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?

I can't believe that the grandmother hasn't said something along the lines of "don't be so fucking ridiculous!"

Exactly!

This right here is part of the problem. You'd tell a person who was just making well meaning small talk to fuck off (very loudly no less) for asking a question about your child. I have news for you, in 99.999% of cases, people don't even CARE to know the answer, they're just oiling the wheels of common courtesy. Jesus, get yourself some real problems, or some tolerance

In 99% of my experiences it was questioning whether she was a girl or a boy and judging me for it.

Actually, I maybe simplified the question to the basics. There were a few cases where I was directly asked- always leading to “why is she dressed like a boy then”, or pointing out my “cruelty” in keeping her hair short, or refusing to believe me and arguing i was wrong, she had short hair, and was thefeore a boy.

Those people I might not have told them to fuck off but in my aged wisdom I’d have been a lot less polite in my answers.

However those people who went to the effort of stopping me in the street to laugh and ask me why I’d allowed my little boy out in his sisters clothes, or their “small talk” was pointedly judging the choice not to conform to stereotype, or tell me she was “too pretty to wear those horriible boys clothes”, yes, i do wish i’d told them to fuck off.

People can be vicious. I’m a 70’s child and genuinely thought we’d moved on from rigid gender stereotypes.

I heard a psychologist talking about this on radio 5 yesterday. If I understood her correctly, I think she was saying this is potentially damaging for the child.

The parents obviously don't understand the difference between sex and gender. They can call their baby them all they like, but their sex will not change. As soon as they are old enough to understand they will more than likey announce themselves as the correct sex and once they hit pubity they will treated by others according to their sex.

As others have said, would have made more sense to say baby is a boy/girl but we don't let that define them.

I should have said if more parents lobbied toy companies about toys and gender.Mumsnet is pretty big, I wonder if they would be interested in a campaign of some kind?

I don't know if Mumsnet itself was involved but Let Toys be Toys did start on these pages
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let_Toys_Be_Toys

Let Toys Be Toys is a campaign designed to persuade retailers to stop categorising toys by gender.[1] It was started by a group of parents on the parenting on-line discussion forum Mumsnet

I found when my chidlren started preschool and nursury that where they really encounted gender stereotyping - if they homeschool I suppose they could continue with this though you'd hope they'd be led by the child so if they didn't want "they" later on they stopped.

Does anyone remember a Swedish couple doing this with their child about 10 years ago? I think I read that they ended up revealing the gender but I can’t find a follow up story now.

parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/01/keeping-the-sex-of-a-toddler-secret/

You can bring your child up however you want you self aware woke millennial idiots .

But a grown woman calling herself Hobbit ? How fucking ridiculous is that!

Just wish the media would ignore them tbh, the less attention given to all this kind of stuff the better.

Why are people like this couple acting like it's a brand new concept to dress children neutrally and let them play with whatever toys they choose? Attention seeking.

Can't understand why people are the slightest bit bothered by being asked whether their baby is a boy or a girl? Like it's offensive somehow? Jesus wept! It's just small talk, there's not really much to talk about with tiny babies is there?

This gender thing is getting so out of hand. We are putting children and teenagers into more boxes than ever before. Rather than encouraging children to just embrace who they are, I fear we are encouraging children to seek to be something they aren't when all they need to do is be happy with who they are. In the worst cases it's fuelling existing mental health issues and leads to permanently damaging choices. It's very sad. A lot of schools seem to be going along with it as well, they need to wake up and fast.

A woman on radio 2 just described how she is a cis woman. Ok, so you're a woman then 🤦‍♀️

You wouldn’t want to be that child’s reception teacher would you?.

I can actually see the appeal in this, since people place such a huge emphasis on the gender of your child and it's totally irrelevant. I'd love to live in a society where kids all have gender neutral haircuts and names and clothes and toys, etc. Where people who don't know the child wouldn't immediately know whether they have a penis or a vagina.

Having said that, I wouldn't conduct this experiment on my own child. Too much potential for individual harm. On a theoretical level though, I like the idea of it.

Hobbit is trending on Twitter. Last week we had the penguin. These stories mean more people start thinking about gender identity and, mostly, see the insanity of it all. That's a good thing, I suppose.

I think they are right in that the only way to shield your child from gender bias is to not let people know what sex they are, and I think you could get away with this until they are about two, when they are talking and making observations about bodies.

Once older it's just not practical - and that's the time at which the stereotypes start to actually affect the child.

Who are they doing this for - the child? Everyone else, or themselves?
Rather thinking it's themselves- with a name like Hobbit I suspect it's self serving bollocks that'll have their child in therapy for years, feeling like an outsider who doesn't belong - perhaps that's what they'd like for themselves but don't saddle a kid with this - give them the skills they need in life to feel powerful, have self assertiveness, capabilities in life, not iconoclastic nonsense to make a stupid point

This poor child. Everyone is going to be treat the parents like the fruit loops they are and the child will be treated like spawn of fruit loops.

School will be a nightmare. This kid will be fucked for life, and all for nought, since within a few short years its biological sex (not gender) will be all too clear to everyone but the wokestazi.

Two different people in my workplace are raising their children like this. It is abusive and attention-seeking in my opinion. I think it's another huge sign that the parents have issues, and sadly that more than anything else will fuck those kids up in future.

So the message they’re sending is you can do anything because we haven’t assigned you a gender and we’re pretending you don’t have a sex

They'll likely also be telling their child that they can chose their own sex. So if the child chooses the one that doesn't match their biological sex, the child will be socially transed very young, and possibly medicated with blockers and then cross sex hormones further down the line also.

I'm in a Facebook group with loads of these types. They believe their child will tell them what gender they are. They can't see that they are influencing their children on this, when it's very obvious they are.

Think it's a good idea. Why do we all need to know which gender it is? So that we can gift blue/pink and encourage the boy to play rough/tell the girl to play with her dolls. Society treats people differently according to gender. So I think it's a great idea! Just for the first 10 years. Let them define themselves instead of being defined

I think this is ridiculous. It has made me think about when I had had a ds and became pregnant I bought him a doll and a buggy so he could have a baby while I was growing mine. I have ended up with two boys and a girl. One son was obsessed with cooking so we bought him a kitchen, he had loads of toy appliances, toy food, a chef's outfit, etc and used to insist on sitting in his buggy with a toy microwave. I did buy dd a doll as I saw one with her name on but she never played with it. I bought them toys because they liked them. I have photos of dd wearing Thomas the tank pyjamas and fuck me, the world is still turning. Dd especially has always known she can do anything she wants and isn't limited by what is in her pants. My boys are very gentle and cuddle me every day. From the moment the children were born they were their own person and treated as such. Not influenced by their gender, sex or whatever it is called these days.

We have definitely gone backwards in terms of gender divided clothing. In the 70's I was dressed very gender neutrally with a short haircut and brown, red and green clothing. I was encouraged to play with whatever toys I like (thanks, hippy mum!)

There is a difference between, however, outwardly dressing gender neutral, and genuinely not informing or letting a child know their own biological sex. Or are they just not ever going to discuss genitals? (this is a mistake as you need to know if your children have an infection/there are any problems).

Luckily my mum was sensible and knew that I was a girl who wore practical clothing and so no issues with gender/sex arose.

I think we have been invaded by aliens from another planet,those who have such mind sets and views, that are completely wacky.

They're just like that family who were crowd funding to go 'off grid' in Costa Rica.
I expect the child will be a corporate lawyer in the future.

Poor child will be bullied mercilessly at school and suffer because of his nutjob parents

What are they going to do when it starts getting periods/symptoms of male puberty? How are they going to explain sex? Mental. Raising a child with issues there.

I think it’s a baby girl. “They like dolls teasets BUT they also like motorbikes”. Just a feeling and if I’m right then the mother has unconsciously gendered teasets and motorbikes anyway

Sorry. Am i the only one on here who is now just bloody confused?
Should i not be classing myself as female if i have a vag ?
If my kids go on to have children should i be discouaging the girls to play with dolls or dress up like a princess? Should i get the girls hair cut short and let the boys grow long?
Or should they both get the same uniformed haircut and dress in exactly the same uniformed clothing and discourage them from playing with anything that remotely enforces the older generations idea of gender for fear of.....????? What??? Im also confused about this? What is it that is suddenly so fashionably disgusting about gender??