Should kids “decide” their own gender?
Boy or girl? She/he decides. (Image by Robert Crum via Flickr)
I read this weird item today:
A couple in Sweden has decided to keep their two-year-old child’s sex a secret–even from the child.
The child goes by “Pop,” and no pronouns are used in reference to the child. Only Mom, Dad, a select few friends or relatives, and, hopefully, Pop’s doctor know the child’s birth sex. The intention is to raise Pop without the gender influences that come from society and gender-based socialization.
Pop’s clothing ranges from dresses to pants, Pop’s hairstyle changes on a regular basis, and apparently Pop gets to choose what clothing and appearance to sport from day to day. There is likely a wide range of toys available as well.
My response is typically American: wtf? But I’m joined in my concern by experts in transgender identity, whom Matt Bailey (apparently also transgender) on Examiner.com interviews, including a Denver therapist and transgender specialist named Rachael St. Claire. She says,
“The concern I have is that the parent’s are raising Pop according to a one-sided view of human development that may be unresponsive to the child’s natural and spontaneous expression of gender. By being gender neutral, I believe they are also being gender un-responsive to their child.
I can agree with Pop’s parents on one thing: kids do seem to pick their own gender. Until she was almost three, Mika played as much with dinosaurs as with teddies. Then it was like someone threw a switch. One day she woke up demanding princess paraphernalia. She went almost six months refusing to wear pants, which was fun in the dead of winter. At one point we argued passionately about the profusion of pants in the wardrobe — my wardrobe.
As a parent, I too object to the color coding of infants. When Kana was a newborn, we received a layette containing a pink headband whose sole purpose was to notify strangers this bald infant was a girl. Kana is still bald, so strangers still frequently mistake her for a boy, and they always look mortified when my older kid corrects them. Why? Who gives a hoot? I mean, if she were 16 and still being drafted for the boy’s baseball team, we’d have to be concerned. About baseball scholarships.
My point is, Pop’s parents are right in one respect: Pop will someday choose his or her own gender. But to intentionally confuse the issue harms the child. That’s my view. Yours?
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Lisa Belkin blogged about this same story on Motherlode today. Guess it touches on a lot of parenting nerves. The comments on Motherlode so far are more positive than I would have imagined which is *surprising*
I disagree that children choose their gender identity. Gender may be more fluid that we thought, but choice really isn’t part of the equation. People are who they are, for the most part. Interest is “boy” clothes or “girl” toys isn’t indicative of gender choice so much as an interest in novel things. As with sexual orientation, who has ever sat down and said, “Damn it, I’m going to be a girl!”
I recommend a book called As Nature Made Him. It’s about a boy whose penis was burned off during circumscision. His parents fell under the spell of a doctor whose working thesis was that gender was completely constructed by socialization. On his advice, they raised their son as a girl. Needless to say, it didn’t work and he lived a tormented life.
These Swedes aren’t much different than that doctor. They’re putting their theory ahead of reality. Good luck to that kid. I hope her parents are socking away some money for later therapy.
A little over 4 months ago I had a baby and I considered many, many different things for him but this was one that never even crossed my mind. I think in some way or another it will harm the child and, as a parent, I can’t imagine what the parents were thinking.
On an objective level I’ll be very interested to hear from “Pop” when he/she is older to see what happened.
I tended to dress my daughter in typical college-student styles- T-shirt and jeans- until one fine morning in Kindergarten, she threw down her clothes and announced, “I’m not wearing this, it’s not PRETTY!”
She’s been dressing herself in pink and frills ever since.