Boy, Girl, or Other?

I came across an interesting article in a magazine I picked up in Australia recently. It was titled "Why I won't reveal if my child is a boy or a girl" and was an interview of a 31 year old single mother who has been keeping the gender of her 1.5 year old toddler unknown. Except for herself, the child's biological dad, her own mother and a few friends who help to babysit occasionally, nobody knows if the child is a boy or a girl. Interesting?

According to this woman, she wants the child to grow up unhibited by the social expectations of the gender. She does not want him/her to be defined that way and she believes that this is liberating. To practise this non-gender way of parenting, she allows the child to have access to all kinds of toys from barbie dolls to trucks and trains. She also dresses the child up in a dress one day and shirt/trousers in another day. Even when she has to open up a bank account for the child, she hand-draw another box and write "other" instead of ticking "boy" or "girl".

While I can understand the reasoning behind her unorthodox way of parenting, I cannot bring myself to agree with her. Personally, I believe that it is important for a child to grow up with a strong sense of self. An identity to be exact. We cannot change the fact that a child is a boy if he is born that way, and it is necessary that he knows that too. In addition to that, the physical differences between a boy and a girl. I do agree that children should have full access to a wide range of toys but to dress a boy in a girly, frilly dress is, well, just wrong. My 3 year old has a good number of soft toys and he plays with a kid size kitchen. He likes to help out in the kitchen and I am aiming to have him master a simple 3 course meal by the time he is 8.  He wears pink and red too. But he knows he is a boy and can differentiate between a man and a woman.

The woman in the article says she will hide the identity of her child for as long as she can and that it is the society, not her child, that she is experimenting with. I just hope that this will not result in serious repercusions in the child's personal development. That the child will really grow up feeling liberated and not totally confused about his/her identity that may have negative impact on his/her self-esteem.

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