Raising a child gender neutral has never, to me, been about making a non-binary child. I know too many trans people (and, of course, am one) to think that you can do that. If a child is a girl- she is a girl. It doesn’t matter if you raise her to be a girl, a boy, or try to stop her from being either. (but guess which one will make her happy) To me, raising a child gender-neutral is to raise a child to know that no matter what they are, what presentation they prefer, what their pronouns are, or who they’re attracted to- this is fully acceptable and not only will they be loved, they deserve to be loved and respected.

I’ve seen some parents of a trans child who, every morning, ask their child if they want to be a boy or a girl today- so that the child knows that whichever they choose is fine, and another mom who sometimes “checks-in” to see what gender her child is identifying with. You can do some form of that as soon as a child is old enough to show preferences- which isn’t very old at all. I don’t really think that a few years of not enforcing gender on a child will ruin them for life if decades of forcing a person into the wrong gender role doesn’t.

That said, I also know that gender is fluid, and that behaviours tend to get stereotyped in certain ways depending on people’s preconceptions about gender. Girls are “bossy,” boys are “confident” or show “leadership.” I don’t know how many people have told me that a boy will be easier to raise in his teens than a girl because girls are “moody” or “they get into way more trouble.” I point out that I know quite a few teen boys who fancy themselves a cross between Hamlet and Holden Caulfield, while the perception of girls getting into more trouble seems to be chiefly driven by the fact that parents have a much higher level of discomfort with their teenage girls drinking, doing drugs, having sex, or getting in physical fights than they do with their teenage boys doing these things; the expectations for good behaviour from girls are so much higher that they are set up to fail. And the boys are kind of set up to fail too, if we have low expectations for them.

So I think the thing to do is try not to over-intellectualize the raising of your children with complex gender theories; rather, just try to commit to encourage them to explore all kinds of experiences, support instead of belittling them when they act against gender type (and making sure others don’t either), and as they get older, raise them to be critical of the gendered expectations that society will sometimes throw their way. As a feminist, I can’t deny that I’ll be disappointed if my child turns out to be an ultra macho man or girly girl, but as someone whose own father always criticized and never really valued who I was, I don’t want to make the mistake of thinking I can shape my kids to be other than who they are.

And since we can’t completely by our own will change our culture overnight (oh, if only ’twere so!), that means that the best we who are raising-kids-purple can do is give them options, and try not to expose them to/push them in to assigned gender roles and gender performance before they pick it up on their own. (Which they will.) Give them at least a chance to develop according to their own desires, and then yes, let them choose pink and princess if that’s what they’re drawn to from the (limited) options society offers them.

There’s no way that love-of-princess is from “nature” — but the desire to be girly could be, and yes, to some extent, I think it’s ok to go with that.

She does like a lot of toys that are traditionally boy toys, but she plays with them in “girl ways”: her cars talk to each other and she builds castles with her blocks. Her exposure to mass media is pretty much limited to the Treehouse channel and kid movies; I try as much as possible to find movies with positive messages for girls but it’s hard because even the ones with strong, independent women are all about fashion, too. I just wonder all the time how much is nature and how much is nurture.