[Cherie]

Originally Posted by Benjamin

I don't see the big issue here. Everybody has different ways of parenting, and that is their choice; whether people believe it to be incorrect or not their opinion really doesn't mean too much, especially considering how often the "best" ways to raise your children change all the time (half the time contradicting the "best" ways in time gone by).

.

The parents are doing what they consider to be in the best interests of the child, end of the day he is 1, by the time he is 3 he may have a very different view of being dressed in fairy wings and dresses or he may not, there is a long road ahead for them either way with lots of good and bad decisions to be made. No parent gets it absolutely right all the time and if they tell you they do don't believe them!

[T*]

Originally Posted by Benjamin

I don't see the big issue here. Everybody has different ways of parenting, and that is their choice; whether people believe it to be incorrect or not their opinion really doesn't mean too much, especially considering how often the "best" ways to raise your children change all the time (half the time contradicting the "best" ways in time gone by).

Totally agree with Ben here, it's not a big issue at all.

[Marc]

Odd

[Niall]

I kind of really like this idea. The gender binary creates so many awful issues within society so to see people trying to tackle it within their own families is kind of wonderful to me. Not to mention that it gives the child as much room as possible to express themselves; there's no pressure on them to be the ideal boy or girl. It's a great way of doing things I think.

[Kyle]

Well I was brought up with Action men, hornby train sets and football tops. I wonder when I will start raping women and beating up pensioners.

[lostalex]

Originally Posted by Kyle

Well I was brought up with Action men, hornby train sets and football tops. I wonder when I will start raping women and beating up pensioners.

What does anything you said have to do with this topic?

That's like saying "well i smoke and don't have cancer, so why are so many people saying that smoking causes cancer?"

Forcing gender roles, especially hyp[er-masculine roles on children is damaging, and i would argue the school shootings in the US have a lot to do with reinforcing hyp[er masculine gender roles on males, because thane they can't live up to them, they feel the need to make those kind of hyper masculine actions to prove how powerful and dominant they are. They are frustrated , they are told that in order to be a "real man" they have to be dominant and aggressive. Most of them are young men who feel emasculated by society, told that they aren't real men because they aren't dominant enough. They only feel the need to be masculine to begin with because society tells them that being masculine means being aggressive and violent and dominant.

I don't think there's anything wrong with telling boys that you don't have to be hyper masculine to be a REAL MAN>

just like there's nothing wrong with telling girls that it's okay to be confident and assertive to be a REAL WOMAN>

[Kyle]

Originally Posted by lostalex

What does anything you said have to do with this topic?

That's like saying "well i smoke and don't have cancer, so why are so many people saying that smoking causes cancer?"

No it isn't. There's scientific evidence to correlate smoking with lung cancer. If you have scientific evidence that says that says rape and violence in society is the result of your interpretation of "traditional parenting" then put it forth.

[lostalex]

Originally Posted by Kyle

No it isn't. There's scientific evidence to correlate smoking with lung cancer. If you have scientific evidence that says that says rape and violence in society is the result of your interpretation of "traditional parenting" then put it forth.

well we have evidence that doing things the same way for the past 100 years causes all of the problems we have in society today. right?

society today is based on what parents have "traditionally" been doing... right?

[lostalex]

I think it's interesting that everyone in this thread is assuming that this kid will end up being bullied, and never for one second thinks that this kid might BE a bully to other kids....

Isn't that interesting?

What does that mean that no one here is worried about this kid becoming a bully, they just assume he will be a victim. and why aren't you more worried about the Bullies, and stopping them, instead of worrying about who will be the victim of bullying?

[Kazanne]

He surely will be confused,also teased as he gets older,while it may be an 'interesting' experiment we are not the one being used for it,why cant kids just be boys and girls without interference,if they are parented in a good and fair way,they will hopefully grow up to be decent human beings,let them play with whatever toys they want to,but dressing him as a girl is too far imo.

[Kyle]

It's almost as if these parents seem to think that the only reason boys don't play with girls toys and wear girls clothes is because of a fear of being mocked. I'm sure there are a small minority of boys who would get pleasure out of playing with Barbie or my little pony and wearing a pink tutu but I don't think the vast majority would be interested and that's why I don't think everybody should be subjected to it so early.

[AnnieK]

The only thing that confuses me is that they are actively creating a divide between the sexes. If in the morning he is a boy and plays with boys toys and wears boys clothes and then in the afternoon he is dressed as a girl and plays with girls toys they are highlighting the difference between the sexes. Surely to promote gender neutral behaviour he should be dressed in gender neutral clothes with access to both boys and girls clothes at all times?

[lostalex]

Originally Posted by AnnieK

The only thing that confuses me is that they are actively creating a divide between the sexes. If in the morning he is a boy and plays with boys toys and wears boys clothes and then in the afternoon he is dressed as a girl and plays with girls toys they are highlighting the difference between the sexes. Surely to promote gender neutral behaviour he should be dressed in gender neutral clothes with access to both boys and girls clothes at all times?

I agree, I noticed that too. The idea that there are certain times to be a "boy" and certain time to be a "girl"... i didn't understand that either. It's totally contradictory to the idea of gender neutrality that they claim to be embracing.

[Niamh.]

Originally Posted by AnnieK

The only thing that confuses me is that they are actively creating a divide between the sexes. If in the morning he is a boy and plays with boys toys and wears boys clothes and then in the afternoon he is dressed as a girl and plays with girls toys they are highlighting the difference between the sexes. Surely to promote gender neutral behaviour he should be dressed in gender neutral clothes with access to both boys and girls clothes at all times?

Yeah, I agree with that

[Nedusa]

I can kinda see the point Alex is making...he is saying aggressive gender sterotyping of youngsters into adopting the roles society has established on them can be damaging to them as for the male stereotype this would involve encouragement of negative qualities such as aggression and machoness.

But nature will assert these roles to these children anyway by virtue of the amounts of testosterone and oestrogen they have. We as parents have to be able to allow their gender development within acceptable limits, allow them to dress as their gender dictates but I agree we should not try and encourage the worst excesses of gender behaviour in them.

As parents we want the very best for our children male or female and as long as we teach them properly and give them plenty of love they should be well adjusted enough to embrace their gender but not develop the more extreme traits like misogyny and misandry eg....

[Jessica.]

When I have children I will let them pick their own clothes, if I have a son and he wants to wear a tutu with bells on it and use a wand pretending to be a fairy then it's not my business to stop him because it's not harmful. I think these people have the idea right but they are doing it in the wrong way, especially by making it something public.

I think it's not fair on children to make them feel like they can't express themselves how they want or even in situations that wouldn't be a big deal. For example, if my nephew came to stay in my house and got wet in the rain, he would prefer to wear his wet t-shirt than borrow one of his sisters for a short time, just because he would actually be embarrassed to wear something for "girls".

[Shaun]

Too much consideration and worry placed on what will happen to him at school, or what people will say about him. If adults bitching about what a child is wearing is really that bothersome to you you need to just remind yourself you're not an adult bitching about what a child is wearing. Whatever kids say about him can be dealt with by the school's disciplinary system.

[lostalex]

I don't remember caring at all what i was wearing when i was a kid. i really didn't care. i honestly don't remember how or why i picked what clothes i put on each day when i was a little kid. I literally just grabbed things out of my drawers and put them on. It wasn't until puberty that i cared about what i wore.

[Niamh.]

Originally Posted by lostalex

I don't remember caring at all what i was wearing when i was a kid. i really didn't care. i honestly don't remember how or why i picked what clothes i put on each day when i was a little kid. I literally just grabbed things out of my drawers and put them on. It wasn't until puberty that i cared about what i wore.

Depends on the child I guess, my son started being funny about what he was wearing when he was 4 years old, it was weird things as well like he didn't like a certain t shirt because it had stripes on it and stuff like that

[daniel-lewis-1985]

Why can she not just teach the boy moral values? This will probably do more harm than good.

Kids are cruel and seeing as this child sees this as 100% normal he's bound to speak about it in school ending in bullying from other children.

I suspect this kid will have a lot of mental health issues in his later years.

[Jack_]

Gender neutral parenting is a perfectly acceptable and progressive idea, but it does seem like they're not exactly implementing it right as others have pointed out.

Gender codes and stereotypes are very damaging to society, and the quicker we try to eradicate them, the more social problems we will solve. I think someone in this thread said something like 'I don't think the majority of boys would be interested in playing with Barbie' or words to that effect - and well...why is that? Because boys are brought up to wear boys clothes, have 'play fights', have toys that are men and are figures of authority, power and strength, the list goes on. They don't just pop out of the vag and immediately start craving some Action Men dolls or to watch Robot Wars, these behaviours and beliefs are taught, learned. They aren't biological or ascribed, they are socialised attitudes given by society, parents, schools, the media etc. The way you conquer that is by reversing the attitudes of those institutions and making gender concepts neutral, equal and open.

I think everyone in this thread should watch the videos in this thread that I posted a couple of weeks ago:

http://www.thisisbigbrother.com/foru....php?p=6692593

The trailers for those films highlight the damaging nature of both male and female gender stereotypes, and continuing to socialise children to adhere to these ridiculous, man-made concepts is damaging and restrictive to the freedom of a child to determine the kind of person they want to be, not someone that is identified by their gender. The only difference people really have are biological ones - i.e. what you've got downstairs, every child is born as a blank slate, and it is the messages and stereotypes that you instil in them that makes them either a 'man' or a 'woman' - that is, a person that adheres to the roles that society has told them they must act out since they have either a cock or a ***t.

As for the idea of the child being bullied - well yes that is almost certainly a problem, but I've always hated this idea that we should repress children's behaviour in fear of them being bullied. What exactly does that solve? Why are people running scared of bullies instead of actually addressing the real problem which is changing the bullies themselves? People are bullied when they are different, part of a minority - so the more you increase something, the more normal it becomes, and the less reason people have to single you out for it. The more children integrate with people of different skin colours, nationalities and sexualities, the more accepting and understanding they become of each other, this is the same for anything. The more people that take the bull by the horns and trial this kind of thing, the less it becomes something out of the ordinary, and the less children can be bullied for it.

[Niall]

Originally Posted by Kyle

It's almost as if these parents seem to think that the only reason boys don't play with girls toys and wear girls clothes is because of a fear of being mocked. I'm sure there are a small minority of boys who would get pleasure out of playing with Barbie or my little pony and wearing a pink tutu but I don't think the vast majority would be interested and that's why I don't think everybody should be subjected to it so early.

I don't think it's that the vast majority wouldn't be interested, but rather they're socialised to be disinterested in female encoded objects from a young age. Straight after birth you're already colour coded into a gender (blue or pink) and it just progresses from there. Adverts targeted at young boys often play up the gender angle to exploit them as a market, and in doing so it encourages preference on those stereotypically 'male' things over the female ones.

And the bizarrely sexist/patriarchal nature of female-oriented toys often renders them boring too. If female toys were given the same focus on making the product dynamic and exciting instead of the rather stale doll and house formula then I'm sure many boys would be much more interested in picking them up too.

It's not a case of being subjected to anything too early because.. well that's already rampant in society today.

[smudgie]

Heaven knows why the parents are making an issue out of it.
We had a "dressing up box" when or kids were little,if our son wanted to walk up and down in high heels we never thought any more of it than our daughter dressing up as a cowboy.
Son was bought a little dinner service, daughter was bought train sets etc
Kids veer towards what they want to play with, just give them plenty of options.
Nothing new or forward thinking in these parents at all. Just letting the child do what they want is the best way.

[Josy]

Idiotic.

Trying to prove gender is in no way an issue by turning it into an issue.

And the mother saying she hopes he isn't bullied just shows that she knows he will and it will be because of them.

Just let the kid make his own decisions ffs.

[Tom4784]

The idea of turning your own child into some sort of social experiment is repugnant.

I think the idea of Gender Neutral parenting is pretty pointless, If the boy shows signs of wanting to play with dolls and such then support him but don't force it on him. I just think this parenting style is going to cause more problems down the line then it's going to solve.

The thought that raising a boy traditionally creates aggression is moronic, confusion causes aggression, hardship causes aggression and resentment creates aggression among other things. The boy's going to be confused as hell when he grows up and he'll possibly even resent his parents for raising him in that way. It's an idealistic and ultimately flawed way of raising a child.