{"id":6836,"date":"2018-05-11T08:00:36","date_gmt":"2018-05-11T13:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/?p=6836"},"modified":"2018-05-08T09:27:34","modified_gmt":"2018-05-08T14:27:34","slug":"parenting-beyond-the-gender-binary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/2018\/05\/11\/parenting-beyond-the-gender-binary\/","title":{"rendered":"Parenting Beyond the Gender Binary"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photo by kgroovy, Flickr CC<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cBoy or Girl?” — It\u2019s one of the most common questions people ask new parents. But some parents are trying to avoid that question altogether by raising their children in a \u201cgender open\u201d or \u201cgender affirmative\u201d environment. A recent <\/span>article<\/span><\/a> in <\/span>New York Magazine <\/span><\/i>highlights the decisions made by these parents — including some parents who are sociologists. <\/span><\/p>\n

Kyl Myers<\/span><\/a> is one of these parents. For Myers, \u201cthe point was not to have a genderless child.\u201d Instead, Myers wanted her child to come to their own understanding of gender without viewing toys and activities as \u201cboy\u201d and \u201cgirl\u201d things. Myers\u2019 concerns are certainly valid — according to <\/span>Elizabeth Sweet<\/span><\/a>\u2019s research, toys are more gendered today than they were during all of the 20th century. Myers goes on to explain,<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cA part of why we are parenting this way is because intersex people exist, and transgender people exist, and queer people exist, and sex and gender occur on a spectrum, yet our culture loves to think people, all 7 billion of them, can and should be reduced to either\/or.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Andrea — also a sociologist — had a partner that was in the middle of a gender transition at the time, which led them to talk extensively about gender and parenting strategies. Andrea believed her child\u2019s anatomy did not matter for their gender, yet her partner was changing their body to match their gender. Andrea says, <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe know that people often experience gender through their bodies and through the meaning that our society has attached to bodies…In our society, breasts are feminized, so it makes sense for someone like my partner to have their breasts removed. When we say gender is a social construct, I am certainly not arguing that bodies and hormones play no role in people\u2019s gender identification.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

These parents — informed by social science research that shows the importance our society places on a gender binary — are doing their best to break out from this binary to include more opportunities for children to explore their gender identities. As Myers says,<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou have to give people the benefit of the doubt that they are trying to love their children in the way that they know best, and that really looks different for different families. This is how we know to love our child best.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cBoy or Girl?” — It\u2019s one of the most common questions people ask new parents. But some parents are trying to avoid that question altogether by raising their children in a \u201cgender open\u201d or \u201cgender affirmative\u201d environment. A recent article in New York Magazine highlights the decisions made by these parents — including some parents […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2020,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,55,85],"tags":[35,39112,39114,105573,23676,105572,105574,102568,4374,39115,779,176,105576,105571,29450,306],"class_list":["post-6836","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-gender","category-politics","tag-children","tag-culture","tag-gender","tag-gender-affirmative","tag-gender-binary","tag-gender-creative","tag-gender-open","tag-parent","tag-parenting","tag-politics","tag-queer","tag-sexuality","tag-spectrum","tag-theyby","tag-trans","tag-transgender"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6836","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2020"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6836"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6836\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6840,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6836\/revisions\/6840"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}