Is child-rearing in a gender neutral way the future?

[simeongrimes]

They are idiots. Most teens will use their upbringing as a weapon in their battles with their parents. This child will have enough ammunition to demolish them.

Many of us parents think we are doing a fine job until the child becomes a teen. That's when you earn your medals and it's tough going.

[Tin Foil Hat]

In all honesty, I don't think it will make much difference.

He will probably turn out more well balanced than most of us.

I'd love to know what you are basing this on. Kids can be cruel. I wouldn't surprise me if this poor kid is considered a freak among his classmates. Getting bullied would not be good for his emotional development.

[damoireland]

Any time this subject comes up, this is the first thing that always comes to my mind.




This line of thinking is just asking for your kid to be bullied as he grows up.

Yes but nemesis is SURE he will be more balanced than the rest of us.She is happy to see experimentation with childrens lives and mental wellbeing,if it favours her agenda.

[damoireland]

I'd love to know what you are basing this on. Kids can be cruel. I wouldn't surprise me if this poor kid is considered a freak among his classmates. Getting bullied would not be good for his emotional development.

She is a woman.That means she knows exactly what it is like to grow up as a boy.

[Nemesiscorporation]

Any time this subject comes up, this is the first thing that always comes to my mind.




This line of thinking is just asking for your kid to be bullied as he grows up.

If that guy had turned up on a farm, I am fairly sure he would have ended up becoming a bullock

That guy is most stereotypes of gays in one picture

Why do I have a niggling feeling he is straight

[blokesbloke]

Well I am mistrustful of how this has been reported, knowing the media as I do, but IF it's true, why is the child banned from wearing combat trousers? I thought the whole point of the exercise was to allow the child to wear precisely what they wanted without imposing anything on them. I suppose they might say it's because they're associated with the military, not because they're seen as boys clothing, but then that just means they're imposing their pacifist value system on their child in the same way other parents might have imposed a gender-system on the child.

They're going to struggle when the child is a teenager and wishes to rebel - he'll probably want to join the army cadets and collect weaponry magazines or something.

I also wonder if they truly are "neutral". I don't know if I believe the child is "encouraged" to wear flowery tops because I've never heard that reported before and they always claimed they allowed him to wear whatever clothes he chose. Still, it is very, very difficult to be truly "neutral" when offering a child something. If you take the child into a clothes shop and tell them to pick anything they like from any section, then let's face it - they have an agenda here and if this child, who we now know to be male, had chosen only boys clothing, they would have been disappointed. They say they wouldn't because they are neutral, but the whole point of this is to make some kind of point about gender conditioning, and I think they really want him to play with dolls and want to wear dresses as much as he wants to wear trousers and play with lego, because it confirms their beliefs about children being essentially gender-neutral.

When children picks clothing, they instinctively look to their parents for guidance and I cannot believe they managed to keep the slightest flicker of a smile off their face when he chose a dress or the slightest little frown if he seemed only interested in the boys section. He'll have picked up signals they didn't even realise they were giving out and were unable to control.

The truth of the matter is that we don't know how this is going to turn out yet. He might grow up into a well-adjusted, macho heterosexual male, or a well-adjusted macho gay male, or a well-adjusted and very camp straight male, or a very happy transsexual, or he might turn out to be a ************************************-up druggie - and even then we don't know how he'd have grown up if he'd been brought up in a more conventional manner - he might have turned out just the same.

My parents would not have allowed me to wear a dress and they didn't buy me dollies, I still turned out gay. This child wore dresses and played with dolls and he might turn out straight. We'll never know - we can't rewind his life, do it again and see what happens.

[Roll_On]

Yes of course he will.And experimenting with childrens lifes by narcissistic gay rights activists is ok too isnt it?

this is not a gay rights issue.

[pragmaticapproach]

errr...ok.

Well the way I see it is children should not be forced into gender roles e.g. playing with dolls or action men etc. However equally children should not be forced away from those aspects of gender, e.g. "banned from sporting combat trousers"

I think the parents are over reacting to what they perceive as an overly gender-centric society. While it is true that our society is too focused on gender, the solution to that is certainly not to stick potato

it seems to me that they are not trying to raise him gender neutral at all, they are merely enforcing stereotypes of the opposite gender on him, e.g. "is also encouraged to wear flowery tops at weekends"

I would say this is an attention seeking ploy on behalf of the parents. It must be very confusing for the wee lad, perhaps give social services a ring.

I think one possible solution would be the end of all state subsidies to sociology departments of universities and letting the students who wish to study such pseudo scholarship pay the full fees.

"overly gender-centric society"? what BS, you're applying constructivism to were it doesnt exist. Gender roles are complimentary and this natural order is primarily an emergent phenomena not a conditioned one. Sociologists constantly confuse emergent order with ideology. I think its a deliberate perversion of societal norms if you ask me.

[damoireland]

If that guy had turned up on a farm, I am fairly sure he would have ended up becoming a bullock

That guy is most stereotypes of gays in one picture

Why do I have a niggling feeling he is straight

You are showing that same deep level of insight that you did when you told us that this boy would turn out more well balanced than us.
Are you just sticking to your agenda or are you really THIS dumb?

[Nemesiscorporation]

this is not a gay rights issue.

You could not get that into damoireland's head with a mallet. Reason will not work there. He has some sort of bug bear about gays, for some reason. He appears kind of obsessed about the subject.