My two cents..

It is hard to avoid, or ignore, that controversy about the couple who decided to keep their baby’s gender a secret.

So, as a mother, I feel that I too should be entitled to put my opinion out there (insert sarcastic tone here…). Anyway, here is what I think: is the baby happy and healthy? If so, then let the gender secrecy continue. Unlike some opinions out there, I think this is far from child abuse; there are worse ways to raise children than hiding their gender. Do I think this is a little strange… YES, but I am far from perfect, so there is no way I am about to throw the first stone.

I do think this though, instead of downplaying their baby’s gender, the parents had inadvertently put it in the spotlight (I do place some of the blame on the media). Gender becomes the big elephant in the room.

When my daughter and I meet people at the park, we introduce names and ages (the kids, not the grown ups), and then the kids play with each other (okay, my kid usually stares at the other one for a long time…), and we move on. I do not ever consciously think: oh, the kid is a boy, so we must play like this, or vice versa… Now, with Storm, I think it will be hard for me to try not to guess. So instead of getting to know the little person, I too will probably be more obsessed thinking about that baby’s gender.

I definitely believe in letting a child develop his or her own identity, and likes and dislikes (and I try very hard to let this happen). I have a little girl, and I do not limit her shopping to only ‘girl’ stuff (I happen to think that little ‘boy’ t-shirts are very cute). I try pretty hard to balance her toys so that she has many options. Right now, though, she is definitely gravitating towards anything with the word princess on it. As my wallet is not infinitely deep, and I am 90% sure she is not going to play with an expensive toy truck, I am going to hold off on buying her ‘boy’ toys just to counter the number of ‘girl’ toys, for now.

And yes, sometimes I too wish I never told my mother what my baby’s gender is just to limit the amount of princess stuff that enters our lives. So I do understand a bit where these parents are coming from. You can control your own behaviour, but there is no way you can control how others behave with your children, especially grandparents.

But in the end, I think the most important thing is that the kids are happy. And, given a choice, I think I prefer their method of parenting, than the parents who push their kids into beauty pageants and other events that goes to the other extreme.