the more i like this idea. i think it's a great counterweight to those parents (far, far more prevalent) who swing the other way in trying to stamp their child's gender in the child's own mind and in every onlooker's mind as aggressively as possible. I'm talking about the moms who never take their bald infant daughters out in public without one of those stretchy pink headband thingies on, because God forbid someone might think the child is a BOY. and the ones who find out the child's sex via ultrasound so that they can get a headstart on gender-coding the nursery (including the crib sheets, the bumper, the diaper-stacker, the wall-hangings, the curtains, even the choice of wood for the crib--dark, manly wood colors for boys, light or white for girls). who tailor every brag about their child to conform to gender expectations ("look at Susie kick her feet! she's going to be such a beautiful ballerina!" "look at George kick his feet! he's going to be such a good soccer player!"). who FREAK if an onlooker gets the gender wrong ("Hayden is BOY" --icy glare--).

I think what these parents want to do if force non-family members to look at the CHILD, not the gender. I think we're all programmed to see a gender first, and then filter all actions through that prism ("she pulled Susie's hair? that's not nice, nice girls don't do that"; "he pulled Robbie's hair? well, boys do play rough, don't they? way to stand up for yourself, little guy!). what's wrong with seeing the child as a child, and getting rid of all this crap that has little to do with the actual child and much more to do with our own hang-ups and neuroses about men and women?

Since it is obvious that "species" is nothing but a social construct, I am appalled that these parents continue to refer to their child as a member of the human species. This deeply insults all primates,not to mention mammals, vertebrates, animals and non-living things like rocks. Why should humans be "privileged" over all other living and non-living things in existence? For that matter, why should we privilege things that exist over things that, through no fault of their own, do not exist? Shame on the parents.

You have a very distorted idea about what a "feminist" is. I'm a feminist. I believe that women are morally equal to men, and that we deserve to be treated with the same respect and given the same opportunities as men. That does not mean that I think that woman are the same as men in all ways. I've enjoyed the differences between men and women for a very long time, and I would hate to lose them. Vive la difference, as the French say.

I don't know a single feminist who denies any differences between genders. I'm sure that there are some, but they are vastly outnumbered by women (and men) who simply want to be treated equally by society. We want equal opportunities. It would be silly to want complete equality - we are physicall different than men, not better or worse, just different.

You make a very good point. There is no reason to privilege humans over other animals. After all, we are all animals, whereas we are not all male or all female. In fact I think it makes more sense to let the child choose its own species. The Pop says moooo.

Thanks for getting the word that was at the tip of my tongue, CeliainSF. This cockamamie plan would get icy glares of horror from any IRB on the planet.

I hate the fallacy that it's either this Swedish meshegas or somehow being an old school gender fascist. I have two little girls who are being raised to take pride in who they are, which includes being female, and may come to include lots of interests, strengths, etc, that are or are not considered typically feminine. Somehow I think that being "out of the closet" about that is probably healthier than denying it and pretending like the only way to have varied interests and strengths is to have no gender, much less a female one.

I love it. Genderflex should be a trend. I immediately thought of all those born with biologically flawed gender (as one letter discusses) who face a physicians (& society's) immediate pressures for surgical determination. What a wonderful world it will be when all the gender baggage is made secondary to the human spirit.

The child will have to use the toilet in a public place. Then we'll see how committed these parents are to gender neutrality.

'Cause you can tell at just a glance which posters are nosy busybodies who want to dictate how other people they'll never know live, and which are self-centered and apathetic enough to NOT CARE ONE IOTA how those wacky Swedes raise their spawn!

Me? I'm the self-centered apathetic type.

(And naturally, in keeping with the spirit of Broadsheet, I judge the other sort of poster VERY HARSHLY and believe they should all be sent away to labor camps to LEARN BETTER--which is to be like ME!)

/s

for taking themselves very seiously and being somewhat gloomy but all this earnestness about a little child is kind of ridiculous. I hope he/she has a nicer name than "it" and, if "it" is a boy, that "it" is called Willie which in Swedish would most likely be Willi, pronounced with a Greta Garbo accent.

"As with any family secret, when we try to keep an elemental truth from children, it usually blows up in the parents' face, via psychosomatic illness or rebellious behavior."

Yes, but I'm sure the child knows his/her gender, right? What elemental truth is being kept from Pop?

This article fails to consider that Pop may have been born without an identifiable gender.

Children are born with ambiguous genitalia every day. Some statistics suggest one in every 500 babies arrives in this world as intersex. Our failure to realize this--our insistence that everyone has a gender and they'd better damn well declare it at birth--is more harmful to these children than parents who decide it doesn't matter.

Perhaps they'll leave it up to Pop to decide when s/he's bigger.