Raising Children as Gender-Neutral

Hi all!

This topic was widespread throughout the media when it first came to light. When I first heard about it a few months ago, I wasn’t entirely sure how I felt about it.
Here is one article about a couple raising their child as gender neutral. A married couple who live in Somerset, England named Hobbit Humphrey and Jake England-Johns have decided to raise their child Anoush with they/them pronouns. (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/09/17/couple-reveal-raising-child-gender-neutral-havent-even-told/)
“Close family members have not been told the child’s sex and grandmother, Camille, only found out when she changed a nappy. ‘Eventually, we decided that we wouldn’t tell people whether they were a boy or a girl … in order to create this little bubble for our baby to be who they are,’ Ms Humphrey said.”

As a transgender man, my personal experience would have perhaps been easier if I had been raised as gender-neutral. I suspect that many other transgender and nonbinary people feel the same way. However, I personally do not think that raising children as gender-neutral (that is, using they/them pronouns and never calling them either a boy or a girl) is the right way to raise children.

As a person who has gone through a gender-questioning period of my life, I can say with confidence that I would not wish it on my worst enemy. It is not a fun experience to have to deal with, and often times it leads to mental health issues such as anxiety and depression. Gender dysphoria (which according to the Human Rights Campaign is defined as “Clinically significant distress caused when a person’s assigned birth gender is not the same as the one with which they identify.”) can be a very difficult thing to have to experience, and often times you can feel like you are alone before you begin to understand what is going on. There were many years where I just tried to ignore my feelings of gender dysphoria, mainly because I thought that it was just how teenagers were.

According to The Williams Institute, 1.4 million adults identify as transgender, which is about 0.6% of the United States population (https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/research/how-many-adults-identify-as-transgender-in-the-united-states/). The truth of the matter is that most people are cisgender, which means they identify as the gender they were born as. This does not mean that transgender people and nonbinary people are insignificant and shouldn’t be cared about, we are important, but just a small percentage. When raising children who are most likely going to be cisgender as gender-neutral, it forces them to have to go through a gender identity crisis when they previously may have not needed to. If I could choose to not be transgender, I would much rather have it that way if only to avoid the anxiety and confusion of it all, especially when I was younger. Raising everyone as gender-neutral forces everyone to have to go through the same thing I did, which is unhelpful and somewhat disheartening.

I do believe that the people who decide this are in charge of their own lives however, and I also believe that they have the best intentions at heart. What I wholeheartedly believe in, is the destruction of gender roles and stereotypes.
If your child is a boy but wants to wear a dress and play with dolls, then let him. If your daughter wishes to play football and wear cargo shorts and a suit, then let her (I am using complete reverses of stereotypes here for a reason). If either of those children later decide that they are transgender or nonbinary, then support them unconditionally, however that may not be the case and forcing that case onto them can be detrimental to their mental health. You can support your children and still allow them to make decisions about their gender expression (and if/when it comes to it, their gender identity) without forcing them to make those decisions when they may not be ready to.

If the whole world decided to raise everyone as gender-neutral, then this idea may work well. However there are an unfortunately high number of people who are uneducated and negatively bias against LGBT people, especially nonbinary people. Having young children who are not within a gender binary around these people could be bad for them and for their parents.
Until we reach a point where everyone is open to every aspect of the LGBTQ+ community, the best that we can do is allow children to be themselves and make their own decisions if it comes to that, and to always remember to support them no matter what.

Until next time, stay strong, stay beautiful, stay you.