Comments on: More Than the Sum of Hir Parts

By: Flackette

Flackette — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 16:46:55 +0000

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.

By: Mirthful

Mirthful — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 08:25:29 +0000

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)

By: DirtyLaundry

DirtyLaundry — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 05:24:58 +0000

“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.

By: mischiefmanager

mischiefmanager — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 22:24:43 +0000

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.

By: Catnip

Catnip — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 21:59:23 +0000

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?

By: vegkitty

vegkitty — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 20:23:04 +0000

@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.

By: Kari

Kari — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 14:53:51 +0000

@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.

By: SarahMC

SarahMC — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 12:24:51 +0000

I never played that game either Lyndsay.

By: Feminizzle

Feminizzle — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 12:14:50 +0000

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…

By: Lyndsay

Lyndsay — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 06:09:28 +0000

“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.