Overly coy?

Sasha and Beck choose some beads for him to wear 
From Cambridge News

I stumbled across this article from Cambridge the other day - about a couple in the UK who concealed the gender of their child for some years after his birth. The boy, Sasha, is now 5 and attending school. The "experiment" is about to get a whole lot more complicated.

Why do it? The mother, Beck Laxton, said that her motivation was:

“Because I wanted to avoid all that stereotyping,” she shrugs. “Stereotypes seem fundamentally stupid. Why would you want to slot people into boxes? It’s like horoscopes: what could be stupider than thinking there are 12 types of personality that depend on when you were born? It’s so idiotic.” 

But for Beck, slotting a child into a ‘male’ or ‘female’ box isn’t just idiotic, it’s potentially damaging. “It affects what they wear and what they can play with, and that shapes the kind of person that they become.” And if that’s skewing their potential, she believes, then it is wrong. 

“That’s when I start to get cross about it: it’s not just a harmless bit of silliness, like horoscopes, it’s actually harmful.”

I'm willing to concede at the outset that we should, generally, avoid stereotyping - slotting people into boxes. Stereotyping practically denies that a person is "fearfully and wonderfully made" by God (Ps 139:14) - a unique individual. A stereotype diminishes a person's humanity. It diminishes the person Jesus died to save.

There are still some big questions about Ms Laxton's actions and motives. Can't you avoid stereotyping, and still identify with your gender? What is the cost of Ms Laxton's decision? Who bears that cost? Is that cost worth paying to make a point?

To her, the cost of her decision is nothing - her decision frees Sasha to become whatever sort of person he would like to be.

But I think that her reasoning falls into two significant errors. Firstly, she has swallowed the idea that ones biological gender is irrelevant; that it forms no significant part of ones identity. This is a position that is impossible to maintain biblically. The Bible speaks clearly about mankind being made "male and female" (Gen 1:27). It emphasises further the different purposes for which man and woman were created (eg 2:15,18), the different roles they were to play in God's perfect creation, and consequently the different effects on each of the decision to rebel against God (eg 3:16, 17-19). This theme is carried throughout Scripture - that men and women are different in fundamental ways, and that biological gender is an important factor in ones identity.

Even without the biblical witness, this conclusion is inescapable.  In just about every society on earth, and in every system of thought, the distinction between men and women has been recognised and respected. The detail differs between cultures and times, but the fact of the distinction does not. The distinction is real, unlike the imagined differences in horoscopes!

So in refusing to acknowledge her son's maleness and masculinity, she is denying him, from the earliest age, a significant part of his own identity. Who can say how that will affect him as he grows?

Secondly, she seems to believe that one can make a neutral decision about child rearing, one that leaves the child free to become whatever he or she wants. But why would this be so? Why would a decision to dress a little boy in boy's clothes affect (skew?) the man he grows to be, while a decision to dress him in "girl's clothes" leaves him unaffected? Why would playing with "gender-neutral toys, as well as plenty of dolls" have no effect on his emerging personality, where playing with cars or guns or robots or barbie dolls might limit his full potential?

The truth is that this is nonsense. Every decision concerning the raising of a child communicates some value judgement to that child. Every decision draws lines: this conduct is acceptable, that is not. More fundamentally, the potential of a child is not something that will grow and flower beautifully if left to its own devices; rather, a child must be carefully tended, nurtured and trained so that he or she can blossom into a mature man or woman. 

As the proverb goes: "Start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old they will not turn from it." (Pr 22:6) This is not an optional instruction, along the lines of "if you want to be sure how your kids will turn out, then start early".  Rather, it is a truism: "the way that a person is trained as a child is the way that person will turn out as an adult."

The final, alarming thought that struck me about this article is Ms Laxton's attitude toward parenting:

But she also admits to an ulterior motive: to make mums who choose overtly ‘girly’ garb for their daughters think about what they’re doing. 

“These women dress them up like dolls, but they’re not dressed like that, so why are they doing it to their children? ... 

So is she hoping that dressing Sasha in pink will change anything? “Yes. If it just made one person think: ‘No, I won’t put that frilly dress on her because it’s a bit silly’ or: ‘Yeah, if he really likes that doll, then that’s OK,’ then that would be really brilliant. 

“All I want to do is make people think a bit.”

Did I read that right? Is she seriously using her son as a means to change the behaviour of other parents with their children?

As a Christian dad, my whole attitude toward my children must be markedly different.  They are individually created by God, loved by Him, saved by Jesus.  They are beings who will live eternally with Jesus (or separated from Him, if they choose wrongly). I get to love and nurture and protect them to the best of my ability, and have the joy and burden to train them up for maturity and independence. I must not treat them as tools to be used for my own ends, but help them to see their true identity - as sons and daughters of God.