It also feels wrong to ask Storm’s older brothers to keep such a sophisticated secret. His parents have got to be hypervigilant since no one but them can change Storm’s diaper. That means no help from grandparents, no relief courtesy of babysitters. While it’s certainly an intriguing undertaking, the amount of effort that must go into keeping Storm’s gender identity under wraps - the constant questions from strangers, the endless explanations - makes me want to curl up and take a nap. “What we noticed is that parents make so many choices for their children. Yet Stocker and Witterick take issue with what they see as parents promoting gender stereotypes.
To try to undo this evolution through your child is very selfish and very inconsiderate to the child,” said Wayne Leung. “The world around us has been set by thousands of years of social evolution. These parents are turning their children into a bizarre lab experiment,” wrote Heather Reil in an email. Some have worried about Storm being bullied or teased, and friends fretted the couple was using their baby to fulfill their own ideological longings. ( More on : Rutgers Okays ‘Gender-Neutral’ Dorm Rooms to Help Gays Feel Safer)Īlthough they’re confident that they’re giving their child the gift of freedom from social norms, others are not as certain. The couple began by sending out an email after Storm’s birth: “We’ve decided not to share Storm’s sex for now - a tribute to freedom and choice in place of limitation, a stand up to what the world could become in Storm’s lifetime (a more progressive place? …).” (Not surprisingly, the two midwives who delivered Storm on New Year’s Day are in the know as well.)Ī lengthy feature last week in the Toronto Star profiled the family and their quest to raise their baby unfettered by the rules of pinks and blues. The only people who know are one family friend and Storm’s older brothers, Jazz, 5, and Kio, 2. Yet Kathy Witterick and her husband, David Stocker, have kept their baby Storm’s gender a secret. A 2007 Gallup poll found that 66% of 18-to-34-year-olds said they would choose to learn their baby’s sex before seeing their newborn’s birthday suit for the first time. Gender is so central to parents’ concept of their unborn children that most moms- and dads-to-be can’t even wait until delivery day to learn what they’re having. Indeed, “Do you know what you’re having?” is probably the question lobbed most frequently at pregnant women, right up there with, “When are you due?” So news that a Canadian couple is raising their third child “genderless” in what amounts to a grand social experiment has set parental tongues a-wagging. Follow pregnancy were a musical composition, finding out whether you’re having a boy or a girl would be the coda.
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