Swedish Parents Keep 2-year-old's Gender Secret

[Nat]

I think, especially when I was under the age of 5, my mom was invested in giving me a childhood experience more like that of boys than of girls. She did let me wear dresses, but she put me in a lot of boyish seventies clothes and didn't readily consent to my yearnings for barbies. (In fact, I didn't receive my first doll until I was 3, and that was a gift from a great grandmother). She decorated my room with peter rabbit stuff and tried to veer me toward bedtime stories that had nothing to do with good little princesses. When she read studies about the differences between the ways boys and girls are treated, she would often resolve to treat me the way boys were more typically treated. (Stuff like carrying me facing outward rather than in after reading that boys are more likely to be carried this way compared to girls). What I find so interesting about this attempt at parenting (and I do think that's what it is - an attempt - and I think all good parenting does involve some level of experimentation) is that rather than force a girl child into boy roles (like certain mothers of kids around my age were wont to do, they are avoiding forcing any roles onto the kid. I would guess it is a largely impossible task, no matter how much they try.

After Toughy's post mentioning she'd read this before somewhere, I went back and looked at this article. The date on it is over a year old. I searched for an update, and there is no update. Pop was 2 and a half when this was written, so Pop is a bit over 3 and a half now. I wish they would update.

I don't think what the parents are doing can be that harmful to the kid compared with some of the most screwed up stuff that is inflicted on kids in this world. My guess is that the kid will gravitate toward a gender on hir own.