Should we raise our kids to be genderless?

A few weeks ago the Internet was buzzing with the story about a Canadian couple who was raising their three sons without telling them what gender they were.

Kathy Witterick, 38, and her husband, David Stocker, 39, said they wanted to eliminate any chance for gender stereotypes to creep into their children’s development. “It is inappropriate to impose gender identity on a child,” she stated in a report by Zachary Roth on The Lookout, a Yahoo News Blog. “If you really want to get to know someone,” her husband echoed, “You don’t ask what’s between their legs.”

The couple refused to reveal the sex of their newest son, Storm, not even to their nearest relatives, until he was born, and then they proceeded not to tell the boy anything about his gender identity nor surround him with anything that suggested either sex. They claim they are all about letting their kids decide what they are. They call parents who make choices for their children “obnoxious,” chastising them for not challenging how they’re expected to look and act based on their sex.

Their two older sons, Jazz and Kio, according to their parents, already “decide” when to cut their hair and what clothes to wear. Five-year-old Jazz recently picked out a pink dress; he wears his hair long and in three braids. Two-year-old Kio keeps his curly blond hair just below his chin. If Jazz want to stay home from school, that is all right with the mother too.

Witterick and Stocker are under the delusion that they are giving their children the freedom to choose, but in fact, the children are no doubt picking up signals from the parents. A child of five does not make choices. He looks to his parents for cues and then choose what he thinks will please them.

It's all about what behavior the parents are reinforcing. If the children braid their hair and wear dresses and stay home from school, and they pick up signals of approval from the parents for doing these things, the parents are thus reinforcing that behavior. This often happens: parents reinforce behavior even though they don't consciously intend to. If the two boys get a smile of approval every time they wear dresses, they will continue to wear dresses. The parents may think they are smiling because they enjoy the boy's freedom of choice, but this is not what their boys pick up.

Even the choice not to tell the boys their gender is a decision these parents are making for their children. For them to pretend they are not making decisions amounts to self-deception and vanity. They want to out-PC everybody else to show just how progressive they are—at the expense of their sons.

As other outraged professionals have pointed out, children need to have a strong sense of identity, including gender identity, to go through life. Instead, these children are being used as pawns in their parents’ crusade against gender stereotypes. As a result they will likely grow up confused about their gender and with a chip on their shoulders due to unpleasant experiences they have been forced into enduring by their parents.

Sometimes, unfortunately, politics overruns common sense.