Parents keep baby’s sex a secret to avoid gender bias

[Doyoumind]

This story has been covered pretty widely but I don't think it's been mentioned on here.

A couple have a 17 month old who they refer to as 'they' and the couple didn't even tell family what sex the child is.

Fine, keep things gender neutral and avoid stereotypes but referring to your child only as 'they' is totally othering. They will soon hear other children being referred to differently.

Pretty soon that child will be talking. Unless it lives in a bubble and never has stories read to it that child will understand there are boys and girls and wonder which they are. They will start to realise the difference between when mummy and daddy go to the toilet, unless they are never to be seen naked. At that point they will know whether they are a boy or a girl if their parents are honest and explain the physical differences between male and female.

Their parents might be able to shield them from gender stereotypes to some extent bit they can't deny the obvious biology.

Or are they going to say only some men have penises and some women do too?

Absolutely ridiculous the world has gone mad. The fact the Dads name is hobbit just shows how ridiculous they are.

I just wonder if this would do more harm than good psychologically for the child. Will the child get to the point where they think to themselves 'since I know I'm a boy/girl (as I have boy or girl genitalia) I wonder why my mum and dad fought so hard to stop other people knowing this? What is it about being a boy/girl that's so shameful/to be hidden?'

It's actually the mum who is called Hobbit

Mum is Hobbit I think Warship

The whole thing is ridiculous. I will never understand why challenging gender stereotypes requires an attempt to pretend that girls and boys or men and women aren't biologically different. Biological difference impacts things like reproduction, overall body strength and size etc. It doesn't affect whether you play football, like dolls or wear pink.

What's wrong with telling the child, you have boy bits or girl bits but you can play with/wear/behave how ever you like, gender doesn't really matter at all and shouldn't define you? Rather than keeping it an absolute secret. Doing that magnifies, rather than minimises the emphasis on sex and gender in my opinion. If it TRULY doesn't matter what sex the child is, why go to such extremes to hide it (and highlight it in the national press, no less?)

They’re absolute fools. I feel sorry for that poor child - how confused he/she is going to be and how confusing for future friends - I hope he/she won’t be bullied because of his/her stupid parents.

my first thought on reading this story= Get a problem!!!
seriously the world has gone mad.
Biologically you are male, we refer to you as he/ end of! Im so sick of the non binary bs.

It’s extreme I know but before the age of about 3 I don’t see the harm. And experiments prove that unfortunately adults do treat babies differently depending what sex they think they are so a couple of years avoiding that seems to be a good idea.

Surely by making this such an issue they are reinforcing the stereotypes?

The more sensible but less attention seeking way of approaching this, is to reinforce that you can do and like anything, regardless of your sex.

Also, I cannot believe that the parents and grandmother have never said something along the lines of "Good boy" or "Good girl" by accident. The mental agility required to avoid slip ups must be tiring.

U think this is a child protection issue, a form of psychological abuse

I do think this is extreme and impractical (eg if anyone else ever looks after the child they will know and treat the child differently and their friends would know etc).

But. I actually voted YABU. Because at this age it doesn't matter. They dont have to choose a gender as in a 2 year old doesnt have to choose whether to go in to a boys toilet or girls toilet or tick a box on a form.

It's a fact that most people in society treat children differently when they know their gender. Boys and girls are spoken to differently, they are held up to different standards of behaviour and they are given different toys. And I do think this is a bit wrong and children should be allowed to become whoever they want. It's such a hard thing to change because it's so engrained and so subtle that if they just said to people 'she is a girl but can you treat her exactly the same a a boy' for example, most people just wouldn't be able to do it no matter how hard they tried.

And the child knowing what genitals they have, doesnt really change what the parents are trying to do, which is change other peoples expectations of their child and how they treat them. Eg knowing that they have a penis like daddy wont impact on how other people treat them if they dont know this. It is unlikely they will be able to keep this up forever but it doesnt mean it is damaging them in any way at the moment.

Granny found out when they did a nappy for first time.

Oops. Either way Hobbit is absolutely ridiculous! I would class this as abuse raising their child totally confused. Likely he/she will be in a school/nursery with loads of children who are secure in their gender and wont know what the hell the poor child is on about when they come in and say "I am known as They" and dont know which toilet to use etc. Educate your child fairly and then if they choose to change gender later/self identify etc etc thats a CHOICE rather than forcing them to be gender neutral. It's no different to forcing/convincing them they are a girl when they are in fact a boy etc. Its abuse.

I'm torn, because adults do treat kids differently by gender.

E.g. girls told to 'be careful' when climbing, boys encouraged to give things a go.

It's not how I'd go about managing it though.

My parents just let me crack on with being me, and reinforced that when I was in public too. Parents are a strong enough influence on a child if they choose to be that any messages in the rest of the world have much less significance.

Also, I cannot believe that the parents and grandmother have never said something along the lines of "Good boy" or "Good girl" by accident
I can't believe that the grandmother hasn't said something along the lines of "don't be so fucking ridiculous!"

Is this Paloma... Sorry can't remember her surname. She's a singer. She's done this with her kid hasn't she.

I dont think they are trying to hide what sex the child is, from itself. I think they are trying to stop society treating their child according to their gender.

Saying 'you can do anything you want and play with anything you want' doesnt 2ork that well when 99pc of people your child meets - other children, nursery workers, grandparents, are all constantly and subtly reinforcing the idea that girls act one way and boys another

They should bring the child up traditionally then if they want to change sex later then that is fine.

Totally stupid and attention seeking! The world is going mad

The child is 17 months old. It is not abuse to not assign it a gender. If they didn't have the discussion by the time they were old enough to understand, then that's different, but even up to the age of 3 kids get confused between he / she, they dont go to the toilet themselves etc...I think it would be different for a school age child and could isolate them but at 17 months its really not an issue at all.

Why would they say 'I am known as 'they'. They would say 'I'm known as 'name'

I think I did ok trying to be gender neutral without all that crap though but I've never been very gender conforming anyway. It was only at school (not even so much nursery) that my DC learned about what boys and girls were 'supposed' to like and do.

Getting so I should feel ashamed I am a woman with a vagina....
And shock horror my ds likes blue and cars.

Another mad and attention seeking family.

I feel things are going backwards.

When I was a kid, my mum let me wear a range of clothes (often including hand me downs from friends / family with boys), we had a range of interests (including "boy ones"), had long and short hair over the years, we played dress up, were encouraged to find our talents and nobody said to me "but Lola you're a girl so you can't..."
Yes there was some socialisation and that's impossible to avoid but I'd say my childhood was fairly gender neutral by virtue of not having the world coded as blue/pink.

Now it seems that gender neutral means a sea of beige and denying biological sex or forcing both extremely narrow stereotypes on your child and praising yourself for being woke and forward thinking.