There was Pop, now there is Storm’s story.
While there’s nothing ambiguous about Storm’s genitalia, they aren’t telling anyone whether their third child is a boy or a girl.
The only people who know are Storm’s brothers, Jazz, 5, and Kio, 2, a close family friend and the two midwives who helped deliver the baby in a birthing pool at their Toronto home on New Year’s Day.
“When the baby comes out, even the people who love you the most and know you so intimately, the first question they ask is, ‘Is it a girl or a boy?’” says Witterick, bouncing Storm, dressed in a red-fleece jumper, on her lap at the kitchen table.
“If you really want to get to know someone, you don’t ask what’s between their legs,” says Stocker.
I love these stories of parents who refuse to reveal their child’s sex until their child chooses to reveal it for themselves. I still can’t get over the comments these kinds of pieces draw, though – talk about excitable.
I am in the camp of less sexist stereotyping is better than more stereotyping for children, so I sympathise strongly with the parents of Pop and Storm. But, I am starting to think that there is something about knowing how to perform your gender that is valuable knowledge for a child, too. I see it as almost akin to cultural tradition. Something that is passed on and potentially even ceremonial. You learn it with the opportunity to reject it, if you choose, and it shouldn’t prevent you from exploring other cultural traditions (ie. performances of gender) should they interest you.. but that it is still kind of important that this knowledge be passed on to you – and provided it isn’t too rigid, it is even sort of beautiful at times. I am wondering about that more and more now that I have a child who is six.
Diane Ehrensaft is a California-based psychologist and mother of Jesse, a “girlyboy” who turned his trucks into cradles and preferred porcelain dolls over soldiers when he was a child. Her newly published book, Gender Born, Gender Made, is a guide for parents of nonconforming kids.
But she worries by not divulging Storm’s sex, the parents are denying the child a way to position himself or herself in a world where you are either male, female or in between. In effect they have created another category: Other than other. And that could marginalize the child.
“I believe that it puts restrictions on this particular baby so that in this culture this baby will be a singular person who is not being given an opportunity to find their true gender self, based on also what’s inside them.”
Ehrensaft gets the “What the heck?!” reaction people may have when they hear about Storm. “I think it probably makes people feel played with to have that information withheld from them.”
Update: I should clarify here that I am not back-flipping on all the stuff I have said previously about wanting to parent my children without so many sexist stereotypes and limitations of gender binary; I am, rather, talking about the difference between what I do and what Storm’s parents are doing. So if there is a spectrum of gender neutrality parenting and mainstream parenting is on one end and Storm’s and Pop’s parents are on the other end, I am talking about the space between what I am doing, which is more than half-way towards Storm’s parents’ end of the spectrum, and what they are doing. Have I just made this more confusing, rather than less?
It is pretty hard to avoid picking one gender or the other when you speak a language – as is English – that is binary. (Interestingly, in the language I know a little that has 3 linguistic genders, the word for ‘baby’ is in the neutral gender.)
The part of this story that bothers me is the burden of secrecy it places on the older siblings. If they let it slip, will they feel they have done something bad?
My question is not of the baby but of the siblings who are forced to carry around a seemingly innocuous secret. That is a large burden for them and for what reason? It just seems to me that forcing no identity, even for a set number of time can be just as harmful as forcing one identity one way or another.
It’s one thing to not tell strangers, but to keep the secret from your family and close friends? It doesn’t seem worth the trouble. You can have all the so-called gender-neutral toys and clothes you want (we have plenty) but I don’t understand what the child gets out of the information being withheld from people. It seems like some sort of satisfaction for the parents, but the baby is too young to learn any sort of lesson from the exercise.
I also sympathise strongly with these parents, and I can see how what they’re doing might educate those that are shocked at not knowing the gender, but I doubt it’s going to have much of an impact on the child. Maybe this just reflects the fact that I don’t get out much, but it seems to me the parents are going to have much more of an impact than neighbours and even friends and relatives who tangentially interact with the child. My boys have certainly received more truck and train-themed toys from friends and family than they would have if they hadn’t been “outed”, and sure they’ve had their fair share of “oh what a strong boy” comments, but I still feel that even though I try very very hard to be gender neutral in how I interact with them, and so does my husband (but less so than I do), my unconscious biases, and all the lessons they assimilate passively from the culture out there that aren’t directed at them as boys (ie in books and so on), these two factors have far more impact on their gender ‘awareness’ or whatever you want to call it, than blue PJs from aunties.
Where does it say that the older children are being burdened and “forced” to keep secrets? The article itself says “Jazz says it’s not difficult”, and “The couple plan to keep Storm’s sex a secret as long as Storm, Kio and Jazz are comfortable with it.”
It also says “Out with the kids all day, Witterick doesn’t have the time or the will to hide in a closet every time she changes Storm’s diaper. “If (people) want to peek, that’s their journey,” she says.”
This doesn’t sound like a family whose life is constantly straining under secret-keeping to me.
I really like what Shannon wrote a million years ago about her daughter and gender:
http://www.literarymama.com/blog/archives/2006/06/bent-gender-doesnt-break.html
As Shirley Chisholm once wrote: “The emotional, sexual, and psychological stereotyping of females begins when the doctor says: It’s a girl.”
“But, I am starting to think that there is something about knowing how to perform your gender that is valuable knowledge for a child, too.” Yes!
I truly sympathize with these parents though I wonder about the ethics of the social experiment they’re running: none of he children involved are old enough to give valid consent.
Wasn’t there a Scandinavian family circa 2007 who were in the press for very similar reasons, but they had only one child? Whatever happened to them?
My gut instinct is that there is something valuable in learning how to deal with stereotypes in a gradual way, rather than all at once when you decide that you want to identify with a gender (my guess is that will be when the kid is about 3- kids go gender crazy around then). But I don’t know, I guess we’ll just have to wait and ask Storm when he/she is older.
But perhaps the developmental stage at 3-4 is actually about starting to find ways to locate yourself in the world, rather than about gender per se. If it is, wouldn’t it be fantastic if children were given other ways to do this, instead of via the boy/girl binary that dominates so much of the input they usually receive?
At what point does raising your child genuinely and authentically according to your own values stop being “parenting” and become a “social experiment”? How many people have to disapprove?
I’d say that one place to put that line is when how you parent according to your values start impinging on a child’s sense of identity. Like it or not, gender is a fundamental part of our identity- just look at the angst being transgendered can cause.
I guess I am also sympathetic to their goals but not sure that I’m on board with their methods. I’m not sure I’d say I disapprove, just that I’m uneasy about this and wonder if there will be some unintended consequences. I suspect it will all work itself out very quickly, though, because as I mentioned above, kids go through a developmental phase at about 3 when they strongly gender identify. If the parents will really go along with Storm’s wishes, I suspect this experiment or parenting phase or whatnot will end then, and that seems early enough to avoid causing much confusion for the kid.
But I also know that as early as two, I was correcting gender stereotypes for my daughter. To me that feels more useful than trying to protect her from their existence- but that is just me.
How does not assigning gender to a newborn impinge on a newborn’s sense of identity? What sense of gender identity does an infant have? In what way are these parents “impinging” on Storm’s sense of identity by standing back and letting hir develop an authentic gender identity of hir very own, in a supportive and open environment? In what way are gender-restrictive parents _not_ impinging on their children’s sense of identity by rigidly presenting traditional binary gendered roles?
I’d like to think that if a lot more people parented in this more gender-open way, being transgender would involve a lot less angst than it currently does, and would involve a whole lot less being-subjected-to-abuse.
@lauredhel, I guess it depends on how long they keep this up and what they do when Storm starts gender identifying.
Gender is not 100% cultural. There is a biological aspect, and we don’t fully understand how it works. This family is running an experiment with their child and they cannot know the outcome. They know what they THINK will happen based on their beliefs, just like you know what you think will happen based on your beliefs, but no one can know what will actually happen, because no one understands how gender identity is developed that well. It will probably turn out fine. Kids are pretty resilient and these kids seem to be loved and cared for- which are the most important things. It just feels risky to me.
I suspect that discovering that your gender and your sex do not match will always be a bit traumatic, no matter how gender neutral the world gets. But I’d love to see the world get to a place where that conjecture could be proven right or wrong.
What @Cloud said. The parents elected to share with the mainstream media the names, ages, and certain anecdotes about their young children – which is among their rights as parents, and is indeed their own parenting journey to take. Nevertheless, this information will likely be internet-searchable, presumably forever. I simply note that the children cannot, and did not, actually consent to the publication of the data.
Have you seen the Babies movie yet? I can see what Pop and Storm’s parents are about, but I think there’s also something really positive about having a gender story, like you discuss above, and I thought that the “primitive” cultures in the Babies movie showed a much healthier attitude to children learning about their physical differences (i.e playing with and looking at their genitals) and conversely I can see a lot of problems with treating a child’s penis or vulva as “hidden”.
I agree with above insofaras the burden of the secret on the siblings. I don’t see how that is fair to them? I can understand the point the parents are making completely but I just think it is making your life hard and now that the media has got hold of it i feel like their will be some kind of hunt on until they reveal the babies sex?
That was a fascinating article, and I see your point Bluemilk. However, I wonder whether gender performance is really in the same class of cultural traditions as say manners or rituals. Because of the way it is taught, directly from birth (as Shannon said), and the priority it is given, it seems to me to be much more intricately woven into identity than those other things. Is it so easy to choose to reject it? I don’t think so, considering how hard I find it to control my own gender biases and training with my children.
I also think that just because Storm won’t be encouraged to perform a particular gender doesn’t mean that zie won’t be able to pick it up easily enough when zie is ready. After all, Storm will have been observing it all around hir in the world outside hir nuclear family. And in the books etc.
Final point, surely Ehrensaft isn’t saying that just because in the 70s many boys stuck to trucks and girls stuck with dolls that goes to show gender is innate? I hope her book shows a greater depth of understanding of gender socialisation than that!
I agree with this emphatically. Thanks for stating it with such wonderful eloquence.
*blushes*
I don’t see the controversy.
When confronted by something new, as parents our first reaction is to defend our own choices by passively/aggressively invalidating this new choice of someone else’s.
The older children seem like happy, well adjusted and very loved children- a good indication that Storm too is a well cared for and loved baby. So what if Storms parents decide not to reveal which physical genital assignment Storm has. Storm is a baby.
My parenting is not a linear thing. How many parents can say theirs is? It changes as my children grow and change. This is a decision these parents have made for the now, they could very well change their minds next week. Storm may change their minds for them.
Who are we to try to guilt them into parenting in a way that makes the rest of us more comfortable? Because that’s the crux of the issue here. Society feels confronted by this so society is condemning them. This is a momentary part of Storms life. Not disclosing Storms gender is not harming the baby in any way. And like I already said, parenting is organic. We don’t parent our kids exactly the same way all the way through their lives. Give the parents some credit for loving their kids enough to change with them.
They’re child led unschoolers, no doubt as Storm grows up, Storm will take the lead on the gender issue.
Yes, this.
The gender rigid ideas most kids seem to hit around 3 seems to coincide with the peer group becoming of more importance in their lives/playing together and an awareness of what other kids are doing.
The reactions to this story make me rage so hard. The Tiny Tyrant’s gender-neutral given name and the fact that we dressed our baby in greens and whites really threw people off in his first few months of life. The reactions were often as confused and angry as the comments I read everywhere about Storm, and we frequently heard from both random strangers, friends and family that we were screwing him up or making him an “experiement”, as though every child is not a new experiment in the parent’s beliefs and abilities in child-rearing.
I think there is something deeply entrenched in our collective psyches, even those of us who claim progressive and liberal beliefs, about gender performance, in the same way that the kyriarchy has wormed its way in re: racism.
I do not believe it is possible to raise a totally ungendered child in the here and now. You cannot cut a child off from television, books, print media, radio advertisements, the attitudes and nudity of peers and family, family being exposed to the child’s naked body and the way they treat the child changing accordingly in lots of tiny subtle ways because of the shape of their bits.
I think Storm will be well and truly gendered by the time zie is 5. But this early start may mean that zie does not feel the performance of gender is as rigid as some of zie’s peers.
The unschooling bothered me more than the genderless thing. But that’s just me liking my kids going to school and me not having to teach them everything.
I think Storm’s older siblings have been raised with gender being unimportant so they are probably more bemused about everyone else’s fascination with it rather than burdened by a secret.
As a homeschooler, I guess that part didn’t bother me at all. It’s not a philosophy we follow as a family, but I have seen it be quite successful. (i have also seen it backfire tremendously) Given the ages of the children, unschooling isn’t really much different from conventional schooling anyway. Most of the stuff kids are doing in kindergarten/prep are play lead. Unschooling can mean something different to each family any way. What I can gather from this article seems like the kids learning is happening, it just happens through play (like when kids in conventional schools paint, draw and play with playdough after reading stories) and without desks and work books.
And as home schoolers we are constantly changing our approaches to education any way. We have that luxury. Because if one method isn’t working, we are free to trial another. (My two older kids have a similar learning style, but my little guy is a whole other kettle of fish. I have to take a very different approach with him.)
A good part of me feels that the responses elsewhere of ‘This is bad because it’s different from how we’ve always done it’ is twaddle. We’ve always done lots of terrible things that were perfectly well accepted. As long as the family is comfortable, and there are no restrictions if the child decides they want to adopt a certain identity I don’t really see the issue. I’ve never been heavily swayed by ‘If you do this they will be bullied’. I was bullied severely despite having pretty middle of the road parents and a father who refused to teach me to drive a manual because ‘Girls can’t do that’. Nothing seems to stop people from being bullied aside from the bullies themselves being stopped.
I’m only about fourteen weeks pregnant and already I am being asked what sex the child is. When I told people we’re not finding out they keep saying ‘But how will you buy clothes?’ My response of ‘With money as we do not live in a barter economy’ is not going down well.
Almost every gender behaviour I was taught was pretty limiting for me. I’ve taken some glee in telling people we know it’s going to be a velociraptor. I like Kaz Cooke’s suggestion of ‘A giraffe – they are able to run an hour after birth and feed themselves’.
On the bullying issue, I had this exact conversation with a friend the other day. The suggestion that my primary job as a parent is to raise my child according to society’s lowest common denominator in order to prevent hir being bullied is wrongheaded (as well as futile). As Storm’s mother points out, and as everything I’ve read about parenting says, a child with a strong positive self-image, who has been supported in hir search for autonomy with unconditional love has the best chance of withstanding whatever society may throw at hir. If only the (potential) bullies were as fortunate as Storm.
I desperately want to join this conversation but can’t seem to get even 10 seconds alone to do so.. I will be back.
Firstly, I need to thank Bluemilk for all her writing – I spent a particularly dispiriting time at work a few weeks ago reading the whole archive – fantastic!
Secondly – I love the idea of gendered behaviour as a cultural tradition – it seems to capture the push-pull so well – “I shouldn’t have to [do X] – but sometimes it’s fun!”. It seems to give more freedom to consider how it might change over time without being overly revolutionary.
It’s not the whole answer, but it’s a really interesting way to think about it.
Eek, that’s a lot of reading, but thank you Thacky. Lovely thing for you to say.
I love the idea and I think there is a lot of misinterpretation of the idea. I see people reading it as forcing a child to have NO gender, and I don’t think that’s it… it’s just allowing a baby / small child to experience all sides and spectrums of gender, and to identify themselves with either/neither/both genders when they are ready.
I mean, whether a child raised this way has male or female genitals, I imagine the child will notice these at the same time most kids do. And then I would think parents like these would have the same conversations you do with all little kids about this, only, ‘Most people with penises say they are boys, but it’s ok to like ‘girl things’ and have a penis’ would really have a chance to feel true for a kid not told by everyone what they are from age 0 etc… the kid is perfectly free to be a stereotypical or non-stereotypical boy OR girl. The parents SAY in the article that they are cool with this and they figure they can just cut out a couple of million messages to their kid that aren’t really necessary.
When people start saying, ‘But SOME aspects of gender have to be innate’, it always makes me very, very wary. I want to say back that we are raised in this culture, where we are bombarded with gender messages from birth, so we can’t possibly know that gendered behaviour in humans is innate, because there is no ‘control universe’ where there is no patriarchy and people are all raised in gender-neutral-message-free environments and we could see if gender still hangs around in the same format, so I could conduct an experiment to prove this point once and for all…
Giving a child the opportunity to avoid the thousands of gender-based assumptions and expectations dumped on them by friends, relatives and random people in parks sounds like a glorious blessing. I’m uncomfortable with assigning value to teaching children to perform their gender when, in our screwed-up world, that is inextricable from teaching them to perform boy=world is about you, girl=you are support crew/goods to be consumed/contemptible/lesser. Don’t you think it would be wonderful to give someone the chance to sidestep that binary?
I agree that performing gender can be interesting and is definitely a strong part of our culture, but why make a baby (or anyone) perform one or the other? Why not let Storm perform whatever gender Storm wants to at any given time? It sounds like Jazz is having trouble with this very issue – wanting to perform femininity while being classified as male – and I can see why the family has decided to side-step this.
Personally, I dressed as a boy for two years aged 7-9 (I don’t remember thinking of myself as male or wanting to be male, just wanting to look male and for strangers to think I was a boy) and I think my parents being completely relaxed about it was very important to my growth as a feminist.
I wrote this post in a hurry and it includes no background/context for my views, which doesn’t make for great blogging so I am sorry about that.
Some of my thoughts, expanded:
1. Yes, interesting that parenting without an identified gender for a child is considered a social experiment, even a potentially damaging one, but parenting with truck-loads of stereotypes is not – even though it means boy infants are talked to less than girl infants, and girls toddlers are prevented from taking risks that boy toddlers are not prevented from taking, to the point where we actually restrict a girl’s development of physical skills. Etc etc. Maybe what people are concerned about is parenting outside the mainstream, regardless of what the focus is; maybe it is the perceived vulnerability of being so far outside the mainstream and so public about it that people are having such a reaction to? I, for one, am pleased Storm’s parents are being so public about it because I was driven mad with curiosity by Pop’s story and the lack of additional information that was provided to that… personally speaking, I want Storm’s family to be as public as possible, I am dying to know more and more about their experiences and decisions and such. More stories from outside the mainstream, not less. Go them.
2. Speaking from the limited experience of our household, I really don’t think there is much of a concept of gender as identity in a baby or toddler until at least 3 years of age. In our family we play down gender, we question stereotypes, we actively encourage the exploration of gender non-conforming activities and displays, and honestly, with our kids I don’t think they have really seen gender as a big part of their identities as little ones. For this reason, I really doubt that Storm is going to be at all curious about it either for a good number of years. It would be fascinating to know what Storm and Storm’s family experience when/if that changes as Storm hits the preschool years.
3. I love what Storm’s and Pop’s families have done and their pursuit of this approach to parenting makes me question some of my own decisions. I have a close feminist friend who took a similar but different path with her babies/toddlers – she tried hard not to make them particularly identifiable by gender by dressing them in the same clothes, which were a range of boy and girl clothes (but never dresses, as she sees them as restrictive clothing for play) and keeping their hair shortish (again, she sees long hair as something requiring ‘fuss’ and ‘care’ and therefore being restrictive). She waited until her children showed their own interest in ‘performing gender’ and then has allowed them pretty close to free reign with the expression of that. So far, the two older ones, who are well into primary school, are extremely gender-conforming. I didn’t parent like this, both my children wear girl and boy clothing and accessories, but Lauca has been put in dresses from day dot and Cormac never has. Lauca’s hair has been kept long and Cormac’s relatively short (though it is long for a boy here). I have examined those decisions of mine and wondered why we have made them. Particularly given my aversion to sexist stereotyping and the suffocating emphasis on gender binary. In the end, I think I did see something valuable in introducing both children to the performance of gender. I don’t want that to be overly restrictive for them, I don’t want to discourage them from choosing a different gender, or focusing more on one identity or the other for themselves, but I saw some kind of ritual (or cultural experience or something?) in the children being introduced to some gender performance as babies.
And, big confession here, now that my daughter is six I wonder if some of my resistance to what I see as over-the-top girliness has removed from her an opportunity she may otherwise have liked or needed to experience being the twirling daddy’s little princess from time to time or something??? I don’t know the answer to that, these are very new thoughts for me.
I think kids have their own ideas very early on. My daughter couldn’t even walk or talk when she saw her first pair of pink cowboy boot pre-walkers and reached out from the stroller, grabbed them and refused to let them go. Luckily for me her aim was good and they were a) her size and b) drastically marked down. Since then she has generally had a say in her clothing. If I buy it and she doesn’t like it she won’t wear it. But her colour choices change from day to day, she rarely wears exclusively pink, she likes dresses, and her favourite colour is green. As a child I hated pink and wore dresses as little as possible. So I’m not sure where this pink liking, dress wearing child came from it’s not something I encouraged it’s just who she is. Likewise, (she’s now 5), she is fascinated by Duchess Kate and yet we don’t buy the magazines or pay particular attention to the royals, although we did end up watching the wedding. My son loves brightly coloured and rainbow tie dye t-shirts and prefers these over most of the boys clothing you can get in shops.
Shorter me: Bluemilk, I think Lauca would have found a way if she had really wanted to.
Yes, I think you’re right. I think it is a kind of insecurity surfacing in me about something.
FWIW, we resisted the over the top stuff too. She was very much a little girl, she just didn’t play with dolls or make up or any of the other things that seem “only girls can do”. Society more than made up for that, so I agree with Mindy, if Luca had wanted to be that kind of little girl, she would have found a ay to express it anyway.
I am very much a tom boy. ( did have my “girlish” phase when I was about five) but I grew up in the country and it wasn’t practical to climb trees, ride motorbikes and play with explosives while tottering around in skirts and heels. (Yes, we really DID play with explosives.) SO having a girl who loves pink, purple, yellow and orange, who went through a phase of playing with Bratz and cabbage patch dolls, I was a little bewildered by it all.
Kids will forge their own identities (and gender) and in the long run, nothing we as parents do, will ever change what they feel they are inside.
[...] Cordelia Fine’s Delusions of Gender, and in light of this, was interested to hear about parents who have chosen not to disclose the gender of their child. I can’t decide whether or not I agree with blue milk’s perspective, or not: I am [...]
[...] Über das Thema und die diesbezügliche Diskussion berichten nun auch der Blog Forbes und Bluemilk. von → Geschichten, Kindererziehung ← Emanzipation auf dem Rücken der Kinder [...]
There are some excellent points being raised here. I’m curious, to those who disagree with me, how are you raising your children – and if you’ve raised them more in line with their (apparent) gender than gender neutral what do you make of those choices of yours? Is it flat out capitulation that we’re doing or is there anything else going on here?
I’m particularly curious if your child/children are school-age or beyond as I think there are some very different decisions needing to be made as your children get to ages where they interact with peers more.
Blue milk, I don’t walk the walk as much as I would like. I’ve never put the wee fella in dresses for ordinary days, even when he was a newborn. I’m just trying to present all choices to him without favouring some over others, and to go with whatever he chooses, whether or not he picks out the ‘girl’ umbrella or t-shirt (we don’t call them that, naturally). And if he says “can I be a girl?” I say “yes, if you like.” Having said that, when we needed to get him a pair of shoes recently I confess I did intentionally divert him away from the fuchsia Blunnies with the glittery elastic, not specifically because they were girly, but because I knew he was only going to own one pair of closed-in shoes and they were SO ugly I didn’t want to look at them every single day till the end of winter.
He is still only pre-school age, so I wonder if my methods will change once he gets old enough to be shamed or bullied if he transgresses, instead of smiled at indulgently because a three-year-old boy dressed as a princess or a fairy is still so damn cute.
Cloud: “Gender is not 100% cultural. There is a biological aspect, and we don’t fully understand how it works. This family is running an experiment with their child and they cannot know the outcome.”
Cloud: I’m really struggling to understand what you’re trying to get across here. No parent here knows the outcome of their parenting. And we’re all acknowledging pretty clearly, I think, that there is a biological aspect to gender (with the exception of headline-writers, but they’re not in this conversation). No one here is expecting Storm to grow up “genderless” (unless perhaps sie should choose to identify as nonbinary, which is fine). Everyone from the parents on down expects that sie will reveal hir gender as time goes on.
You say it “seems risky”. What exact risks are you envisaging? Do those risks clearly outweigh, in your estimation, the risks of bringing children up in a rigid binary assigned-at-or-before-birth gender system?
We probably don’t disagree as much as you think we do.
I come from the perspective of having read (as an interested bystander- this is not my area of expertise) some of the scientific literature around gender assignment issues, and from that perspective, reading about this family’s approach to gender roles, I thought that what they were doing may not have the outcomes they are hoping for. Biology always announces itself, and in the cases I’ve read about where the way a kid was raised didn’t match the biology, the outcomes weren’t great. There are cases that end in suicide, which is an outcome that would be devastating to me as a parent.
Of course, those cases are far more extreme than what is happening here.
It seems that they think they will make gender less of an issue for their kids. I wonder if they are going to make it more of an issue, because they are essentially trying to prevent the strong gender association that typically happens when a child is about 3. Either that, or Storm will drop into that period and have it be the first time he or she really experiences the rest of the world’s reaction to his or her gender. I wonder what the outcome of that will be. I don’t know. Although, as I’ve said before, I suspect it will be fine, it is still a big unknown.
Sure, none of us know how our parenting decisions will play out. But I can look at the thousands of kids who have gone before mine and have a fairly good guess at what will happen to my two little girls raised with everyone aware of the fact that they are girls, but by parents who are trying their best to teach them that their girlness doesn’t prevent them from following any interests they may have. I know what my kids can expect in part because it is a path I’ve already been down myself. This family is blazing a trail with only a few other people before them. That feels like an experiment to me, and how can any of us know what will happen?
But if, as you say, you can have a fairly good guess at how people will treat your children, given their girl-ness. And if, in our society, that means confining them to the pink ghetto, discouraging their risk-taking instincts, and using the very word that describes them as an expression of contempt; don’t you think giving them the chance to sidestep all that could be a massive bonus for their development?
Cloud – Storm’s parents are happy to identify gender as soon as Storm chooses to, so I wonder if the gender neutrality will be that big a deal in Storm’s life and really, how long it will last for – two years? three years? four? I am not sure how old your little ones are but Cormac is two and he probably thinks of himself as a “Cormac” more than a boy or a girl. I don’t think he would feel anything was particularly missing from his life at the moment if we didn’t tell him that he was a boy.
Lauca went through a patch where she really clung to a gender binary – around three years of age – but by six she has relaxed on that and is quite fine supporting two children who identify as a different gender to their apparent born-gender.
Also, by definition all change is experimental – men being more active fathers, for instance – and we could hardly argue that all change is too risky to even try.
Having said all that I am not doing what Storm’s parents are doing, and there have been times when I have had Lauca participate in some very feminised activities/clothing (also, plenty of boyish stuff, too) and in the end I’ve started to think that it is almost like costumery – in my community/culture girls get this stuff, here, have a taste of that. Your brother can taste it, too, but in the end I am giving you a bigger taste of that girly stuff than he will probably get. I am still not entirely sure why.
I guess I didn’t answer your question about what I think the risk is. I think the risk is that they’ll end up with an unhappy kid, or an unhappy grown child. My main goal as a parent is to raise a happy, well-adjusted person.
And yes, I know that they say they’ll let Storm gender identify as soon as Storm wants to. But then I read what is going on with Jazz, and I wonder. It is impossible to tell from the glimpse that they and the author of that piece have chosen to give us.
And orlando- I reject that it is an either or proposition. My girls can wear pink and take risks. I see it as my job to teach them how to navigate through the stereotypes. Pink is just a color. I could perhaps protect them from gender stereotypes for awhile, but they’ll run into them before too long. I think it is better that I teach them how to handle that head on rather than try to sidestep the reality that they exist.
I have to say, as a woman working in a very male dominated field, one of the hardest things for me early on was balancing the pursuits that society deems “male” with my desire to still be seen as female.
“But I also know that as early as two, I was correcting gender stereotypes for my daughter. To me that feels more useful than trying to protect her from their existence- but that is just me.”
Completely agree with this.
What I find uncomfortable about what Storm’s parents are doing is that they seem to be trying to make a Big Statement and using their child to do that. I know that we all use our children to impart our values, beliefs etc but there is something sort of self-serving and smug about so consciously going against the social norm of telling people the sex of your child.
I have a friend who wanted to adopt a child but only wanted to adopt a mixed race child AND didn’t want the agency to tell her the race so that she wouldn’t ever have to tell anyone else the child’s race and he/she could be a “universal citizen” so to speak. She is one of those bloody annoying self-righteous lefty academics (which I confess to also being at times) and I couldn’t help thinking that this was a child not some bloody political mascot for showing how much above everyone else you were.
It all just seems a bit uptight and rather pretentious to me.
[awaits flaming]
I think the media wants them to be making a big statement, but I’m not so sure they are. They aren’t purposefully telling people their baby’s ‘born gender’ but it’s not like they won’t be discussing it at all in their family. Storm has two older siblings so Storm will be able to compare and contrast as most kids do. Storm, it seems, will also be brought up in a family where rigid gender roles are not played out. I think Storm will be fine. I think this family is quite laid back and it’s other people who have an issue. Most importantly I think Storm is loved. Really, what difference is it going to make to Storm if people outside the family, like the neighbours, don’t know Storm’s born gender? How, really, is that going to affect Storm?
“Really, what difference is it going to make to Storm if people outside the family, like the neighbours, don’t know Storm’s born gender? How, really, is that going to affect Storm?”
Yes, this is what I was trying to say!
This is a very oh nooooooooooooooooes article about the whole issue.
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/indulgent-idea-that-puts-parents-before-child-20110529-1fal6.html
This piece provides a more nuanced critique:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/relationships/news-and-views/judith-timson/the-genderless-baby-well-intentioned-but-wrong/article2036155/
Here’s a piece from Stoms mother.
Storm’s Mum speaks
(crossing my fingers in the hopes I didn’t stuff up the html!)
Thanks for posting that. It is far less troubling with regards to Jazz than the original piece, and makes me lean more towards the thought that this will all end when Storm hits the gender identification phase.
I fear that I ended up sounding more disapproving of this family than I really am- I was just trying to explain why the idea seems risky to me and is one I would never consider. As I said why back at the start- I suspect that these kids will be fine. But I still think we won’t know until they are old enough to parse for themselves whether their unorthodox upbringing was a good thing.
At this point, I can’t believe I’ve thought this much about this one family, when my first reaction upon hearing about them was to shrug my shoulders and think “whatever.” I find I have more thoughts on the issue of gender neutrality vs. gender equality… but I will save those for when I have time to write a careful post on the issue.
Thanks for hosting this discussion. It has been interesting.
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