Canadians raising gender-free baby

No way I'd ever do that. Not because I don't believe we have bad stereotypes about gender / make bad assumptions based on gender - we really do, and I don't like it at all. But because they're setting their kid up for a lot more assumptions and rude comments this way. I think they're making it harder, not easier.

Also, being a woman is something that's important to me. I don't agree with a lot of the assumptions people make about gender, but that doesn't mean I'm happy to ditch the concept!! Men and women are different, afterall, and that's a good thing to be celebrated rather than ignored/hidden.

I'm much happier to bring Jacob up as a boy, but make a point of letting him know he's free to make his own choices regardless of other people's views. Along the lines of "some people think dolls are girls toys, but we know that boys and girls can enjoy playing with them, don't we?" kind of stuff.

I find that quite interesting, I doubt Storm will stay gender-neutral though, as they say until 1 of the 3 children can't keep the secret or don't want to.

Funnily enough at 1 yr old if I dress my girl in her "boy" (blue) clothes she will be taken as a boy 100% of the time, but even dressed in pink she is still sometimes called a boy. We let her play however she wants, trucks/dolls/shapeo/teddies, who cares, if shes having fun and learning from it then thats a healthy child.

Strange.....bit extreme! Cooper brought home an angelina ballerina DVD & A thomas the tank engine book from the library, he copies his sisters dancing but also does rugby tackles, he wears his hair up if he wants to but to hide him from being a boy....crazy


Also "itterick practices unschooling, an offshoot of home-schooling centred on the belief that learning should be driven by a child’s curiosity. There are no report cards, no textbooks and no tests. For unschoolers, learning is about exploring and asking questions, “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,” says Witterick. The fringe movement is growing. An unschooling conference in Toronto drew dozens of families last fall."
- gee this is raising worthy members of society, I would like to hear how these kids are doing in 20 years time & what they are doing for a crust!

so when talking about Storm, I wonder what they will use instead of the masculine/feminine pronouns?? you can't always use the name, it sounds ridiculous.... and you'd hope they wouldn't refer to their baby as 'it'

fruit loops

I just came to post about this here is my link of many more links if people want more reading, includes parent responses etc.

I get that once you say 'boy' you get blue clothes, trucks, cars, moterbikes, toy diggers and rugby games. But like Hopes said i think you can break that mould without going that far. Besides by the time he is old enough for peer pressure he'll be well aware what gender he is and will get all the "boys don't wear pink" or "boys play hockey not ballet" anyway! Sounds like they're lining him up for a lot of bullying later in life. I'm all for my son wearing a tutto and pretending to be a princess but i wouldnt necessarily let him go to school dressed like that aged 10, kids being cruel and all.

*somewhere along the lines i've decided Storm is a boy. No idea why!

I wonder who birthed him (can't say it!). I assume unassisted homebirth, otherwise somewhere there is a midwife who knows the answer!

Their baby, their choices

Idiots, thats sick! Poor kid.

Sheza wrote: Idiots, thats sick! Poor kid.

Oh, "sick" seems to be an extreme sort of word to use in these circumstances. Can I ask why you feel that way?

I can understand people saying it's "silly" or even "stupid" as it doesn't conform to their own ideas regarding child rearing but "sick"' to me seems to indicate the thought that this is a form of child abuse.

Do you think it is abuse to keep a child's gender a secret from other people?