Gender-creative children? WTF? What will the DFH's think of next?

[^_^ 5,021]

“So it’s a boy, right?” a neighbour calls out as Kathy Witterick walks by, her four month old baby, Storm, strapped to her chest in a carrier.

Each week the woman asks the same question about the baby with the squishy cheeks and feathery blond hair.

Witterick smiles, opens her arms wide, comments on the sunny spring day, and keeps walking.

She’s used to it. The neighbours know Witterick and her husband, David Stocker, are raising a genderless baby. But they don’t pretend to understand it.

While there’s nothing ambiguous about Storm’s genitalia, they aren’t telling anyone whether their third child is a boy or a girl.

...

“What we noticed is that parents make so many choices for their children. It’s obnoxious,” says Stocker.

...

“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?!.” Witterick writes in an email.

...

Both come from liberal families. Stocker grew up listening to Free to Be ... You and Me, a 1972 record with a central message of gender neutrality. Witterick remembers her brother mucking around with gender as a teen in the ’80s, wearing lipstick and carrying handbags like David Bowie and Mick Jagger.

...

Jazz was old enough for school last September, but chose to stay home. “When we would go and visit programs, people — children and adults — would immediately react with Jazz over his gender,” says Witterick, adding the conversation would gravitate to his choice of pink or his hairstyle.

That’s mostly why he doesn’t want to go to school. When asked if it upsets him, he nods, but doesn’t say more.

Instead he grabs a handmade portfolio filled with his drawings and poems. In its pages is a booklet written under his pseudonym, the “Gender Explorer.” In purple and pink lettering, adorned with butterflies, it reads: “Help girls do boy things. Help boys do girl things. Let your kid be whoever they are!”

...

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.

She believes parents should support gender-creative children, which includes the transgendered, who feel born in the wrong bodies, and gender hybrids, who feel they are part girl and part boy. Then there are gender “smoothies,” who have a blended sense of gender that is purely “them.”

http://www.parentcentral.ca/parent/babiespregnancy/babies/article/995112--parents-keep-child-s-gender-secret

[Bad_Daddy 2,209]

Why am I not surprised that this is a "California thing".

[^_^ 5,021]

nm

Edited May 24, 2011 by \

[Obama 2012 1,714]

I feel sorry for thid child....

[Pedro Thiago 2]

Haha, I used to live on the East Coast, then I moved to the West Coast, and this seems to be absolutely standard thinking around here. Those children sound like they might be having difficulty integrating with society, which DOES have gender expectations (though maybe not in Cali...)

[Jenn! 918]

I posted this in my mommy group and some people's heads near exploded.

Not my cup of tea, but I don't think it's something to get enraged about. I think the parents are brave - I think the most creative minds are borne out of non-traditional environments. Yes, it's weird. So?

[one...two...tree 2,762]

IMO, a child's gender identity isn't something they can define for themselves at a young age. My 3 year old loves to play with cars, and it wasn't something that was encouraged or discouraged. I was not like that at his age. I preferred to draw or color with crayons and build things with blocks. However, dressing a child to intentionally make them look androgynous is just inviting ridicule from other parents and children.

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

I think it's wonderful. Just smooth out all the rough corners and remove the easily swallowed objects in life, and let the kids explore for themselves. We don't need all those puritanical attitudes and forced gender roles.

...dressing a child to intentionally make them look androgynous is just inviting ridicule from other parents and children.

There will always be insensitive people, but that is no excuse not to try and make a better world.

[Danno 1,228]

IMO, a child's gender identity isn't something they can define for themselves at a young age. My 3 year old loves to play with cars, and it wasn't something that was encouraged or discouraged. I was not like that at his age. I preferred to draw or color with crayons and build things with blocks. However, dressing a child to intentionally make them look androgynous is just inviting ridicule from other parents and children.

Not only ridicule but developmental confusion.

One can only imagine pressures this crackpot will put on the kid.

This mother is like the religious nutcase (without the religion) which warps her kids for life.

Probably forcing equal-time with gender specific toys, clothes and programing.

Who bares the burden of this game?

The kid for the rest of their life.

Edited May 24, 2011 by Danno

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Not only ridicule but developmental confusion.

One can only imagine pressures this crackpot will put on the kid.

This mother is like the religious nutcase (without the religion) which warps her kids for life.

Probably forcing equal-time with gender specific toys, clothes and programing.

Who bares the burden of this game?

The kid for the rest of their life.

Do you have any children?

[Danno 1,228]

Do you have any children?

Yup

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Yup

Did you ever catch your son playing with toys that weren't made for boys?

[Danno 1,228]

Did you ever catch your son playing with toys that weren't made for boys?

Not my kid but it is absolutely normal... and nothing wrong with that.... unless mom is enforcing it.

Edited May 24, 2011 by Danno

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Not my kid but it is absolutely normal... and nothing wrong with that.... unless mom is enforcing it.

Were you and your ex-wife on the same page about it or was she more forceful?

[faust-yusov 103]

Probably forcing equal-time with gender specific toys, clothes and programing.

Isn't the entire point to abandon notions of "gender specific"?

It is the socially-determined girl/boy dichotomy I presume their intent is to abandon - one ought reasonably conclude that this would not involve "forcing" their child to vacillate between its material extremes.