Raising Children Gender-Neutral
A couple months ago the greatest single event in my life happened: My wife told me she was pregnant. After about 17 months of trying (second greatest event in my life) we had done it. I couldn't have been happier.
During the past two months I immersed myself in an array of books ranging from what my wife is (and will be) going through during the pregnancy, during childbirth and then what to look for in the early months following the birth. At this point, I am telling her things she had no idea about. Yep, she needs me not only for my maleness (anatomy) but for my brain too. Feels good.
Here in the past week I have moved on in my reading to actually raising the child. From what I understood, nobody does this so I wanted to get an idea. I wish I hadn't.
One of the first things I came across was also what I though to be the most outlandish idea (to put it plainly, dumb) I thought possible: Raising children in a gender-neutral environment. I thought it was a one-off type story that some super hippy (perhaps mentally ill) people tried in Los Angles. Wrong. Its big time real...like all over California.
Potential Mental Detriment
Aside from the obvious reason why this movement is not likely to end well I think it is on the verge of denying a child the main the main parental responsibilities of equipping them with the basics (i.e. this is earth, you were born male/female, that is a dog, you have to eat to live, etc.).
Life and childhood in particular can be rough. Childhood and adolescence in a lot of ways is about finding yourself and pondering who you are as a person. While your child looks down and thinks, "what the hell is this?" he is being denied valuable time to ask himself, "WHO the hell am I?". Keep in mind this is just the tip of the iceberg of potential issues that could arise. Take notice I used "He" here. I'll vary that to keep everyone happy.
Strangely enough, my next thought was even more obvious: School and bullying. Whether real or perceived there has already been a running issue with bullying. It is hard to tell if it is due to more bullying or lack of what I like to call emotional readiness. When I say "emotional readiness" I mean the ability of children to deal with bullying in a way that is not completely detrimental.
Life is not Fair
I was bullied on occasion in middle and high school and I know people who had it a lot worse than I did. In the end we came out fine and can barely remember the exact circumstances. I think my generations ability to let it roll of our shoulders is due to the fact that our parents did not push us to believe we were the most special people in the world and we can do anything and everyone will love it. In fact, they gave us the pragmatic version: You are special but the world is not always kind and life is not fair.
As you may have gathered, I am going with the lack of emotional readiness for this rant. Since I've already posed that a parent who raises their daughter gender-neutral is effectively neglecting one of their main duties by not giving her the basic knowledge of her existence it's likely that they will neglect her the hard facts about the world she's going to have to exist in. The parent may tell her that it doesn't matter if she is a boy or a girl but that she is an enlightened person/human. Wrong. It will matter when she shows up to school and hits the boys bathroom. Kids will make fun of her. If you think I'm being mean, you're naive. That is what it is. The world can be cruel. Learning to deal with it is important. Having the basics and the whole truth up-front will significantly increase a kids emotional health from the get-go by not having her expectations too high only to get crushed the first time out. Seems too logical.
Relationships
Lastly, I want to talk about relationships. Once a kid figures out its gender and/or decides what it wants to be, then it has to focus on what it likes in the opposite ahhh, yeah whatever, I've confused myself. You know what I mean though. How does your child cope with that? Considering the sliver of the population who identifies as the opposite of their biological sex how do they find a significant other? Most gay guys I know think a man turning into a woman is weird. They don't want that. So, say you have a biological male who thinks he's a woman but likes men. In totally regular speak, I am talking about a gay guy who dresses like and longs to be a woman. He would have to find another gay man who for some reason wants to be with a man who wants to be a woman. I can run through a bunch of scenarios like this that all have the same low likelihood of success.
We are talking about taking a small percentage of the population and then finding an ever-so-small percentage of that population.
This has been my initial thoughts on a subject that was totally new to me until a few weeks ago. If this trend takes hold, it will be interesting to see the long-term effects. Maybe, I am proved completely wrong. Maybe some of my worries will manifest. I can say one thing for sure, the idea of gender-neutral children will not go over perfectly smooth when it comes to entering the world on a social basis. That's for sure. The part that I can't be sure about is the emotional and psychological side-effects. I can just use my own observations and experience to have an opinion.
Very nice post