I’d be the first to say that a parent needs to remember her principles when raising her kids, and that includes her standards regarding social issues as well.
But this…this just sounds exhausting, and not only does it throw yet another variable into the already-complicated job of parenting, I’m not sure what purpose it serves. Using my kid to serve up an indictment of society seems kind of hard on the kid. I think the child (and sometimes it is, indeed, all about the child) is better served if he’s raised to thoughtfully consider society’s judgement and reject what he finds useless, as opposed to trying to control society’s judgement in the first place through a highly-contrived set of circumstances.
I mean, gender identification is not a new symptom of an unhealthy society. Cavemen knew who was a guy and who was a woman. This is important information. It helps you know whom to hit on.
The article is copied under the cut.
The first question people ask after hearing of a new arrival is usually, “Boy or girl?”
Friends and family of one Canadian couple are getting no answer to this simple inquiry. Kathy Witterick and her husband David Stocker have decided to keep baby Storm’s gender a secret.
Steve Russell / TORONTO STAR
Boy or girl? They’re not telling.
“We’ve decided not to share Storm’s sex for now — a tribute to freedom and choice in place of limitation, a stand up to what the world could become in Storm’s lifetime (a more progressive place?),” the couple wrote in an email to friends and family after Storm’s birth, according to the Toronto Star.
Other than Storm’s parents, the only other people to know Storm’s gender are the couple’s two sons, Jazz, 5, and Kio, 2, the midwives who delivered the baby and a close family friend. They got the idea to raise a genderless child from a book they found in the library, and told the paper the secrecy is about giving their children freedom.
“What we noticed is that parents make so many choices for their children. It’s obnoxious,” Stocker told the paper. He and his wife allow Jazz and Kio to choose their clothing from both the boys’ and girls’ departments – including pink dresses – and how they want to wear their hair.
Although many parents rebel against traditional pink and blue clothing for their babies, and give dolls to their boys and trucks to their girls, Storm’s parents’ decision seems to have touched a nerve, sparking discussion on news outlets and blogs around the world. Comments on the original story accuse the parents of being “irresponsible,” confusing their children, and setting up Storm for “future damage.”
“Reading the story I thought about Storm’s brothers,” writes Lisa Belkin in the New York Times blog Motherlode. “What message is being sent to them, telling them that their sibling’s sex is an unspillable secret. Doesn’t that in itself give gender the all-defining importance that these parents are trying to avoid?”
This isn’t the first time a family has decided to raise a genderless child. A couple in Sweden kept the gender of their 2-year-old child, named Pop, a secret, saying they want “Pop to grow up more freely and avoid being forced into a specific gender mold from the outset.” The latest stories about Pop date back to last summer. Wonder how that’s working out?
What do you think of this couple’s decision to keep Storm’s gender a secret?
© E. Stocking Evans 2011
Mom, Interrupted 
I saw this article the other day. My thought is if this is really something they want to explorer they maybe should try to find a community and convince at least a few other parents to go along with them.
I read a third article about it and can’t find it now but went to yours and then the link to the Toronto Star article the original article I read didn’t go into quite as much detail but the excerpt below breaks my heart for Jazz… a single family trying to change social behavior is just potentially damaging their kid(s). If they found others who would embrace their thinking it actually sounds like the potential for something good. (Says the girl who cried when she was ~9 and her family redid her room and it was PINK.. ugh! I liked blue).
Anyway here’s what I was refering to from the Toronto Star:
“Jazz was old enough for school last September, but chose to stay home. “When we would go and visit programs, people — children and adults — would immediately react with Jazz over his gender,” says Witterick, adding the conversation would gravitate to his choice of pink or his hairstyle.
That’s mostly why he doesn’t want to go to school. When asked if it upsets him, he nods, but doesn’t say more.
Instead he grabs a handmade portfolio filled with his drawings and poems. In its pages is a booklet written under his pseudonym, the “Gender Explorer.” In purple and pink lettering, adorned with butterflies, it reads: “Help girls do boy things. Help boys do girl things. Let your kid be whoever they are”
Oh man I really need to stop reading the full article from the Toronto Star.. I’m angry now that I see:
On a recent trip to Hamilton, Jazz was out of earshot when family friend Denise Hansen overheard two little girls at the park say they didn’t want to play with a “girl-boy.” Then, there was the time a saleswoman at a second-hand shop refused to sell him a pink feather boa. “Surely you won’t buy it for him — he’s a boy!” said the woman. Shocked, and not wanting to upset Jazz, Witterick left the store.
Parents talk about the moment they realize they would throw themselves in front of a speeding truck to save their child from harm, yet battle the instinct to overprotect. They want to encourage independence. They hope people won’t be mean. They pray they aren’t bullied. No parent would ever wish that for their child
I totally get the feeling that the parents are pushing their older two children to be “girl-boys” I hope not because it sounds like a hard life. I also wonder how or why the store clerk even knew for sure that the boa was for the boy. It seems to me that the Mom would have to be making an issue of it otherwise the store clerk would probably have assumed he was picking it out for someone else.
The most charitable thing I can think of is that Jazz turned out to be a sweet kid who really does prefer what the rest of the world calls ‘girl stuff.’
And he caught flak for it, because the world IS a judgemental place, and the parents have reacted by deciding that by encouraging him to be vocal and encouraging him to choose even MORE ‘girl stuff’ and then, finally, decided that this baby wouldn’t even HAVE a gender, to further reinforce the Jazz’ case.
If so, I wouldn’t have handled the situation quite like that. Polarizing never solves anything, and I don’t think it helps your kids if you polarize THEM.