir sex and hir gender identity be known. And eventually people will be able to treat Pop the way they think people of hir sex should be treated. Eventually people will be able to make assumptions about Pop that have nothing to do with hir actual personality, desires or abilities. Until then, I think it’s beautiful that Pop’s parents are letting hir be free from all that.
that’s facinating! Good for them!
The gender essentialists quoted in this story confused me greatly, if they believe what they say what the parents do shouldn’t make any difference and Girl-Pop will want to play cooperatively with dollies or Boy-Pop will want to play competitively with fake guns. If they believe it doesn’t matter, why do they think it matters?
I think like any parenting decision, this is just something for everyone else to freak out about. UR DOIN IT RONG is the tone of almost every article on parenting I see, it seems!
Choosing to keep Pop’s sex a secret might give Pop some trouble down the line. I can see why it might be confusing to hir or maybe make hir feel ashamed (what’s so wrong with knowing I’m a girl/boy that my parents wouldn’t tell anyone?), but I doubt it’d be more damaging that your run of the mill parenting decisions… like a parent really pushing a kid to play a certain sport or instrument or something. They love their kid, are providing for hir well being and health and aren’t abusing hir, hurting hir or anything else. So many kids don’t have that, why do I care what kind of decisions these parents make about the sex and/or gender presentation of their kid?
Though, I’m betting they write a book. People would eat that up!
You know, this kind of reminds me of learning I was going to have a son. Because I was at first apprehensive, wondering how conventional notions of what a boy should be like would affect him (and me). And then I realized something: if there’s a parent (or parents) who is able to distinguish between sex and gender, and what an individual boy is like vs. what an entire society says he should be like, then the mother and/or father can instill that in their child and hope that it will take root. Brava to these parents.
weeeeellll. I don’t know. On the one hand I have no problem with this, I think that they aren’t “forcing” her into one gender or another so the comparison with Dr. John Money is inapt. And like you say SarahMC the child will most likely eventually gravitate towards an identity that will most likely include gender identification. However there is something about this that strikes me as a bit too, “experimenting” on your own child, for my taste. I mean on the whole, I don’t think the child will be harmed in any way, it just leaves a slightly bad aftertaste for me. I just think you need to be very careful when you go down this path.
What aspect of it seems experimental to you, Bluebears? I recognize that this method of parenting and dealing with sex and gender is not the norm, but I personally consider the norm harmful.
Is any unusual approach to gender (or anything, really) “experimental?”
If anything is experimental I’d say it’s assigning a rigid role to people based on their privates. The parents probably realize they can’t tell everyone on earth they don’t want their kid treated stereotypically, so they’re going a step beyond that.
SarahMC, I normally agree with you about things, but in this case I think that bluebears is right about it being experimental. Assigning a rigid role to people based on their genitalia is not experimental, as in, the outcome of this act has been repeated many times and a good pattern established of the possible outcomes. No one knows what effect this decision will have on a child, and thus Pop is, in some sense, an experiment. I share bluebears’ reservation — I think people should be very careful and think things through when they try things like this. However, the parents are probably in as good a position as possible to undertake such a project. My impression of Sweden is that it’d be a much better place to make an attempt at this sort of thing than, say, here.
I’m not sure that the parents are doing anything that would harm Pop. I don’t think it’s that they’re not allowing hir adapt certain gender characteristics. They’re just allowing hir to discover them for hirself rather than try to drill it into hir head. I think it’s more harmful to drill “boy” or “girl” behaviors into children who exhibit any “wrong” behaviors.
I’m sure that y’all have seen this before, but it is a short story about this topic: X: A Fabulous Child’s Story by Lois Gould
http://www.gendercentre.org.au/22article4.htm
Meh. How disappointed are these parents going to be when their baby still gravitates towards the “gender appropriate” toys and colors and ends up in a traditional, opposite-sex (tm Miss California) marriage? I don’t see this parenting decision as hurting the child in any way so I support them in their efforts. But I think it’s possible to raising a well-adjusted child who can choose their own sexuality without all the secrets and hirs and zies. It has more to do with being a loving, open-minded, attentive parent than what color you dress your baby in. Plus it’s only going to take until what? preschool? for some kid to suggest a game of show me your, I’ll show you mine and then what’s between hirs legs won’t be so secret.
Who knows if they’ll be disappointed IF Pop gravitates towards “gender appropriate” stuff. At least they’d know Pop chose things that way, rather than being coerced.
The couple only plans to continue doing this for a few years. They’re not under any delusion that Pop’s sex will remain a secret forever.
i’m wondering where they’re buying clothes – is anyone else super depressed by the gendered baby clothes out there? apparently all infants are either into trucks or flowers…
@saramMC: I’m not even saying this is what is actually going on here, but its more like, a feeling, I got from the article. That felt sort of…off. Its true that anything thats outside the norm as it refers to gender is experimental, and its true that nothing will change until some leaps are taken…but…still. I’ve read a lot of case histories from back in the day when psychiatrists used their own children as case studies and there are so many conflicts of interest there. Perhaps if this sort of thing was done and the children were part of a controlled and carefully monitored study? Again, I just want to reiterate this is based on my reading of just that one article, and its more an uneasy feeling than anything else. I absolutely don’t think the government should step in and force the parents to reveal the gender.
(Getting over my nervousness about posting here again.)
Speaking as someone who’s genderqueer and felt that the gender policing exerted by her parents and peers was nothing but harmful… hear, hear!
I read about this on ‘Feministe’ a week ago, and I can’t say how happy I am for Pop. There is no ‘experiment’ going on here, just the allowance of total expression on the part of the child.
I had a professor a few years back who, while she didn’t withhold her childrens’ sexes from the public, was deliberate in absolutely not gender policing either of her sons. One loved singing and playing with dinosaurs and robots. The other son enjoyed dancing about in pink tutus and getting visitors to participate in improvisational theater with him.
Both were happy and healthy.
FRB- I just started working in a children’s clothing store last week. It depresses me how much pink and blue there is, and so little green/orange/yellow/etc.
As for Pop, I think zie will turn out fine. It’ll probably only be a few years before zie plays “show-me-yours-I’ll-show-you-mine” with the neighbor kids. Once they see, the secret’s out.
Coolest. Parents. EVER!
“It’ll probably only be a few years before zie plays “show-me-yours-I’ll-show-you-mine” with the neighbor kids.”
It seems like there’s an assumption that all children do this. Or maybe I’m just different because I don’t think I played with boys outside the classroom much at all. Or my memory’s bad.
The more I read blog entries about this, the more doing this seems to make sense. Do I like my hair somewhat long because it looks better? Or is it just because I’ve never had it very short and so I feel more comfortable with it long? I wonder how much our comfort and liking for things is dependent on what we experience in the first few years of life. Of course one could say if I like my somewhat long hair, then what’s the problem if I was socialized to like it? I am comfortable with it and nowadays girls can have short hair if they want. Still, I sometimes wonder what it’d be like to feel comfortable and not judged in men’s clothes. I like the thought of more choices. If crossing gender lines were less judged, perhaps more people would dress in unisex clothing? Perhaps Pop will feel more comfortable crossing gender lines for something different even if sie feels decidedly girl or decidedly boy.
I’m a little late to the game, but I have to say that I really like the idea. I can’t even recall how many times I have babysat and people come up, immediately wanting to know the babies’ sex. Why? Just to say how “beautiful” or “pretty” the girl is and how “tough” (sometimes cute) the boy is. Really? He’s going to grow up to be a football player? And these comments continue, typically from outside sources, all the children’s lives! The boys need to buck up and tough it out, the girls look prettier smiling and need to cheer up!
I think the parent’s motives are wonderful and it seems a logical step in preventing others from making unwanted gender-based comments that the child will overhear. It’s also a step towards making gender equality more basic by bringing seemingly natural assumptions to question…
I never played that game either Lyndsay.
@bluebears: The article actually calls it an “experiment”, and I don’t think it’s wrong to call it that. However, I think that we would need to acknowledge that all parenting is, to a certain degree, experimental. It’s all trial-and-error, a constant negotiation between doing what makes the individual child happy and what the world expects. Parents, especially first-time parents, never really know exactly what to do, or how their parenting choices will affect their children. And there are certainly enough voices from all sides telling them what they SHOULD be doing, many of which are contradictory or counter-intuitive.
Keeping Pop’s gender private doesn’t strike me as especially harmful. It may cause complications, but so would being forced into a gender role the child isn’t comfortable with (which I imagine happens fairly often, and with a lot less fanfare).
It was interesting to read this post right after reading an interview with the author of “Between XX and XY” on Salon this morning. It’s good to see these issues being discussed, even if we don’t have any easy answers about gender and children.
@Lyndsay and SarahMC
Maybe that statement was too hyperbolic. I just meant that, somehow, someone outside of the family is going to find out Pop’s sex, be it through playing “doctor,” “show-me-yours-I’ll-show-you-mine,” demonstrating to a playmate that zie knows how to use the toilet, getting a bath from the babysitter, or just flat-out telling someone else.
I really can’t understand why some people are so upset about this! It’s not like the parents are trying to hide Pop’s sex from hir (or hir baby sitters), there is no hush-hush approach: the article (at least the original article) clearly states Pop knows boys and girls have different parts, just that it is up to Pop when to disclose this particular piece of information about hirself.
The parents also say they do not view this as an experiment; the way they see it they are giving their child a chance to grow up as an individual, without preconcieved notions of how zie should behave based on what is between hir legs. They also say that they have received plenty of support, both from family and strangers, and that in general people get more upset about their decision not to enroll Pop in preschool (they both work part time and care for Pop at home) than their decision to keep their child’s sex a secret!
The outrage of some really is puzzling. If, like they say, this approach will do nothing to prevent Pop from developing gender-specific behaviour tied to hir biological sex, why are they so upset? The child seems to have loving, caring and supportive parents, and surely that matters more than the rest of the world instantly knowing if zie is biologically male or female?
Late to the party too…when you have a small child, it becomes very striking very quickly how much the world wants to impose a gendered experience on both parents and kids. I always wonder about tiny infants with those little pink headbands, which can’t possibly be comfortable for the baby but make the parents feel good. And instead of just saying to someone “Your baby is beautiful”, the first question is “boy or girl?”. And don’t even get me started on clothing for kids-talk about imposing gender standards. (And really, bikinis for toddlers? Eeeew.) The level of discomfort when an adult doesn’t know which sex a kid belongs to is palpable.
And yet I have to confess that our kids pretty much stuck to traditional gender lines in their choice of toys and activities as they grew up. They were both offered the full spectrum of toys and they went with the standard, which was fine with us-whatever they wanted.We had one boy and one girl, and he liked legos and Magic cards and cars and action figures, and she liked Barbies and dressing up (when she got older she especially liked taking the heads off the Barbies and mutilating them in creative ways).
Now our son is sort of helpless with tools and writes a philosophy blog, and our daughter is an aspiring chemical engineer. Take that, gender stereotypes! The bottom line is, you have to let the kids lead in their own personality creation (within limits, of course). I wouldn’t have had the energy or the courage to do what this couple is doing, but it’ll be interesting to see how it comes out.
“If they believe it doesn’t matter, why do they think it matters?” Good question bellacooker.
One one hand they are saying the outside does not influence what gender a child will choose/gravitate to on the other hand they are saying outside influences will affect what gender a child chooses/gravitates to. It is almost confusing. I agree with BlondeGrlz. A parent/s can dress their toddler girl in pink frills and by the time she is 4 or 5 she may want to play with guns in the mud. The kid is going to be whoever they want to be as long as their parents let them, everyone else plays only a tiny role and will not affect he/she very much. This just seems like a waste of time because children don’t being to form a memory until age 3 so the child won’t even remember their previous “gendering” or non-gendering in the case of these parents.
And I do think they will be a bit disappointed if this child winds up gravitating towards the “gender appropriate” toys and colors and ends up heterosexual, because it seems like they are doing this to prove a point, if not to simply say other parents are raising their children wrong.
What I find fascinating in all the comments is that people apparently believe that the parents can keep Pop’s sex a secret for as long as they want. Pop is bound to start asking questions in at most a few years as zie figures out that the rest of the world is divided into boys and girls. The parents will have to handle that. Also, even some Swedish commenters seem to think that this can continue into school years, which is just stupid. Swedes have personal identity numbers, which have to be revealed in all official settings, such as opening a bank account, or starting school. It’s immediately obvious from your PIN whether your sex – according to the state – is male or female.
(Se wikipedia for more details on the pin – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_identity_number_(Sweden) – we have a very similar system in Norway)
You know, reading this I can’t help but remember something I heard an expectant father once say. He and his wife were both tall, largeish people who had both struggled with their weight. She was about 3 months pregnant and they didn’t know the gender. He said “well, if it’s a boy, we’re calling the NFL scouts immediately. If it’s a girl, she’s in for a lifetime of weight control programs.” I think that said it all – they were already policing the body image of their child in utero. The baby, btw, ended up as a healthy, chubby boy. He’s about 3 now and there is a photo of him on Facebook with a football.