that we have to force infants, toddlers and children into strict sex roles? Apparently so. If you look around, you will see that we raise our children in an almost completely gendered world today. Dress your daughter in blue (not pink)overalls or give her a child's tool set rather than an Easy-Bake Oven or dress your son in a pink (not blue) shirt or give him a doll to play with and I guarantee you will provoke a reaction. Something must be seriously fragile about heterosexuality to need all this constant propping up and reinforcement!

Here's a radical idea: let's let children be children and help them discover who they are before the whole world tells them who they should be. Maybe that will help reduce the incidence of anorexia in pre-teen girls and teen-age boys shooting up their schools.

...of a LONG list of (mostly failed) experiments in parenting. Pop could end up writing a book about that ("the way my parents screw with me").

When people try to rewrite human nature, misery ensues. Every culture in the world has differentiated between boys and girls, because there is a biological difference beyond sexual organs: the brain, the behaviour. Science proves it. If you want references, I can provide you with some book titles.

This is not to say that males or females are superior (after all, I am not one of some Broadsheet posters who pay lip service to equality while deffending female superiority - "end sex scandals, elect female politicians"). They are different. If I were a woman, I would have liked my parents to tell me so and I would be happy and proud of being a woman, the same way I am now proud and happy of being a man and don't apologize for that.

That everybody tends to assume certain presupositions based on sex? Yes, it is true. This is the same with race, with economic status, with language, with physical appearance and beauty, with weight, with styles of dressing, with everything.

The answer is to fight against the prejudices, not to act as if the differences didn't exist. I would have liked my parents to teach me the truth. If I don't like it, I would fight against it.

For example, the way to fight against social injustice is not to assume that there is no difference between poor and rich people and treat the poor as if they were the same than the rich. I have worked in Latin America in programs of social justice and the first step is to make the poor aware of the injustice. To watch in another direction is not the answer (this reminds me of the Lotophagi, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotophagi). But, this is Broadsheet, where the common sense is rare and uncommon and the weirdest ideas are praised.

I always wondered why Michael Jackson was so popular in Sweden. It must have been his advanced philosophy toward gender identity combined with his unorthodox parenting method. If the parents can just teach this kid how to moonwalk, I'm sure he'll will be a well-adjusted superstar in no time.

What these parents are saying to their friends is:

You have damaging stereotypical attitudes that will rub off on our child and harm him/her -- and you're such a potentially malevolent force, we need to keep you in the dark about his/her sex.

Hilarious, actually.

At first I was appalled by this story, but on reflection I kind of like it.

First of all, EVERY parent is experimenting on their children to some degree. No one has a clue as to how to do it, beyond a vague recollection of what their parents did and what they've seen on TV.

Anyways, because there is so little else to go on, gender identity normally plays a large role in people's approach to infants. What is the first question -- "boy or girl?"

...of all traces of sex stereotyping?

Might they be subconsciously imparting those "cruel" pink-and-blue stereotypes to their child?

They're operating on the theory that if no one knows what sex Pop is, he/she will be treated as an individual and never be pigeonholed into a certain role and set of expectations in society.

But they know Pop's sex.

"Not only that, but the child will notice that there are social and status differences between males and females in the world beyond their home, and those distinctions will shape the child's sense of self in the larger world..."

You have explained the situation nicely. The social and status differences come from perceived gender differences, not individual strengths and weaknesses.

How is this kid gonna learn how to masturbate??

What if Pop turns out to be a little boy who loves spitballs and hates keeping a journal? Will the parents rend their clothing? Will they disdain Pop and his oppressive self-stereotyping?

Wow, your mom is like a good friend of mine who's a pacifist and feminist who wouldn't let her son play with toy weapons or GI Joe dolls, though he begged for them.

Same outcome as yours. She relented, having made a choice between denying him his true nature or allowing him to be who he was -- and she bought those toys for him.

There is no shame in being a stereotypically masculine boy or feminine girl. Or a quiet, unathletic boy who reads or does art. Or a hard-charging, rambunctious girl who plays with the boys' toys.

The Swedish kid would haved ended up pretty much the same with or without his parents' silly and manipulative experiment.

I've had conversations with my mother about subjects like this. She tried to discourage me from playing with toy guns and such when I was a little boy, but had to give up. As she said, "If you give a little boy a stick, he'll make it into a gun. If you give a little girl a stick, she'll make a dollhouse for it." Boys will be boys, and girls will be girls. Why is this a bad thing? Is one set of behavior inherantly better than the other? Seems that's a value judgement. There's no point to denying reality because it doesn't fit into your idea of what you think reality ought to be.