They are from the east coast; I think they are making a special effort to ensure their child is not exposed to gender specific predetermined assumptions, many parents are doing this in order to let their child express what comes naturally to them, if a boy plays with a doll , for example, no biggie.

How their quest will translate later, when the child is exposed to other kids for example, will be revealing ; but most imprtantly, how the mom and dad interact and define their roles through gender , this will be the example the child is seeing everyday, and this is often what molds a child's knowledge of how boys and girls are different.

My daughter was masculine from the start of her preschool years, and this continued on ; she rejected the way I dressed her, she rebelled at teachers asking boys to carry heavy things, it was in her. Why am I saying she was masculne? she was just being herself, she was a girl wanting to do certain things that were stereotypically seen as things that boys do, and she was told it was wrong by some teachers . We told her she could do what she wanted.
That was 30 years ago, I think things are more gender neutral in schools today.

Even if these parents would reveal the child's gender, they could still observe their child's character and let him/her express their natural tendencies.
I don't condone what they are doing though, they seem to be loving and just wanting to see to what point society influences one's gender tendencies.

I think if the mom would have just gone ahead and bought the pink boa for her son, instead of storming out of the store, that would have been a better lesson for the boy.
My grandson was pure boy since day one, in his attitude and play, it was evident; but my dil painted his toenails when he requested it at age 3.
I think parents do have to give their kids the freedom to explore their gender
and follow what the child's tendencies are, teaching them that the barriers they encounter in society ( girls don't do that , etc..) are not necessarily true.

I personally applaud their effort and hope they are supple enough to go with the flow of what their child's identity needs will be down the road, letting her/him dictate what his/her needs are and who they are, what they gravitate towards. Even if they don't reveal it, the child has a gender already.

Flyingflower, "Who else but a Californian would think up something that stupid?"

I have to say that ruffled my feathers a bit and would like to ask you what you meant by that.

--Nancy from California

I saw that story! I predict that in 20 years, Storm will be seeing a therapist.

I'm with nancybee. Especially after some of the stuff that comes from other parts of the country!

I honestly don't know how they can do this to their kids. The oldest is being teased as it is.

I think that was rather tongue-in-cheek as flyingflower lives in Cali herself.

While their intentions may come from love and the desire for their kids to be comfortable with who they are, I don't believe their process is healthy or in their best interest. It would seem that for whatever reason, they have a problem with the social issue of gender, why they are pushing that onto their kids is mind boggling. Kids don't have the mental development to know who or what they are, and it's up to the parents to teach them how to learn that. IMO, these parents are failing their kids horribly.

As for the comment about Californian's, as someone who was raised there and who's whole family is still there, I too thought that was uncalled for. With as diverse as this country has become, I'm absolutely positive your little corner of the country is not immune from exposure to people who think outside the box or differently from you. It sure would be sad if it were.

Oh, thanks Tina. I can unruffle my feathers- thought I was going to have to defend my state. Thanks Maryanne and Lukki.

As for the original topic, I agree they shouldn't be using their child for a social experiment!

Let boys play with dolls, let girls play with trucks, who cares anymore? This is just crazy. I think this is nutty, attention-getting, selfish behavior.

If Storm is a girl and she decides she needs to make a switch-a-roo a la Chas Bono, cross that bridge when you get to it. Love and support her/him with open arms if that's the direction the child feels compelled to go in.

Being a male is a wonderful thing. Being female is too. I'd much rather teach my child to celebrate and embrace their gender than to feel they must hide, ignore, escape it in some way. Choices and interests in life need not be limited by gender, so let's delight in the differences!

This practice is imparting shame regarding gender to the child, imo, not to mention a lot of confusion. Not only that, but Storm's siblings are sworn to secrecy regarding his/her sex. Is secret keeping, especially regarding something this fundamental about a person, really healthy for the siblings to have to live with?

I would think the pronoun issue would be a total pain.

But I think our society, and most others, are too heavily invested in gender stereotypes. Especially for boys.

And I totally support that DD and DSIL chose to paint the nursery of our first and only grandchild a gender neutral color. On purpose.

From the article I read the other two kids, who happen to be male, are embracing their feminine side. I don't get why hiding gender makes a difference here. Why would Storm be any different?

Here is a link that might be useful: Storm

Seems silly to me. And how do they handle the personal pronoun issue - It?

It looks like a boy in the photos.

Stinky-Gardiner said: "This practice is imparting shame regarding gender to the child, imo, not to mention a lot of confusion."

Well said, Stinky! Each and everything that this child and his (her?) siblings will do is going to be analyzed via the Gender Police mom and dad. Just let them be kids and find their own way, will ya? At least they didn't name it "Child", and for that, I'm thankful.

"I think this is nutty, attention-getting, selfish behavior." Absolutely agree, Barb, with the accent on attention-getting. And I also immediately thought of the pronoun issue.

Neighbor: "How is Storm today?"
Parent: "Storm is fine." How many times do you repeat Storm's name?

N: "How is Storm today?"
P: "He/she is fine." Wrong, privileges the male.

N: "How is Storm today?"
P: "She/he is fine." Wrong, privileges the female.

N: "How is Storm today?"
P: "It is fine."

And that's just the tip of the iceberg, so to speak. I'll bet there are other nutty things going on in that house. These people are fanatics. I wonder how they would do in a serious biology class. Or studying a language that's inflected (all words assigned a gender). It would be funny if there weren't three children being used in a social experiment.

One more thing. How do you get/persuade/force a 5 year old and a 2 year old to keep a secret like this?

yeah, it ruffled mine too Nancy, I mean our family is pretty goofy but geeze...there's a lot of goofy people in this world.

Good points, Sable, Barb, and Graywings...the pronoun issue is a vexing one! Wow.

Folkvictorian, thanks. You say, "At least they didn't name it "Child"..." LOL, so funny. But remember, that might impose the notion on the creature that it was human, and perhaps the being would prefer to be something else.

If they named the infant "Apple," like Gwyneth Paltrow named her baby, they could be running a risk too. Maybe the child would feel hindered, limited, put upon and resentful. When all grown up it may decide it was partial to vegetables and choose the name "Celery" instead.

Can you imagine someone growing up and saying, "My parents were so insensitive. They actually TOLD me I was a girl. How intrusive, limiting and downright abusive of them. They should have given me the freedom to CHOOSE!"

Having worked in the medical field for many years, some of which was at a major children's hospital, my first thought when I heard this story was that the child was born a hermaphrodite. For anyone not familiar with this medical term, it basically means that someone is born with both male and female reproductive organs, although the vast majority don't have complete ones of both sexes; one is usually only partially developed. There's also the chromosome issue, and medical tests need to be done to determine if there is a clear majority of either male or female chromosomes. Parents usually give these kids a genderless name, such as Pat, Alex, Jamie, etc. And then, if medical tests can clearly determine one gender over another, most parents opt to have the "unneeded part(s) surgically removed.
I have actually seen a few kids whose parents decided to wait until the child developed a clear, natural preference to be one gender or the other. When meeting those patients while they were still in grade school, though, it was apparent that they were already having issues, socially and emotionally, because they couldn't give their gender to their peers. It was sad to see them having to go through that.
In this toddler's case, though, no one mentioned it being a hermaphrodite. If that's the case, I personally feel that the parents are setting this poor kid up for some major psychological problems. In my opinion, calling a boy "a boy" doesn't lock a person into having to fulfill that "roll" , if the parents are sensitive to their child's feelings. These parents seem to be that but, frankly, I personally think they're well-intentioned headcases themselves, caught up in their own screwy fantasy world playing child psychologists . . . but like I said, that's only *my* opinion.
Lynn

Stinky, well said. Boy, the world's gone crazy. That kid will need a shrink on speed dial, along with "it's" siblings.

BTW, all you have to do is look at HIS picture. Storm reeks MALE. Who do the parents think they're fooling, anyway? Not me! lol

I think you can send the 'gender isn't particularly important' message without stigmatizing your child, and I think that's the message they'd argue they are trying to convey. But I think their strategy is backfiring! Instead of making the issue a non-issue, it's taking center stage in the family's daily life.

Both of my boys enjoyed nurturing and artistic/craftsy activities in addition to more active 'boy' play -- and I encouraged it. At one point, at their requests, I even painted their toenails pink. (Older son wanted his fingernails pink. I suggested his toes instead but didn't say why.) Both boys love nice fabrics (sheets and towels, shirts) and are reasonably wide-minded when it comes to colors. (Younger son in particular likes Easter-egg colored shirts, which are fabulous with his blue-eyed blond complexion.)

Once, I did catch my husband telling our youngest not to 'act like a girl' and you can believe I called him out on it! (Not in our son's hearing though.) Told him that if he didn't like girls, I knew the perfect solution to that... But that if he did like girls, I'd thank him not to send the message that acting like a girl or doing 'girl' things was somehow any less valuable or less desirable than doing 'boy' things.

Lynne, I'm reading 'Middlesex' right now and that is the first thing I thought of when I heard the story.

If the parent's have nieces and nephews does that make their baby COUSIN IT??

The baby is absolutely adorable, and I agree with others, appears to be a boy.

If the parents were doing this due to physiological issues, like Lynn spoke of, I could have some sympathy for them, but would still feel their handling of the matter was misguided. No, they have an agenda, and the baby, their other children, and the rest of the family on some level, have to suffer while mom and dad who know better, "prove" a point.

Flyingflower, cousin IT, indeed. That's sad.

In the one article I read about it they specifically stated that the baby had no medical reasons that were encouraging this decision... ie had completely normal genitals of one gender or another.

Personally, I think these people are bat$hit crazy and I feel sorry for their kids. I think that parents who are overly wound up about gender and transfer that to their kids are doing more harm than good, even though I am sure they have the best of intentions.

I have a soon to be 3 year old and am an older mom (37 soon myself) and all of my friends have kids around my son's age or a bit older. We are a well educated group, most of us are in fields that are traditionally male, many of us have dealt with gender discrimination, and some of my friends have even highly highly encouraged their children to not be bound by gender stereotypes. I have to say that the neurosurgeon I know who fought against it for years finally acknowledged that it's ok for her son to like only trucks and not want to play with dolls. Another friend of mine who I met at the engineering college I attended (but who is now a teacher) fought her daughter's girly tendencies until she was about 5 and then she gave into the hot pink/purple room and the princess everything... and at 10 the girl will wear nothing but sundresses and sandals in the summer and loves hair bows. She (my friend) laments constantly that she doesn't know how she ended up with this girly girl!

Personally, I think our role as parents is to encourage our children to blow through any glass ceilings there are because they don't even know they exist. It's to allow them to grow up with enough self esteem and self confidence (the true kind that comes with being challenged and meeting those challenges, not the "everybody wins all the time and no one ever fails" kind that seems so popular today) that they can be who they are, no matter who that is. It's to love them unconditionally for who they are and to teach them to be good people. They are not pawns of social experiments or our chance to change the world... if the world needs changing, put your adult self on the line, not your children. If our children end up saving the world when they can make informed decisions about things themselves, even in some tiny way, then it's a big win for a parent. But please, don't impose your bat$hit crazy ideas on your kids and force them to fight an uphill battle in the self confidence department by not allowing them to learn how to live like normal members of society. My heart breaks for kids like this... if you read the article, the older child who is having gender identity issues it seems sounds very very unhappy.

KGWlisa, what a well thought out, great way to put it! I agree with you 100%. And, BTW, thanks for my new favorite expression, "bat$hit crazy" . . . I love it and think that it ~ sadly but definitely ~ fits those parents.
It's times like these that I thank heaven for my normal, down-to-earth (great!) parents.
Lynn

Yes, it sounds like they are creating a problem where none exists.

My nephew is five and is as boy as they come. He loves to hammer, play with trucks, is obsessed with construction equipment like back-hoes. But sometimes he asks my sister if he can play dress-up and she is perfectly happy to let him wear lipstick and high heels! No big deal.

Parents need to remember that kids feed off of their emotions and having a freak-out about every little thing your child does or is exposed to can't be good for the child's emotional well-being.

I think this will all settle itself when he gets a bit older--it is clear the child is a boy, and he'll let himself be known soon enough :).

Ann

My kids seemed to express their gender stereotypes at an early age. My younger DD has been 100% girl all her life. Very girly. Never liked to wear pants as a child and would cry if her hair were cut short. At 26, shes still girly.

Eldest DD is happy with her girly traits and is just as much a tomboy as they come. While she looked cherubic in her little Alice in Wonderland pinafores and blonde curls, she preferred to be playing in the dirt. She's just like mom!

DS wore pink until he was 6 mos old. Long story, but he had to wear some hand-me-downs. At 2 he was using his sister's Barbies as guns. In kindergarten his best friend in the world was a girl. At 6 he let his sisters dress him up and put make up on him and had him star in videos as 'Joanna'. By 10 he was 100% a stinky boy. As a teenager, he preferred to wear girls pants, because they were tight and he could skate board in them better. He also favored the color pink. But he had posters of girls in bikinis pasted all over his room. He's established himself as a man who is quite comfortable with his softer side.

This whole gender neutral thing is nuts. Just teach the kids that the only thing that makes men different from women is a uterus. Other than that, we are all capable of doing the same things. In fact, I just read an article that noted that men are actually capable of producing milk to nurse a child with!

When my sister had her first baby she announced "Candy shall never touch my child's lips!".
How long do you think that last? HA!

What I find interesting about most situations where parents say "I don't want the child to have any preconceived notions about gender" is that it typically (when I see it) means it is a girl that they wish to steer toward more stereotypically "male" attributes and away from female clothing, colors, activities, etc. I don't see it so much the other way around.

My stepson and his wife are very gung ho about this with their 5-1/2-month-old. Mostly SS's wife. NO pink of any kind in the nursery or in clothing. No skirts, no dolls, etc. My question: why is "male" automatically the default preference? I've often wanted to ask them, if the next child is a boy, will you be painting his room pink and dressing him in dresses? If not, then you're not about being equal-opportunity; you're about saying male attributes are superior to female ones. And I don't think that is the message to send.

My mother was ahead of her time for a woman in the 1950s. Rather than worrying about picking a cute name popular at the time she concerned herself with how our names would carry us through life. Clearly not a lot of woman are thinking about that these days with names like Apple. Anyway, she chose gender-neutral names for her daughters because she didn't want our resumes to be dismissed purely because our names indicated we must be women. To think that far ahead during the 1950s is impressive. Little did she know that I would go into a field dominated by men. They couldn't tell if I was male or female, they had to read further into the resume and contact me first to find out. That gave me at least a fighting chance to prove myself without being descriminated against right out of the gate. Now that's the kind of thing you can do to help your children as adults.

As long as the child feels the parents will support them no matter what changes they decide to make in their identity later on that's all that matters. My friend's daughter appeared like every other girl on the block until she reached puberty and then the transformation began and you'd think she is a boy now. Her mother calls her daughter her son now. When and if it happens you deal with it then, no need to anticipate something that in all probability won't happen anyway. They're acting like they expect their child will want to change their sexual preference. If they confuse the kid too much the result could be promiscuity &/or bisexual habits just trying to assure themselves which sex it is they like.

I agee with what you said jakabedy. It bugs the helloutofme when women brag that they used to play with trucks as children or they climbed trees and hated to wear dresses. Why is that something to be proud of, is there a problem playing with dolls that you are ashamed of? One woman I know keeps bragging how strong she used to be, that she could arm wrestle her brother and boyfriend before they got too muscular for her. Do you ever hear a man bragging how weak he is? They don't want to imitate women so why are women trying so hard to imitate men!
I see the same thing in interior design, notice how some women are proud that they don't like florals. You'd think a floral fabric was a sign they had no taste or were behind the times and not contemporary! Such bs. Pink fabric IS pretty, don't be ashamed if you like it!!
(oh boy we're really off on a tangent now, lol)

Great posts guys. I actually like Barbies & motorcycles & have worked a "man's" job most of my life. My dad didn't have any boys but I was the closest thing to having a son lol

Why was I proud that I could pump gas; fix cars & ride motorcycles? Because people tend to think women can't do things like that. I'm also pretty good on a fork lift.

Yes; we're taught that men were superior.. that is depending on when you grew up. Kids these days have no clue how many people stood up at one time for equal rights for women.

I think they said for the time being and that the child will reveal itself as time goes by. They are just having a temporary effect on how others will treat this baby, not how the baby will self-identify, that is going to happen regardless and it will happen relatively quickly. They are not forcing a genetic male to act as a female or a genetic female to act as a male. Since the parents and siblings who were present at the birth (which I disagree with) actually know what gender this child is, I can't imagine they will be completely neutral themselves, as much as they may try. But, I don't know how much effect short-term neutrality will have...the child is going to express itself anyway.

These people are idiots and I would take the child away from them for doing this to a baby. A boy is a boy and a girl is a girl physically. Only upon very extreme conditions is this EVER in question. What would you guess this child to be? A boy and the parents are assuming he is gay already. Or a girl and they are thinking girls are weak or they really wanted a boy. God created this baby to be a boy or a girl from the moment of fertilization - one or the other - it is NOT a maybe question at this point. If they are this horrible as parents so early they will only be worse as time goes on. I would love this child to be a boy and this boy becomes a man who becomes an excellent and holy Catholic priest. That's what I am going to pray for.

Threedgrad, much of what you have written is incorrect, and many people who God created have suffered from such thinking.

Threegrad, that's really over the top. It's sad that you obviously have no compassion for or understanding of people who are born in the wrong body.

They aren't concealing the gender of the baby from the baby itSELF, only people outside the immediate family. I think its a bit odd, but that kid is going to know what it is, regardless.

I would love this child to be a boy and this boy becomes a man who becomes an excellent and holy Catholic priest. That's what I am going to pray for.

??? I don't understand this comment at all. Eileen, are you ok?

I don't think it's so extreme that they should have their child removed from the home. They just seem to be enjoying their 15 minutes of fame with a very silly issue. There's not enough Foster homes for the abused and neglected children as it is. This story will all go away shortly. (I think the baby looks like a boy.)

Very few Catholic priest's are holy, if any. Their humanity gets in the way. It is dangerous to assume *anyone* could be holy, IMO.

I see no need to insult 3dgrad, she's entitled to her opinion. Implying there's something wrong with her is a low blow.

I certainly didn't mean my words to be a "low blow" or an insult, flyingflower. If you felt it so, then you misread my intent.

FF, you have to admit that comment was out of left field.

So there's no confusion ... I'm talking about Elaine's.

"I would love this child to be a boy and this boy becomes a man who becomes an excellent and holy Catholic priest."

Like the kid doesn't already have enough to deal with? Why wouldn't you wish for the child to be a girl? How about praying that the child becomes an excellent human being?

Or if Christian ministry is what you consider the best end result, how about praying that the child becomes an excellent and holy minister - regardless of whether the child is male or female?

I think the parents are kinda wacko, and certainly this little game will end as soon as the child is old enough to interact with others outside the family, to learn about his/her body parts as a toddler, etc.

Sending the message that gender is the problem is misrepresenting the truth.

The baby looks like a boy and from reading stuff from Threedgrad in the past, she's Catholic. I thought only men could be a Catholic priest? Or that a women priest was frowned upon?

She gave a very blunt opinion and because it's a hot topic.... Bat$hit crazy wasn't attacked.

Eileen (3grad) hasnt posted in a while and her recent posts do not sound like herself (at least to me). I hope everything is okay.

You're right Shee - she is catholic.

tina

There are no women priests ordained in the catholic faith ; it's tradition.
Archaic and senseless imo.

Eileen was always a very pious and devout catholic, it did come out a few times in the past, although not as preachy as in her 2 recent posts. The Arnold thread response was intense .
I also hope she's ok, the threads must have provoked her to post in a moment of vulnerability perhaps. Or else this is really her opinion.