5 Myths About Gender Neutral Parenting

January 8, 2013 by Paige Lucas-Stannard

http://everydayfeminism.com/2013/01/gender-neutral-parenting-myths/?utm_content=buffer92f66&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

The day I found out the baby I was carrying was a girl, I bought a frilly, pink dress. It had taken me a long time to get pregnant and I wanted a girl. Yes, I wanted a "healthy baby" but I was honest enough with myself to say I preferred a girl.

In retrospect, it seems incongruent with my feminist views that I did something so "pigeonholing" to my 20 week old fetus. Shouldn't I have rushed out to buy The Feminine Mystique to read her in-utero?

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Parenting outside the mainstream boy/girl dichotomy can seem daunting to say the least. Am I not allowed to think that dress is cute? Is it ok if I put my baby boy in that jumper with the soccer ball on the butt? What do I do when the photographer calls my daughter "princess" for the millionth time?

The desire to not pigeonhole a child into a specific gender based solely on their biological sex is called Gender Neutral Parenting (GNP) and it isn't easy to know what Gender Neutral Parenting is and is not.

My belief in gender-neutral parenting died the day I gave my daughter a fire truck for one of her early birthdays (3? 4? 5? Around then.) She gave me a look that said "what were you thinking?!?"

I guess maybe it's best to just let them find what they like, like colours, just make sure the choice is there and that might let you know how to proceed? I've a 14 month old nephew and that the extent of my experience...

I don't like gender neutral parenting... I feel like little girls and little boys should be able to decide themselves what to play with, etc... Without any interference like with gender neutral parenting...

So we are kinda "lucky" in this regard as we have two girls and a boy who are the same exact age, well just a few minutes apart really. So we just buy a pool of toys and let them have at it.

The girls and boy share toys. I've found my son playing with a few of his sisters' toys but he loves to play with boy toys. But just as he enjoys playing with trucks and basketball sets and thomas trains, he plays with his sisters and their klip klop princess stable. Likewise the girls enjoy playing with the trains and trucks in addition to the princess stable and dolls. My son doesn't play with dolls. However I'm not going to discourage him from finding his own identity.