Parents Decide Not Release Their Newborns Gender.
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These parents decide to let their baby decide what gender roles it would like to take. only a hand full of people know what genitals the baby actually has. The grandparents aren’t even included in […]
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http://www.thelocal.se/20232/20090623/#
A couple in Sweden did this with their baby a few years ago. The kid should be about 4 or 5 now and probably entering the gauntlet of organized schooling, which means they’ll soon be pressured to identify as boy or girl, most likely by their peers.
I think it’s probably less damaging than rigorous enforcement of gender roles. At the very worst, if the parents behave neurotically about keeping their kid’s sex a secret, or if the kid themselves is really insecure and wants to identify strongly as one or the other, it could give the kid an obsession with gender roles or gender identity, the way some people who grow up in sexually repressive households become obsessed because sex was so taboo. But they’ll probably be fine.
It’ll also take more than one or two kids raised this way to determine the effect such parenting has, and in countries other than Canada or Sweden, which from all accounts are incredibly egalitarian and likely to be more accepting of gender variance. And of course, widespread social change (which is happening as we speak) will make people less uptight about bombarding babies with strict gender assignments wrapped up with pink or blue ribbons, making parenting choices like this easier or, better yet, completely unnecessary!