Thread: Keeping the Gender of a 2-Year-Old Secret

Remember "Pat" from SNL??? LOL.

I'm torn on an opinion on this one. I find it very odd. However its the parents decision how to raise the child. I would NOT want someone to tell me HOW to raise my child. HOWEVER that being said as the child gets older and (I assume they will let "it" play with other kids........If they tell the child NOT to disclose "its" gender to them if asked by a child....well than that is telling a child to lie. And then you are creating (IMO) a form of child abuse. Because pretty soon the child could start to cross lines from right and wrong....
Because as they get older it would get ALOT messier IMO.

Not disclosing your gender isn't lying. And I'm sure 'it' knows what gender it is and what those parts are for (at it's age, to urinate with) And I hate the whole 'pink is for girls, blue is for boys' 'girls like dolls, boys like trucks' kinda shyt. But they're taking to an extreme.

My girl is just as rowdy/loud/likes guns and trucks as my son was/did. I tried to keep gender classification away from my kids & let them form their own personality and traits with out being influenced by what gender they are, but it's impossible.

Kinda OT but my grandmother wore dresses her whole life, even when she had rather had worn pants. But she never felt comfortable in the pants because she had been taught her whole life that women did not wear pants. So here's this woman plowing, planting, feeding etc, in a dress. I thought that was so totally stupid.

I hate it that they even ask your sex on applications for school, employment etc. Or race either. If you're qualified, you're qualified, no matter what sex or color.

freaks.....................they need to be investigated for child abuse. you don't do social experiments of this sort on your own kids.

I believe in 'free expression' for children.......my house was/is full of trucks and Barbie dolls, etc.....the children feel like playing with whateer they choose. I never hid their gender, never felt the need to. They often chose their own clothes as well.....

We're they influenced by the 'world around them' as to their 'gender'/preferences? Sure......but they also never felt that it was a secret as to what body parts they have.....they got what they got (gender), they are who they are and they play and dress to their liking.

These parents are pushing their own agendas on an unsuspecting, innocent child. Why make him/her keep secrets? Your body parts are what they are.....you behave and choose what you choose....(clothes & toys)....

If one makes it a 'big deal', then it becomes a 'big deal'......:

why not let little girls be girls and little boys be boys? wth has gone wrong with the world? you can have tomboy's and lil boy's who like dolls but don't play around with this stuff. let the kid be what they will. without doing retarded "studies"............

people are born male or female.........you got a penis or a vagina. seems to me like sometimes....very rarely....hormones get "retarded".....yes that is a legitimate word that is not derogatory.....and a male ends up with a lil too much estrogen and vise versa a female ends up with a lil too much testosterone. here is where we have to be delicate....not with those who have the right balance. people take it overboard. trying to prove something they don't have a clue about.

Tue May 24, 1:08 pm ET
Parents keep child’s gender under wraps
By Zachary Roth



When many couples have a baby, they send out an email to family and friends that fills them in on the key details: name, gender, birth weight, that sort of thing. (You know the drill: "Both Mom and little Ethan are doing great!")

But the email sent recently by Kathy Witterick and David Stocker of Toronto, Canada to announce the birth of their baby, Storm, was missing one important piece of information. "We've decided not to share Storm's sex for now--a tribute to freedom and choice in place of limitation, a stand up to what the world could become in Storm's lifetime (a more progressive place? ...)," it said.

That's right. They're not saying whether Storm is a boy or a girl.

There's nothing ambiguous about the baby's genitals. But as Stocker puts it: "If you really want to get to know someone, you don't ask what's between their legs." So only the parents, their two other children (both boys), a close friend, and the two midwives who helped deliver the now 4-month-old baby know its gender. Even the grandparents have been left in the dark.

Stocker and Witterick say the decision gives Storm the freedom to choose who he or she wants to be. "What we noticed is that parents make so many choices for their children. It's obnoxious," adds Stocker, a teacher at an alternative school.

They say that kids receive messages from society that encourage them to fit into existing boxes, including with regard to gender. "We thought that if we delayed sharing that information, in this case hopefully, we might knock off a couple million of those messages by the time that Storm decides Storm would like to share," says Witterick. "In fact, in not telling the gender of my precious baby, I am saying to the world, 'Please can you just let Storm discover for him/herself what s (he) wants to be?!." she wrote in an email.

How did Stocker and Witterick decide to keep Storm's gender under wraps? During Witterick's pregnancy, her son Jazz was having "intense" experiences with his own gender. "I was feeling like I needed some good parenting skills to support him through that," Witterick said.

Stocker came across a book from 1978, titled X: A Fabulous Child's Story by Lois Gould. X is raised as neither a boy or girl, and grows up to be a happy and well-adjusted child. "It became so compelling it was almost like, How could we not?" Witterick said.

The couple's other two children, Jazz and Kio, haven't escaped their parents' unconventional approach to parenting. Though they're only 5 and 2, they're allowed to pick out their own clothes in the boys and girls sections of stores and decide whether to cut their hair or let it grow.

Both boys are "unschooled," a version of homeschooling, which promotes putting a child's curiosity at the center of his or her education. As Witterick puts it, it's "not something that happens by rote from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. weekdays in a building with a group of same-age people, planned, implemented and assessed by someone else."

Because Jazz and Kio wear pink and have long hair, they're frequently assumed to be girls, according to Stocker. He said he and Witterick don't correct people--they leave it to the kids to do it if they want to. But Stocker and Witterick's choices haven't always made life easy for their kids. Though Jazz likes dressing as a girl, he doesn't seem to want to be mistaken for one. He recently asked his mother to let the leaders of a nature center know that he's a boy. And he chose not to attend a conventional school because of the questions about his gender. Asked whether that upsets him, Jazz nodded.

As for his mother, she's not giving up the crusade against the tyranny of assigned gender roles. "Everyone keeps asking us, 'When will this end?'" she said. "And we always turn the question back. Yeah, when will this end? When will we live in a world where people can make choices to be whoever they are?"

http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_theloo...er-under-wraps


comments

Your goal as a parent is do everything in your power to raise a happy, healthy, well-adjusted child that will grow up to be kind, independent, successful, and make a positive difference in the world. Turning your child into your own "tribute to freedom and choice" is unbelievably self-serving. Storm deserves to be loved for everything he or she is, not to be a pawn in the messed-up agenda of his/her parents.

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ng a gay man. I know as much as anyone that our society is in dire need of being taught to be accepting of others without regard to race,color, sex etc. However, using your children as a social experiment is not a great idea. Progressive thinking, but just not a great idea. Teach your children to be free thinkers if you want to change the world. But dont use them as lab rats to prove a point. They are human beings and should be treated as such.

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Just another parent drawing attention to themselves and using their child to do so.

No 'him' or 'her'; preschool fights gender bias
Jenny Soffel, Associated Press – Sun Jun 26, 11:40 am ET

STOCKHOLM – At the "Egalia" preschool, staff avoid using words like "him" or "her" and address the 33 kids as "friends" rather than girls and boys. From the color and placement of toys to the choice of books, every detail has been carefully planned to make sure the children don't fall into gender stereotypes. "Society expects girls to be girlie, nice and pretty and boys to be manly, rough and outgoing," says Jenny Johnsson, a 31-year-old teacher. "Egalia gives them a fantastic opportunity to be whoever they want to be."

The taxpayer-funded preschool which opened last year in the liberal Sodermalm district of Stockholm for kids aged 1 to 6 is among the most radical examples of Sweden's efforts to engineer equality between the sexes from childhood onward.

Breaking down gender roles is a core mission in the national curriculum for preschools, underpinned by the theory that even in highly egalitarian-minded Sweden, society gives boys an unfair edge. To even things out, many preschools have hired "gender pedagogues" to help staff identify language and behavior that risk reinforcing stereotypes.

Some parents worry things have gone too far. An obsession with obliterating gender roles, they say, could make the children confused and ill-prepared to face the world outside kindergarten. "Different gender roles aren't problematic as long as they are equally valued," says Tanja Bergkvist, a 37-year-old blogger and a leading voice against what she calls "gender madness" in Sweden.

Those bent on shattering gender roles "say there's a hierarchy where everything that boys do is given higher value, but I wonder who decides that it has higher value," she says. "Why is there higher value in playing with cars?"

At Egalia — the title connotes "equality" — boys and girls play together with a toy kitchen, waving plastic utensils and pretending to cook. One boy hides inside the toy stove, his head popping out through a hole.

Lego bricks and other building blocks are intentionally placed next to the kitchen, to make sure the children draw no mental barriers between cooking and construction.

Director Lotta Rajalin notes that Egalia places a special emphasis on fostering an environment tolerant of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people. From a bookcase, she pulls out a story about two male giraffes who are sad to be childless — until they come across an abandoned crocodile egg.

Nearly all the children's books deal with homosexual couples, single parents or adopted children. There are no "Snow White," "Cinderella" or other classic fairy tales seen as cementing stereotypes.

Rajalin, 52, says the staff also try to help the children discover new ideas when they play. "A concrete example could be when they're playing 'house' and the role of the mom already is taken and they start to squabble," she says. "Then we suggest two moms or three moms and so on."

Egalia's methods are controversial; some say they amount to mind control. Rajalin says the staff have received threats from racists apparently upset about the preschool's use of black dolls. But she says that there's a long waiting list for admission to Egalia, and that only one couple has pulled a child out of the school.

Jukka Korpi, 44, says he and his wife chose Egalia "to give our children all the possibilities based on who they are and not on their gender."

Sweden has promoted women's rights for decades, and more recently was a pioneer among European countries in allowing gay and lesbian couples to legalize their partnerships and adopt children.

Gender studies permeate academic life in Sweden. Bergkvist noted on her blog that the state-funded Swedish Science Council had granted $80,000 for a postdoctoral fellowship aimed at analyzing "the trumpet as a symbol of gender."

Jay Belsky, a child psychologist at the University of California, Davis, said he's not aware of any other school like Egalia, and he questioned whether it was the right way to go. "The kind of things that boys like to do — run around and turn sticks into swords — will soon be disapproved of," he said. "So gender neutrality at its worst is emasculating maleness."

Egalia is unusual even for Sweden. Staff try to shed masculine and feminine references from their speech, including the pronouns him or her — "han" or "hon" in Swedish. Instead, they've have adopted the genderless "hen," a word that doesn't exist in Swedish but is used in some feminist and gay circles. "We use the word "Hen" for example when a doctor, police, electrician or plumber or such is coming to the kindergarten," Rajalin says. "We don't know if it's a he or a she so we just say 'Hen is coming around 2 p.m.' Then the children can imagine both a man or a woman. This widens their view."

Egalia doesn't deny the biological differences between boys and girls — the dolls the children play with are anatomically correct.

What matters is that children understand that their biological differences "don't mean boys and girls have different interests and abilities," Rajalin says. "This is about democracy. About human equality."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110626/...r_neutral_tots


comments

If all the children's books deal with homosexual couples, single parents or adopted children, but have no stories with "classic" families, guess what? They ARE cementing stereotypes. People are taking their cruzade pro equality to an extreme and loosing themselves in it.

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It sound to me like they don't get any of the a chance to be what whoever they want to be.

"Nearly all the children's books deal with homosexual couples, single parents or adopted children. There are no "Snow White," "Cinderella" or other classic fairy tales seen as cementing stereotypes."

so if you child is a a typical girl or boy they will be BAD. This social engineering is as bad if not worse that triditional stereotypes.
I am SOOOOO gald I don't live in Sweden. I have 1 boy and 3 girls. We all cook together. We all fix things around the house. But then I am an old fashioned Mom. I am still married to my one and only husband, the father of all my children. Something that in this preschool would be looked at as freakish.