The coolest thing for me, as one who loves them in any of their various incarnations, has been to sit back and enjoy the ride and give them plenty of space to experiment with who they are, something not all of us got when we were growing up.

p.s. I adore your blog, and the family that you and your beloved are making.

Anecdote Time:

I wrote a research paper on transgender parents a couple years ago for a social psychology seminar. And I really was shocked at the extent to which everything I read stressed the very little difference between kids in those families and kids in heteronormative families. The attitude of the folks in the Advocate article really bums me out. It is very understandable, but I’d be psyched for gender atypical kids. Part of my personal feelings on the subject, being kidless myself, come from the two-mommed children I babysit. These two kids are delightfully androgynous. I’d say that they have pretty similar tendancies, boy and girl are both pretty aggressive and pretty bookish and pretty sensitive. It’s lucky to be in a home where gendered activities and play are value neutral. Or potentially one where gender atypical behavior is actually encouraged. The parents went along just fine when their daughter requested to go by “Andrew” for a few months last summer. In fact, they shared the news with me behind slightly delighted smiles.

Ok, I’m going to stop because I feel an essay coming on. I’ll save it for my own paltry blog.

Seriously, I’ve heard this from so many people that I don’t doubt it: our stereotypes of male and female have some basis in biological tendencies. But tendency is the word. I cringe when people say things like “She’s definitely a girl–so dainty!” (Yeah, she’s small and pink and has little tiny fingers. And white boy babies her age are different?) And worse, “I’ll have to remember to treat her like a girl,” and following up by holding her very still, talking to her quietly, handling her like she’s made of porcelain. Now, this is a baby who loves being tossed in the air. But how long would that last if everyone “treated her like a girl”?

I think there’s nature and then there’s experimentation and play leading to self-determination. And the point of nurture is to make sure that such experimentation and play is encouraged and not penalized.

Of course I had to scurry off and look up ceteris paribus, which I would have bet cash money referred to some tender delicate body part that, if a ball hits it really hard, it really hurts.

Second: Geesch. I can’t believe the strength of gender. And I, too was (am?) a social constructionist on this topic. Problem is, there is no ceteris paribus in this experiment. We can’t stop everything else and observe. For example, even when we don’t mean to, I think that we inherently react positively to people who “fit” the gender stereotypes. So we may be subtly (possibly even inadvertently) encouraging their behavior even if we try try TRY to encourage them to expand these confining roles. So, maybe our Big (22 months now) hasn’t shown a preference for wearing dresses (yet) and playing with dolls (although he DOES like to push around a stroller . . . a stroller that is usually filled with trucks, but hey, he is nurturing SOMETHING isn’t he?) but maybe that’s not just due to a natural inclination, but to a combination of his natural inclinations and from the quite perceptible positive reactions he’s received from just about everyone (”Oh, he’s SO boy!!!”).

And lastly, our doctor once said that we (as humans) tend to only see and react to things that are either very much aligned with the stereotypes and/or very much DISaligned with the stereotypes. So we SEE that Big is “all boy” when he kicks the soccer ball and gets excited about trucks. We don’t SEE that he is kicking off this dreaded haircoat of a genderbox when he focuses on a little board book in his car seat for 45 minutes of the ride.

Our boy seems to be “all boy” but he sure does like “Pik!” (his word for pink).

Then she got a bit older and started interacting more with the other girls at her daycare and suddenly she became very interested in babies. She even turned her giant plastic pleisiosaur into a baby, carrying it around and asking us to change its diaper. The gender non-conformist within me takes comfort in the fact that she makes her babies do things like jump off the couch or do summersaults off the counter…

I think there’s nature and then there’s experimentation and play leading to self-determination. And the point of nurture is to make sure that such experimentation and play is encouraged and not penalized.

Much to my chagrin, my every day presence as gender traitor, female division, has not inspired the girlchild to prefer to eschew dresses, like I did, or prefer crawling around on her hands and knees making engine sounds as she motors her Hot Wheels collection through the dirt, like I did. Who knew that not every girl wouldn’t necessarily become a Tomboy, given the chance? I thought that was the free zone — Switzerland — between the war-torn dominions of boy and girl. Could be maybe it was just my free zone (and yours).

AllieG, I appreciate the reminder that it is true that nurture is the part we do have a hand in. This is where, if I might indulge a bit of partisan sentiment, the lesbian mums shine. Sociologist Judith Stacey did a study with USC colleague Timothy Biblarz, of the gender roles/identities of kids of lesbian and gay parents (don’t know whether they included bi or trans parents). Their study “How Does the Sexual Orientation of Parents Matter?” was published in the American Sociological Review in 2001 (Vol. 66, April: pp 159-183;USC news coverage of it here; whole PDF of it, courtesy JSTOR, here). While “sons tend to be more conforming in gender roles,” still they found that:

For example, boys raised by lesbians appear to be less aggressive and more nurturing than boys raised in heterosexual families. Daughters of lesbians are more likely to aspire to become doctors, lawyers, engineers and astronauts.

In addition, heterosexual mothers tend to encourage sons to participate in historically “masculine” games and activities – such as Little League – and daughters in more “feminine” pursuits – such as ballet. In contrast, lesbian mothers had no such interest – their preferences for their children’s play were gender neutral.

But it’s not as if all LGBT parents are totally fine with gender-variant kids, either. In this thoughtful commentary in the Advocate online, therapist Arlene Istar Lev finds plenty of discomfort and worry. Though it’s complicated: “We are torn between encouraging our children to be themselves and protecting them from a judgmental world. “

I do think there is some nature involved. But I also think nurture plays a huge role. Not to mention social gender norms. Our oldest 3.5, yes can be a physical, ball throwing, jumping from tall heights type of kid, but he is the same kid who can be found in the sandbox making a pie out of sand, or sitting for long periods of time perusing books. His toddler obsession was animals, not trucks or trains or planes. However, I guess he doesn’t spend lots of time nurturing a baby, although he would try to breastfeed his stuffed monkey from time to time, or enjoy coloring as I see lots of his female classmates–this is slowly becoming more interesting to him.

So, maybe it’s just that I don’t want to admit it yet. . .