Raising Them: Our Adventure in Gender Creative Parenting

by Kyl Myers

“So, do you know what you’re having?” Robin asked. I put a hand on my round belly. “Well, I’m confident it’s a human baby. I know I’m naming the baby Zoomer. I have a little information about Zoomer’s chromosomes and anatomy, but I’m not going to assign a gender based on that. I’m going to do this thing called gender creative parenting. We use they/them pronouns instead of she/her or he/him pronouns. I don’t want Zoomer to be treated like a stereotypical girl or boy and only offered half the world. I just want Zoomer to get to be a kid. I think they’ll find their gender identity in their own time.” Robin smiled, a genuine one, complete with smiling eyes.

Male and female babies showed identical levels of motor performance; what differed was their mothers’ estimations of their crawling abilities. Mothers of girls underestimated their daughters’ performance, and mothers of boys overestimated their sons’ performance. Many of the physical, emotional, and verbal differences we see between boys and girls are largely socially constructed and reinforced through stereotypes. If we want our children to grow up believing that men and women are equal, we need to treat them as equals in childhood. If we want children to grow up outside the constraints of boy = masculinity and girl = femininity, then we need to provide room for children to explore their interests without gendered boundaries.

I wanted to give my child a gift. The gift of understanding gender as complex and beautiful and self-determined and the gift of being free from the restrictions and limitations and expectations of binary gender and all the stereotypes that come with it. I hadn’t considered how much of a gift I would also be giving myself. Parenting is like being a tour guide. Parents help their children navigate the world, taking them to the great spots and steering them clear of unsafe ones. While curating an experience for Zoomer to explore their interests and come to their own identity, I inadvertently started taking a closer look at my own identity and how I operate in the world. Zoomer is a superhero; their superpower is ignoring the noise and seeing people for their individuality. Zoomer rescues people from stereotypes.