If they are just neutral about the subject (ie the don’t force the child not to follow gender-expected stereotypes) then the chances are it won’t backfire on them. The kid will just start behaving like a boy if it’s a boy and like a girl if it’s a girl.
The most interesting thing, I think, is whether the parents will (knowing the kid’s anatomy as they will) be able to avoid behaving towards the child in gender typical ways. From what I’ve seen and read, adults differentiate in extremely consistent ways in their behaviour towards children depending on what they believe the child’s gender to be. I know this could all be learned, but it wouldn’t surprise me at all if firstly at least part of it is innate and secondly even if it is learned it’s deeply ingrained, and that consequently either way the parents will find it very hard to resist their urges to behave toward the child in a gender specific way to at least some extent.
Homeschooling is currently theoretically legal in Sweden, but it can be quite difficult to get permission to do it. There are about a hundred legal homeschoolers in Sweden and another hundred+ flying under the radar. The Swedish gov’t is currently considering a proposal that would effectively render almost all homeschooling illegal.
(Oddly, several of my more liberal/progressive homeschooler friends have expressed shock that liberal, progressive Sweden, which they admire greatly, would want to do this. I have lived in Scandinavia and am much less surprised.)
At any rate, I don’t know anything about this couple, but IMO the probability is that they are not planning on homeschooling, and if they are they’re in for a tricky time.
My little brother (in the 70’s) had beautiful blond curls (but brown eyes). Lots of people thought he was a girl until he was around 5.
As father to a little boy, and uncle to a little girl of exactly the same age, anecdotally it seems to me that the kids themselves have very different ideas as to what constitutes “fun” - and did from a very early age.
Perhaps one could argue that this is all socialization (the “nurture” side) but I think it rather more likely that at least part of it is hard-wired (“nature”).
No doubt there are boys who like to play with dolls, and girls who like to play with toy cars and guns, but on average gender rolls do tend to follow the stereotypical pattern, at least from what I’ve seen. My young neice is a case in point. Her parents are pretty strict feminists (her mom and dad are both university professors in physics), and they swore up and down that she would be raised to do what she wanted, not what society expected - for example, they refused to have pink baby stuff. Now, at 3, the kid insists on wearing nothing but pink, playing with Disney Princesses, and her favorite activities are dressing up and playing with dolls. This certainly is not something her parents enforced or encouraged, and some of it emerged before the kid had much contact with anyone else.
In contrast, our son could not care less what he wears, and likes nothing better than toy cars, trains, robots and guns - anything mechanical in fact. We got him all sorts of doll-like toys and stuffed animals, but he’s not nearly as interested in those.
To my mind, from what I’ve seen of babies and very young children, on average kids have interests that do fall in line with their gender. Not to say that there are not exceptions, and of course it helps that gender roles are re-enforced by much of society - but I do rather think that at least some of it is due to innate differences.
It’s all well and good to teach kids to ignore gender boundaries, but it has a harmful side effect. People quickly learn to become ashamed of their genders. The 90s were a horrible time to be a man, as society pretty much expected us to apologize for it.
I don’t see it even very likely that Pop will be confused. Pop will know if Pop wants to play with trucks or with dolls. I doubt if Pop will break any more gender rules than anyone else does. I think Pop will turn out fine.
Scandinavian languages have two genders, but it’s not like Spanish, where things are male, female, and neuter. They have ‘common gender’ and ‘neuter.’ So most of the words are common gender, and a (large) minority are neuter.
Pronouns, of course, come in masculine, feminine, and neuter, and are used similarly to English. An object is it, and males and females are he and she. I think it might be a little easier to refer to a child as it, as English used to do, but I’m not really sure on that point.
My concern with this odd plan is that it draws unnecessary attention to the very thing under discussion - gender. Making gender a taboo topic strikes me as a fundamentally bad idea - and later, as the child socializes, has the potential to increase any difficulties the child has in that direction.
I think the fact that they’re just keeping it from the outside world is one thing. I mean, it seems like things will even out when the kid is old enough for it to be relevant. It is sort of an interesting thought. Look how uncomfortable some people get when you say, “Oh what a cute baby boy” and it’s really a girl, or vice versa. Even though at that stage of the game, it’s really not important what people think it is.
Sorry, Mika! I looked for natural paragraph breaks when I posted it, but I couldn’t find any, so I said “Fuck what society wants! I’ll create my own formatting roles!” Alas, casting off society’s shackles is not as easy as it looks. I should have known.
As for the studies that show certain behaviors separating male and females as young as 3 months, isn’t it apparent that gender roles have been socialized since the moment the ob/gyn holds up the baby and says, “It’s a boy (girl)”? I remember one psychology class I took as an undergrad where we watched a video called “Baby X”. Several people were asked to play with a baby on a one-on-one basis. Basically, you couldn’t tell what sex the baby was just by looking at it. When the experimenter told the handler it was female baby, they handled it very differently than when you told someone it was a male baby. Also, in interviews following the play session, the handlers also interpreted the baby’s movement and behavior very differently when they thought it a female baby vs. a male baby. But it was the same baby!
I once saw our daughter playing with one of our son’s toys: it was a helicopter, and it had two compartments that held little removable cars. She was making the cars follow the helicopter around and call it “mama!”
Another time we saw our son playing with our daughter’s Barbie dolls. He bent them in half and used them like guns.
At that point we shrugged our shoulders and stopped worrying about what society was telling them about gender. Seems that a lot of it comes from the “nature” side of the equation.
Aww. Your kids sound like a lot of fun. And I have no idea why, but the mama and babie copter/cars sound even cuter than if your daughter was doing it with baby animals.