Raising a genderless child from birth

Great Debates
1

This article chronicles several parents who are attempting to raise children to not identify with any gender. They refer to their unusual approach to child rearing as “gender-open parenting”. They refuse for the child’s sex to be mentioned on the birth certificate, they don’t even want the doctors/midwives to shout out the kid’s sex in the delivery room, nor do they want anyone making any mention of the child’s genitalia in any and all situations. Most tellingly, they insist on people referring to their children only by gender neutral pronouns from the moment they’re born. Oh and they even refer to their babies as “theybies” even though the word baby is already gender neutral. They claim that in doing this, they are upending the patriarchy and gender binary.

Idk, I tried to summarise this article to the best of my ability, but I really do recommend reading it in its entirety to get the full picture. What do you guys think? Do you believe this radical take on parenting is legitimate and something more people ought to be considering or do you find it as extreme and cringeworthy as the gender essentialists who still cling to a 1950s notion of gender roles? Personally, I’m all for being open minded enough to let your kids explore their identities without having to live by archaic ideas about gender, but the people in the aforementioned article strike me as being attention seeking more than anything else, and they’re just using their spawns as tools to further propagate their agenda. They come across as real life caricatures of SJWs.

2

Not to mention they named the poor thing “Zoomer”.

3

I don’t have “the answer”, but it seems clear to me that if people find out the sex of your baby (NOT gender thank you, gender is for grammar) then many are likely to treat that baby differently than if they hadn’t known. If you don’t want the baby to be treated differently, you are going to have to be very forceful in preventing people from finding out, because for whatever reason, far too many people feel entitled to know - as if these strangers (or relatives) consider themselves obviously the only people in the world who could possibly understand what a baby is.

4

I doubt this will accomplish much, if they actually stick with it, and I don’t see it catching on a larger scale any time soon. With that being said, there are doubtlessly a whole lot of people in this country right at this very instant, raising kids in ways that will fuck them up far worse than this idea probably would.

5

I think it sounds well-intentioned but painfully convoluted, riddled with difficulties, and given to extremism. The only way to be gender-open, these people think, is to eliminate it entirely: “For them… the gender binary must not simply be smudged but wholly eradicated…”

Yet one has to ask why eradication is necessary or even possible, given that unless the child is raised in isolation from other humans, gender assumptions are going to take hold:

The parents of one child who identified as “girl”

.

And this is an approach that requires affluence. As the article says, very progressive daycares, the ones most likely to go along with the approach, tend to be extremely pricey.

I confess to gritting my teeth at substituting third person plural for singular pronouns. It grates on my nerves, and I found it confusing in the article. I also have trouble with the painful preciousness of “theybies.” And I hope I’m not offending any Dopers, but “Zoomer” is not a name I can learn to love, not for a child, anyway, of any gender or none at all.

6

It seems to me that unless things change in a big way, when the kid starts school someone is gonna need to know the sex of said kid. Restroom usage and athletic teams being the first things that come to mind. I guess they could home school. Someone named Zoomer may be safer at home school, considering the bullying issues.

7

The article is all about propaganda. There are certain features and characteristics that come with being a biological sex. Raise your child according to what they are born of. If they want to change gender later, so be it. You cannot predict what gender your child will choose if they choose to change it so why do it for them before they have even have a choice? Speaking generally, Accept what is given and wait and see, not everything can and should be controlled to suit your choices or narrative.

That is irresponsible and by definition is forcing gender roles which will make them hypocrites as well.

8

I have often thought that the worst name to have is [any normal average name, spelled wrong]. Like Dannyell or Jaymz.

But I had not considered the possibility of Zoomer. Man, that’s bad.

9

You’re supposing that it’s even possible to “raise them according to what they are born of”, but isn’t it clear that at least some of what passes for “how to raise a boy” is stupid stereotype that isn’t helpful or good?

I think what you’re saying there is not much more than rejecting it because you aren’t familiar with it.

But I think you may have an important point, where you say that forcing the absence of roles is still forcing (and therefore presumably bad).

10

Too bad Johnny Cash isn’t around to sing A Person Named Zoomer.
Anyway, the parents’ plan will last until the child is old enough to choose to play with dolls or trucks.

11

Oh, I’m absolutely not arguing that some of what is taught for a boy or girl for that matter isn’t bad, or that it shouldn’t be changed. But also, on that note, I also do not believe in either masculinity or femininity being “toxic” or bad or anything, although some aspects can be open to change. I am saying that [initial sex and gender] is the default, let’s see how the default works out and if change happens it happens and it should be the persons choice, forcing someone who can’t have a choice (at that point) to be someone else is not a good approach. That type of decision is for the person and the circumstances (much like how I feel about being pro-choice, it’s not my body, its not my decision), and this is coming from a right-winger. :stuck_out_tongue:

Its like trying to change the contents of a box before someone opening it, without the owners
permission. (Weak analogy but I hope it works).

12

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I like my gender. I always have. I can’t help but feel that most or all of these children are being deprived in some way. Wouldn’t it be better to just not be uptight about gender?

13

They can raise the kid genderless all they want, but I don’t believe gender can be eliminated by fiat. I don’t think gender will ever disappear from humanity. All we can do is mitigate the strictures of society around it and let people find their own level. A few folks do honestly wind up nonbinary, but most are going to settle on one side or the other.

This parenting plan could turn out either benign or detrimental, depending. If starting from a neutral place, the child can find their own gender setting, then they can settle into where they feel right with a minimum of the fuss and bother that accompanies society’s pressure to mold a person into predefined gender roles. But if the parents rigidly insist on nonbinary as the only allowable option, it will wind up harming the kid as much as any trans kid is harmed by being forced into the wrong gender.

14

In other words, I hope this doesn’t result in an even more insidious form of transphobia than already exists. I fear that the ideologically nonbinary program is sometimes inherently hostile to trans people. But it doesn’t have to be, if you can put people before ideology. In a broader sense, ideologies in general are malign when prioritized over people. As a humanist, I just don’t trust ideologies. People—real, breathing, feeling, caring, loving, warm-blooded human beings— are what matter, not your head trips about them.

15

Trans people themselves are the most transphobic humans on the planet. It’s their own intolerantly rigid and absolutely binary view of gender roles that leads them to mutilate themselves. If they had one ounce themselves of the acceptance they ask from others, the mutilations would be unnecessary.

16

Are you under the impression that all trans people have surgery? If so, that’s an incorrect notion.

17

I was raised in the 1970s, which was a great time to be a little kid. Everyone was trying to raise children without gender stereotypes. Girls could play with trucks; boys could play with dolls, and everyone had a copy of Free to Be You and Me (on which Michael Jackson ironically sings “We Don’t Have to Change at All”). But I don’t know of anyone who was raised with their sex kept a secret.

The idea wasn’t so much that no one should have a gender, as “Your gender should not dictate your interests, goals, friends, etc.”

I remember a world where adult women were nurses, teachers, secretaries, librarians, cashiers, and nuns. And they all had to wear skirts to work. If you saw a woman in some other occupation, it was a real event. I was the first girl in my neighborhood to have a paper route. My parents both had Ph.Ds, but they still got mail all the time addressed to “Dr. and Mrs.” Made my mother furious.

Sometime in the 1990s, the toy store manufacturers realized they had a saturated market, and started making “regular” and “pink” versions of everything, and marketed the pink versions to girls. It seemed like a step backward, to have pink Legos, and pink Lincoln Logs, but since it was only 30 years since anyone bought those toys for girls in the first place, what do you do? I’d rather see girls play with pink building toys, that just playing with dolls. Endlessly, with dolls.

I work in a preschool, and I’m here to tell you that even though we’ve gone backwards in dressing girls in frilly clothes and bows once more, like it’s the 1950s, children don’t think of toys as “boys” or “girls.” Or, at least, little children don’t. So really, a lot of headway has been made. These children are the children of mothers who are doctors, professors, rabbis, lawyers, mortgage brokers, engineers, business owners, and lots of company managers, including one CEO.

So believe me, we have made big cracks in the gender stereotypes. Sure, they still exist, but the change in my lifetime has been enormous. We don’t need people pulling stunts. Or naming kids “Zoomer.” Just tell your daughter she can do anything she wants, and keep telling her. And give your son a doll. He will probably be a dad some day.

18

How will this work once they start playing with other children? Everyone else has a gender, and it’s a big part of how people interact. When all of the boys are off doing one thing, and all of the girls are off doing another, what are these kids going to do? How will you even explain to them why the other kids self-segregate into two mostly-nonintersecting groups?

And what will they play with, and what will they wear? The vast majority of children’s things are designed for either boys or girls. Are the parents going to buy all of the toys, and just let the kids play with whatever? Dress them in alternate styles?

Before you do something, you should first ask if you can do it, if you may do it, and if you should do it… in that order. These parents seem to have skipped over the first question, leaving the second and third irrelevant.

19

Little Zoomer smells of patchouli.

20

Isn’t that a masculine scent?

:flees: