What do you think of the parents raising their child "sexless"?

Question

http://uk.lifestyle.yahoo.com/family-parenting/meet-the-parents-who-are-raising-a-genderless-baby-blog-90-yahoo-lifestyles.html
"Kathy and David feel strongly about releasing their children from the constraints that society poses on males and females and want them to make their own decisions about how they act and look."
In my opinion they are absolutely abusing their power as parents and are using an innocent child for a social experiment. A social experiment is just what it is and this is clearly true otherwise they wouldn't have felt the need to broadcast it to the world.

Answer 1

This is ridiculous. I completely agree they are just using them as an experiment. Poor kids, hopefully they don't turn out too confused.

Answer 2

If they had felt strongly enough to do this with their two older children then I'd shrug it off more. By choosing the third 'disposable' child, it does make me think they're doing an experiment, and by revealing the gender to close family and such it makes me think that the focus of the experiment are the public. No one likes to be told they're being watched and critically watched at that. So I doubt anyone's going to agree with them.



It does make me wonder how the kid's going to turn out though. We know that gender is not just genetic, it's influenced by the environment and by their behavior (the brain even evolves depending on how the baby then child then adult acts, whether the 'female' or 'male' area develops more.) So by removing the environment, it makes me wonder what the kid will eventually lean towards in behavior. Since the outcome could be negative, I do think it's an unwise and stupid decision on their part.



I mean, they're gambling with this kid's life.



Add: That only confirms they're not doing this for the kid's benefit but to scrutinize and judge the public.



The scientific community condemns social experimentation on children for a GOOD reason. It's unethical. So yes, I would call it abuse.

Answer 3

I don't think genders should be imposed but I was always aware that the outside world would anyway.

i will explain. I have a son now 9 .since he was a child I never determined toys by gender ,I do not think its fair on children. when he was 4 he asked me for a playhouse,he had a phase that he played with dolls and cars ,he loved his play kitchen until not that long ago .

Now did that affect him in any way??? NO ,he knows he is a boy ,he knows what girls are ,the only thing he does not know is that he needs to play differently just because he is a boy. he still is happy playing with girls as he is with boys .

I don't think being manly and rough needs to be a necessity for being a "proper" boy and if parents think that teaching their children that boys are rough and play fight is the norm then ...poor children

I will have another child in the next 2 years and even if its a girl I will do the same,if she preefers football and play fight why should i say to her it is wrong?

Answer 4

i'd pick to do an identical component. yet my difficulty is that i'd would desire to objective to describe to them the thought of gender roles, clarify to them why stereotyping a guy or woman of a particular gender is undesirable, and clarify why i've got faith they might desire to be unfastened to take part in "female" events whilst they are adult men (and visa versa for females). it would be somewhat plenty for a baby to understand. yet i think of that ultimately what they are doing is a competent component. i think of gender roles is detrimental, and does no longer something yet carry us returned as a society. Clinging to previous ideals whether they are risky and illogical. i think of that we as a society could recognize that adult men have penises and females have vaginas, yet there's a great spectrum of behaviors it is acceptable for individuals to act like. So i've got faith a "sexless" society could be the main suitable society. however the subject is the infants would no longer understand those style of issues. whether that's extra desirable than indoctrinating them into an ultimately sexist ideology. Psychologists have shown that infants as youthful as 5 would have already have gender schemas firmly implanted of their heads. little infants have been shown a photograph of two females enjoying baseball and a pair of boys baking a cake. a week later whilst asked what the genders of the infants doing the events have been, the matters had switched the genders following "time-honored" gender schemas.

Answer 5

Sorry but you are either born male or female, I'm sure they will have to home teach the child cos no school is going to help them play out their experiment.

Answer 6

Makes my yearn for a parenting lisence even greater.. lol.



Seriously, disgusting. Way to completely confuse your child. I think they're forgetting a baby is born with a fresh brain and not a morphed version of freak humanity that this pair have, they're not going to understand their parents reasoning. It kind of makes me sick how people could be so naive.

Answer 7

I think they are going to confuse their child more than cultural gender roles ever would.



Gender exists regardless if they want to believe it or not. What happens when he/she goes to grade school and the teacher tells him/her she can't go in the opposite sex bathroom just because mommy and daddy don't believe in gender. Sorry, there are parents who believe in gender and just don't want that little boy (maybe) to walk into the bathroom with their daughter using it.

Answer 8

I get their reasoningbut unfortunately the world is not equipped to deal with sexless children which will make life unnecessarily complicated and hard for said children



If it wouldn't mess up the kids I would agree 100%

Answer 9

You mean where they don't have sex with the child? Sounds like a good idea

Answer 10

It would just confuse the child and make it difficult for him in later life. i disagree with it.

Answer 11

The aggressive and hateful responses to these people (not just on here, but below the article itself) show the single drawback to not placing focus on a child's gender, and instead allowing their personality to develop without the societal constraints that go hand in hand with the gender label: It's an issue of other people being bigots, not an issue of the parents being jerks.



By the way, the original and full story is a bit more informative. Here are two quotes I appreciated from it:



"This past winter, the family took a vacation to Cuba with Witterick’s parents. Since they weren’t fluent in Spanish, they flipped a coin at the airport to decide what to tell people. It landed on heads, so for the next week, everyone who asked was told Storm was a boy. The language changed immediately. “What a big, strong boy,” people said.



The moment a child’s sex is announced, so begins the parade of pink and barrage of blue. Tutus and toy trucks aren’t far behind. The couple says it only intensifies with age.



“In fact, in not telling the gender of my precious baby, I am saying to the world, ‘Please can you just let Storm discover for him/herself what s (he) wants to be?!.” Witterick writes in an email."



“When faced with inevitable judgment by others, which child stands tall (and sticks up for others) — the one facing teasing despite desperately trying to fit in, or the one with a strong sense of self and at least two 'go-to' adults who love them unconditionally? Well, I guess you know which one we choose.”

Answer 12

Proof that any loonies can procreate.

Answer 13

They are idiots.