Keeping your child an "IT"

[SoonerTexan]

Has anyone else heard about this?

http://www.livescience.com/14323-gen...r-anxiety.html

Basically, a couple has decided to keep the gender of their delivered child a secret. As far as I can tell, this isn't an ambiguous gender case (because I would understand their approach in that situation), just a social experiment. The idea is for the child to be able to form his/her identity outside of "social gender norms." The kid's name is "Storm"

Personally, I think this is just creepy and wrong, especially this type of stuff:

The way Storm's parents handle the de-genderizing (is that a word?) of the youngest member of their family is confusing at best and creepy at worst. During a family vacation to Cuba, they flipped a coin to decide how to refer to Storm: on this particular trip, (s)he was a boy.

[DCJenn]

I still maintain that this has GOT to be a setup along the lines of botox mom.

J.

[scarlett09]

I read about this the other day and it was really interesting.

I didn't read the one ST posted or the Yahoo! one, but this one from a Canadian parenting website: http://www.parentcentral.ca/parent/b...-gender-secret.

[GrayMatterWife]

People are idiots.

[Chrisada]

People are idiots.

I think you said it all!

[SoonerTexan]

During a family vacation to Cuba

Better question--vacationing in Cuba is an option?

[HouseofWool]

If you are Canadian it is.

[lovelight]

Better question--vacationing in Cuba is an option?

For Canadians anyhow...

[SuzySunshine]

And now they're not doing anymore interviews - um, yeah, I wonder why?!?!?

Weirdos!

[HouseofWool]

I posted about this a couple of places on FB. I really think they are doing their kids a huge disservice. If the older one is already experiencing issues with interacting with peers, how much worse will it get? I feel like my job as a parent is to produce productive members of society who can function well in it. These kids will not be able to function well as they will not have the standard societal norming. It really pisses me off.

[Phoebe]

That is just bizarre.

[houseelf]

ITA that these parents are looneytunes and this will have repercussions (sp?).

With this being said, I just read a fascinating book called Packaging Girlhood. One of the chapter analyzed the genderization of toys. In short synopsis, here is what I took away fromit. At the turn of the 19th century, all babies wore the same white gowns until three (due to bleaching and laundering efficiency) and didn't cut a babie's hair. All babies looked gender neutral. In the fifties and sixties, clearly there were toys delineated as boy and girl (dolls) but there were a whole lot gender neutral toys: jacks, balls, tinker toys, linkin logs, bikes, wagons, etcetera. In the last few decades, pink has come to designate girlhood. (Ironically, blue was the closest gender designation in previous times due to the association with ethereal/angelic qualities while red and pink represented the more aggressive nature of boys). In the last few decades, pink, and perhaps lilac, has come to clearly designate which toys are appropriate for which gender. This creates more consumerism because now families with both genders buy two sets instead of one. More indisuously, this clearly gender indentification further limits cross gender play between peers as well as tampens down the breadth of toys played with. The author opines that as women have become greater equals in society, we have more anxiety about what it means to be a specific gender which consequently shows up in our toys which are used to reinforce cultural expectations.

This is only one aspect of this book, but it is interesting food for thought.

Sidebar over...

[SuzySunshine]

Kelly, I think that is interesting because when we had A we made a point of only buying primary color toys because we didn't want to have to buy two of everything if the next one was a boy. However I do notice myself buying more pink things now that A is very much into pink, like the other day I bought her a new pair of Crocs and she wanted pink - fine, but afterwards I thought I should have bought her a red pair or something that R could also wear eventually.

[houseelf]

The book is a fascinating read. I'm not sure I buy into her premise 100% because after all, gender identification is a huge developmental marker of the preschool set. It is food for thought about what choices we make as parents regarding our consumption and media exposure. I think this discussion is parallel to the princess/ear piercing/media monitoring discussions we have had on this board and how we each should try to at least think about navigating these issues as best we can.

[MrsK]

Yesterday, I just about lost my mind in the grocery because I could not find a gender-neutral sippy cup. They were ALL either Disney princesses or Cars. I mean, it's a sippy cup! Does it need a gender?

That said, I do think babies need to have a gender. Babies, yes. Sippy cups, no.