Tue May 24, 1:08 pm ET
Parents keep child’s gender under wraps
By Zachary Roth




When many couples have a baby, they send out an email to family and friends that fills them in on the key details: name, gender, birth weight, that sort of thing. (You know the drill: "Both Mom and little Ethan are doing great!")

But the email sent recently by Kathy Witterick and David Stocker of Toronto, Canada to announce the birth of their baby, Storm, was missing one important piece of information. "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? ...)," it said.

That's right. They're not saying whether Storm is a boy or a girl.

There's nothing ambiguous about the baby's genitals. But as Stocker puts it: "If you really want to get to know someone, you don't ask what's between their legs." So only the parents, their two other children (both boys), a close friend, and the two midwives who helped deliver the now 4-month-old baby know its gender. Even the grandparents have been left in the dark.

Stocker and Witterick say the decision gives Storm the freedom to choose who he or she wants to be. "What we noticed is that parents make so many choices for their children. It's obnoxious," adds Stocker, a teacher at an alternative school.

They say that kids receive messages from society that encourage them to fit into existing boxes, including with regard to gender. "We thought that if we delayed sharing that information, in this case hopefully, we might knock off a couple million of those messages by the time that Storm decides Storm would like to share," says Witterick.

"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?!." she wrote in an email.

How did Stocker and Witterick decide to keep Storm's gender under wraps? During Witterick's pregnancy, her son Jazz was having "intense" experiences with his own gender. "I was feeling like I needed some good parenting skills to support him through that," Witterick said.

Stocker came across a book from 1978, titled X: A Fabulous Child's Story by Lois Gould. X is raised as neither a boy or girl, and grows up to be a happy and well-adjusted child.

"It became so compelling it was almost like, How could we not?" Witterick said.

The couple's other two children, Jazz and Kio, haven't escaped their parents' unconventional approach to parenting. Though they're only 5 and 2, they're allowed to pick out their own clothes in the boys and girls sections of stores and decide whether to cut their hair or let it grow.

Both boys are "unschooled," a version of homeschooling, which promotes putting a child's curiosity at the center of his or her education. As Witterick puts it, it's "not something that happens by rote from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. weekdays in a building with a group of same-age people, planned, implemented and assessed by someone else."

Because Jazz and Kio wear pink and have long hair, they're frequently assumed to be girls, according to Stocker. He said he and Witterick don't correct people--they leave it to the kids to do it if they want to.

But Stocker and Witterick's choices haven't always made life easy for their kids. Though Jazz likes dressing as a girl, he doesn't seem to want to be mistaken for one. He recently asked his mother to let the leaders of a nature center know that he's a boy. And he chose not to attend a conventional school because of the questions about his gender. Asked whether that upsets him, Jazz nodded.

As for his mother, she's not giving up the crusade against the tyranny of assigned gender roles. "Everyone keeps asking us, 'When will this end?'" she said. "And we always turn the question back. Yeah, when will this end? When will we live in a world where people can make choices to be whoever they are?"

(Baby Storm: Steve Russell/The Toronto Star)
http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thelookout/20110524/ts_yblog_thelookout/parents-keep-childs-gender-under-wraps

Who else thinks these two are a couple of nuts?

IMO they do sound like a couple of kooks. It's silly of them to treat their baby's gender like a mystery. If he's a boy, he's a boy. If she's a girl, she's a girl. He or she is a baby, not a game of Clue. They're creating an issue where there doesn't need to be, which ironically is what they're trying not to do. Cut that out.

I see what they're attempting here. Barring some less common variations we come into this world either male or female. I can only speak for American culture, but the stereotypes begin at birth. Each has their "role". It wasn't that long ago that the male went to work, the female stayed home to clean the house, cook the meals & raise the kids. Gradually we began to move away from that. But even then the male was the doctor or the policeman, the female the teacher or the nurse. Remember the old riddle about the doctor who couldn't perform surgery on a child because "He's my son." But the doctor was not the father. There was a time when people would say in that case it was impossible to answer. There were specific roles for each based solely on genitalia. We've come a long way with a very long way yet to go. I think what they're doing is certainly unusual but very interesting.

Weird ass people. I get the "gist" of what they're trying to do, but the execution is wrong. This is like putting sun glasses on the baby and saying "his or her eye color doesn't matter." You can raise your child free of conformity without being forcing ambiguity.

AtownPeep wrote:

Weird ass people. I get the "gist" of what they're trying to do, but the execution is wrong. This is like putting sun glasses on the baby and saying "his or her eye color doesn't matter." You can raise your child free of conformity without being forcing ambiguity.

Supernova wrote:

Who else thinks these two are a couple of nuts?

I do I do!!!!!

Whether these fruitcakes know/like it or not, someone's gender IS a fundamental part of their identity. They're using this kid as a psychological/developmental experiment....and in the meantime not letting family know the baby's gender is obnoxious.

This isn't exactly one of the mysteries of the universe, if it has a penis, it's a boy, if it has a vagina, it's a girl, and barring future corrective surgery, it's going to stay that way no matter what its name is, how long its hair is or how they dress it.

Good thing they're unschooling - heard of that method before and was not impressed - because they're setting that kid up for a lifetime of hassles. I'm with Super and Tony - they're nothing but a couple of nuts who care more about their own agendas than their child's. Talk about gender confusion as this child grows. It'll serve them right when they get a really messed up kid. I feel sorry for little Storm!

Yeah, like THIS isn't going to give the kid a permanent identity crisis.

I wonder how they're goign to explain hat's between storm's legs - let the child make a decision to add or remove parts? if Storm is a girl who wants to be a boy will they add boy parts or nice versa if storm is a boy who wants to be a girl? what if Storm wants to be his or her own gender - will the stop the child from doing that? Kids leanr gender differences at a pretty young age - wonder how they'll explain to Storm that he or she is supposed to ignore what is between the legs and be whatever he or she wants.

I remember the absolute joy I felt when I learned my sister-in-law had given birth to a girl. EVERYONE had assumed she was having a boy. I think the betting pool was something like 95% in favour of a boy, with the onyl votes for a girl coming from my sister-in-law's 8 year old girl cousin. I'd have loved a nephew just as much, but my Mom and I were hoping for a girl for the first baby. Of course I'm ready for a nephew now but will love another niece just as much.

Nystyle709 wrote:

HA HA!! An loves the gif

Supernova wrote:

Yeah, like THIS isn't going to give the kid a permanent identity crisis.

I know. They shouldn't treat the child like a hermaphrodite if he/she isn't.

Chris wrote:

I know. They shouldn't treat the child like a hermaphrodite if he/she isn't.

In an effort to not veer off topic, it's really hard for me to not want to crack a joke about don't bother telling a hermaphrodite to go screw themselves, because they really can. . . . So I'll just say that yes, the parents of that baby need to get a grip---there's a fine line between testing the waters of unconventionality and individuality, and creating a situation where your kid will not be able to function in the real world because they were raised too "out there".

They just talked about this on the local news here. Apparently it's generating, to quote the newscaster, 'a firestorm of controversy.'

I'm really not surprised. They've turned their child into a freak show. When I first read that announcement, i thought the reason was because the child had been born with both genitalia and that's why they were waiting but to do this to a child who was born one gender? If this child is a girl wants to play with dolls, will they deny her and force her to play with trucks just because they want her to be gender neutral? If he's boy, will he be forced to play with dolls, just to break the stereotype? If the parents are this wacked out, maybe SS needs to take a closer look. Sounds like the 4 year old is pretty messed up already.

I think it's obvious that kid is a boy. The parents sound like a pair of misguided new-age wackjobs.

TSJFan4Ever wrote:

I'm really not surprised. They've turned their child into a freak show. When I first read that announcement, i thought the reason was because the child had been born with both genitalia and that's why they were waiting but to do this to a child who was born one gender? If this child is a girl wants to play with dolls, will they deny her and force her to play with trucks just because they want her to be gender neutral? If he's boy, will he be forced to play with dolls, just to break the stereotype? If the parents are this wacked out, maybe SS needs to take a closer look. Sounds like the 4 year old is pretty messed up already.

I actually read about something similar to this...the parents didn't hide the gender of their child from the world but they raised their daughter in a 'gender neutral environment'. Her name was Jess, not Jessie, Jessica, just Jess, and she didn't have dolls, she had blocks to play with, her mother figured she would be so excited with all the boys to see the construction machinery working down the road, she didn't care, and overall I don't think the woman was pleased with how she was raised. It caused her a lot of explaining to do when she was in school.

These parents obviously aren't thinking down the road and are living only in the moment. Let a child play with whatever he or she wants - girls playing with trucks and boys with dolls - but don't raise them without a gender. That's taking away something vital. You can't change a child's nature unless you force those changes. If they want to raise this child to not be limited by his or her gender, then expose the baby to all sorts of different things but at least let the child make choices, rather than choosing for the child

I was one of the few who did not think this gender neutrality was particularly weird. Maybe because I knew kids don't really care and my own grampa was in a family foto from 1903 wearing a dress.

While sitting in the Dr. office yesterday, reading Smithsonian Magazine, I came across this article. Maybe try harder to think outside of the cultural box as to what is 'normal' or 'abnormal.'

Little Franklin Delano Roosevelt sits primly on a stool, his white skirt spread smoothly over his lap, his hands clasping a hat trimmed with a marabou feather. Shoulder-length hair and patent leather party shoes complete the ensemble.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1884


We find the look unsettling today, yet social convention of 1884, when FDR was photographed at age 2 1/2, dictated that boys wore dresses until age 6 or 7, also the time of their first haircut. Franklin’s outfit was considered gender-neutral.

But nowadays people just have to know the sex of a baby or young child at first glance, says Jo B. Paoletti, a historian at the University of Maryland and author of Pink and Blue: Telling the Girls From the Boys in America, to be published later this year. Thus we see, for example, a pink headband encircling the bald head of an infant girl.

Why have young children’s clothing styles changed so dramatically? How did we end up with two “teams”—boys in blue and girls in pink?

“It’s really a story of what happened to neutral clothing,” says Paoletti, who has explored the meaning of children’s clothing for 30 years. For centuries, she says, children wore dainty white dresses up to age 6. “What was once a matter of practicality—you dress your baby in white dresses and diapers; white cotton can be bleached—became a matter of ‘Oh my God, if I dress my baby in the wrong thing, they’ll grow up perverted,’ ” Paoletti says.

The march toward gender-specific clothes was neither linear nor rapid. Pink and blue arrived, along with other pastels, as colors for babies in the mid-19th century, yet the two colors were not promoted as gender signifiers until just before World War I—and even then, it took time for popular culture to sort things out.

For example, a June 1918 article from the trade publication Earnshaw's Infants' Department said, “The generally accepted rule is pink for the boys, and blue for the girls. The reason is that pink, being a more decided and stronger color, is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl.” Other sources said blue was flattering for blonds, pink for brunettes; or blue was for blue-eyed babies, pink for brown-eyed babies, according to Paoletti.

In 1927, Time magazine printed a chart showing sex-appropriate colors for girls and boys according to leading U.S. stores. In Boston, Filene’s told parents to dress boys in pink. So did Best & Co. in New York City, Halle’s in Cleveland and Marshall Field in Chicago.

Today’s color dictate wasn’t established until the 1940s, as a result of Americans’ preferences as interpreted by manufacturers and retailers. “It could have gone the other way,” Paoletti says.

So the baby boomers were raised in gender-specific clothing. Boys dressed like their fathers, girls like their mothers. Girls had to wear dresses to school, though unadorned styles and tomboy play clothes were acceptable.


Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/When-Did-Girls-Start-Wearing-Pink.html#ixzz1ODQwfB5o

Yeah but this isn't a matter of boys wearing dresses, it's a matter of the family is keeping the most basic thing about their baby a secret from the whole world and deciding he can pick for himself if he wants to be a boy or a girl before they ever refer to him as either. I imagine even FDR's grandparents and aunts and uncles knew it was a boy before he hit puberty.

On GMA, they showed pictures, and I, Robin, and George all agree, Storm looks like a boy.

If gender is all in one's mind, and the body is irrelevant, then why keep it a secret? They could just do as Brad & Angelina are doing. Their 5 year old daughter Shiloh wants to dress as a boy, and have her hair short. So they let her. They don't say she isn't a girl.

I am not certain it will be a lifelong thing with Shiloh. It is too soon to tell. She has 2 older brothers. It could be an identification thing.