On Raising our Child Gender Neutral
By far, the question I am most asked as a pregnant person is, are you having a boy or a girl? I often respond that we don’t know and leave it at that. I’m not trying to have a long-winded conversation on gender theory with every stranger who stops me in the grocery aisle. The truth is, my husband and I know our baby’s chromosomes, but we’ve decided to not assign a gender to our child at birth. This is not a new idea, gender creativity exists within all of us and many parents before my husband and I have made the same decision. We’ve simply concluded that the gender binary is too limiting and that our child will let us know how they identify when they are ready. As artist and writer Alok Vaid-Menon puts it, “The real crisis is not that gender non-conforming people exist, it’s that we have been taught to believe in only two genders in the first place. Gender diversity is an integral part of our existence. It always has been, and always will be.”
The belief that only two genders exist is so deeply ingrained in our culture that categorizing children as one or the other begins even before birth. I don’t just encounter the gender binary in folks’ questions about what I am having, I see it every time I scroll through social media and a gender reveal pops up, or at the store when I sift through pink onesies that proclaim “daddy’s little angel” and blue ones that state, “future MVP”. The pressure to conform to the gender binary is immense from the moment a pregnancy is announced and, while folks have largely been supportive when we’ve shared our intention, we’ve experienced enough push-back, confusion, and questions that I decided to write this essay to examine the why behind our decision to raise our child gender neutral.
First, I think that it’s helpful to make the distinction between biological sex and gender. A committee convened by the IOM specifies that “the term sex should be used as a classification, generally as male or female, according to the reproductive organs and functions that derive from the chromosomal complement [generally XX for female and XY for male]” and “that the term gender should be used to refer to a person’s self-representation as male or female, or how that person is responded to by social institutions on the basis of the individual’s gender presentation.” Thus, gender is not rooted in human biology or anatomy, but is instead a cultural construction that we express through cues and behaviors, like the way we dress, style our hair, and the pronouns we use. Girls have long hair, boys have short hair. Girls wear pink, boys wear blue. These are some examples of assumptions we make about gender, but none of these signals are biologically determined. Instead, they are choices we make about how we present ourselves.
One argument I’ve heard is that raising a child with little gendered input and they/them pronouns will confuse or negatively impact our child. This centers a rigid gender binary as the natural order while othering any form of gender diversity and it is through this belief that pervasive power structures function. Gender, while a social construct, is very real and the enforcement of a binary often has a harmful impact. When we look at statistics around gendered violence, division of labor, medical research, or the wage gap, for example, we see that upholding a gender binary benefits those currently in power and works to disenfranchise femme folks. Just look at some of the state legislation currently being passed that harshly punishes non-gender conforming folks. The response to any departure from gender norms is swift and violent. It’s apparent that those in power are desperate to keep the gender binary intact in order to protect their power and resources. However, I’d argue that the gender binary ultimately hurts us all as it works to stifle our creativity, connectedness, and free will.
So far, I’ve mostly unpacked gender theory, which is important for context, but I’d like to get to the heart of what motivated my family to take a gender creative approach to parenting. I was an early childhood educator for years and what I observed as the most important elements of raising a happy, confident child were encouragement of self-expression, building autonomy, and emotional intelligence. As someone who truly believes in child-led parenting, I want my child to have the freedom to self-determine. To me, part of this is minimizing gendered input. Consider some of the ways that gender roles manifest in our lives and how that shapes us. The fact that adults talk differently to infant boys vs girls is well-documented (check out Andrew Reiner’s NYT article, Talking to Boys the Way We Talk to Girls). As soon as we are aware of a child’s gender, the language we use with them is deeply coded. We speak to girls with more emotional language that undermines their strength, while we speak to boys in a tough manner that undermines their emotional experiences.
When I think of my own childhood, I experienced a deep sense of shame in deviation from my assigned gender. I remember I felt most free when I could wear shorts and a t-shirt, play in the mud, capture crawdads at the river, and let my hair be wild. However, this was seen as un-ladylike and I kept it secret. I quickly learned that expressing myself in any way that seemed masculine was bad. My brother on the other hand, suffered much more severe punishments than I did. He was more prone to be yelled at and the emotional relationship my father and brother shared was severely underdeveloped, it only existed as bonding through traditionally masculine activities like hunting or expression of anger. I often wonder what we would have become if we had been given the opportunity to safely explore our interests, creativity, and emotions, if my brother had been held more when he was sad or if I had been told I was capable and allowed to take up space. More and more, I think about not only the negative impact that gender roles have on girls’ autonomy, but also about how deeply painful gendered expectations can be for little boys. Nothing breaks my heart more than thinking of a child who feels sadness or fear and believes they must stifle that, or that expression of an emotion will not be met with love but instead shame.
For any child I have a hand in rearing, I want to create an environment where all emotions are accepted and forms of self-expression are encouraged. The decision to parent our child in a gender creative manner is not a social experiment, nor is it is not an attempt to be viewed as progressive, our decision is deeply rooted in love. It is part of a broader commitment to our child to build a relationship based on open communication, self-discovery, and trust. We will simply love our child, and listen to their cues. I don’t think that at 2 years old our toddler will sit us down and make a grand announcement that they are a boy or a girl. Like gender, it’s much more fluid than that. Instead, they may decide to only wear tutus one week, and only pants and tractor t-shirts the next. They may want to wear their hair short when it’s hot in the summer, or braid ribbons through their long hair for school pictures. One thing is certain, they will have questions and as much as we limit gendered input, they will encounter gender roles and expectations in the outside world. Regardless, we will always show up to listen and navigate these questions alongside them, with love, understanding, and a message that whoever they are is ok. I believe that is how children and all humans thrive.
