A transcript of our developing e-mail conversation:
I tried to post a new topic on WTWT, but haven't figured out how (maybe I can't). But here is an article I would really like to share: Parents keep child's gender secret. I found it on Tiff's Facebook page. Thanks for sharing that!
Here is my comment on the "Parents Keep Child's Gender Secret":
I always find it hard to answer the question "how much freedom should parents give to their children". What I have not yet figured out is not only "should children choose for themselves whether they are girls/boys/others", but also, for example
- Should children choose for themselves which family they grow up in?
- Should children choose for themselves which specie they are?
- Should children choose for themselves whether they should be born?
-Bing
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6 comments:
Jacob says:
I don't think it's a similar line of questioning. The answer I would give to all of those three things is that they're non-questions, because none of those are a matter of choice. You can only exercise choice over the things that you can control. The reason that F=mg isn't because I'm choosing to obey the law of gravity.
Those children aren't choosing their sex, they're choosing their gender. The distinction is that their sex is determined by their chromosomes (XY/XX) and their gender is determined by their behaviour and their outlook. The former is biological fact, and the latter is at heart a matter of choice.
Bing says:
I agree that
1) a kid can not choose who are their biological parents, and
2) a kid can not choose to be a non human being in a biological sense, and
3) the third question is not a matter of choice.
However, 1) and 2) are different from my original first two questions.
"Should children choose for themselves which family they grow up in?"
In the original article, the parents give their children an environment to explore their gender themselves. On a similar line, I wonder whether the society should give a child an environment to experience different parental styles, and to choose the one that fits the child the best?
"Should children choose for themselves which species they are?"
What inspired this question is Tippi of Africa. I wonder whether kids should be given the choice to live as a lizard, an elephant, or a human being? Also, if Tippi at the age of 5 thinks that "I think I am a wolf", should she have the right to live as a wolf?
Jacob says:
If a group of parents are willing to exchange children and let the children choose which they prefer, it's within their rights to do that. There is a system for that in place (foster care followed by adoption). Of course, a child cannot choose to be raised by a family that is not willing to raise them, and they will also run into difficulty if their parents aren't willing to let them go. But that's no different than the idea in the article, where the parents are the ones granting permission to their children to have the freedom to choose their gender. So in both cases, it's ultimately up to the parent to give the child that freedom.
As for allowing children to choose which species they wish to behave as, that's somewhat more complicated by the question of what legal status a child who claims to be a lizard would have. Since lizards don't have human rights, legally allowing the child to be non-human would be equivalent to taking away all of their legal rights. This kind of loophole would allow parents to sell their children into slavery. I think that would be very dangerous. Alternatively, if the child has the legal status of a 'child-pretending-to-be-a-lizard', well what does that mean exactly?
Of course parents have the right to let their kids behave as lizards, elephants, or even human beings. There's no law against that... and some people might say that their younger siblings behave like monkeys sometimes - right Mo? ;) I don't think there's anything in the Wikipedia article on Tippi that seems particularly controversial to me. She does appear to have quite permissive parents though.
In some cases if the child's safety is at risk - like putting a kid in a hungry tiger's cage and saying "go make friends", then there's a good argument to be made in favour of the state intervening and taking the child away from their parents. But when it's letting the kid choose whether to wear pink or blue, that won't happen.
Charles says:
I admit my original take on the question was to add a rule that a child cannot choose whether or not their parents make their existence a social message.
How do we determine which family is best for the child? If it were up to the child, it might just be the parents who let them do whatever they want and pig out on ice cream. Should we take into account the fact that if this child grows up uneducated and malnourished they'll probably come to regret it? If we leave it up to ourselves, why should we limit us only to those parents that give children freedom of expression? Or are we assuming social conformity is implicitly evil?
I'm not sure I understand the concept of letting children choose which species they want to live as. If this means simply that they can pick to identify with raccoons and cockatoos, not only do most parents allow that, there's actually nothing we can do to stop kids from doing it short of brainwashing. If this means letting them live with a pack of wild wolves or group of penguins, I think Jacob's comment about the reluctance of parents factors heavily.
To make my earlier sardonic comment more serious, I think ultimately that questions about parenting are significantly more pertinent than questions about children's preferences. (I mean, I don't know about you guys, but I was pretty stupid when I was four. Though it's not obvious if I've really gotten smarter since then, I KNOW more, and I know what I used to think was often wrong.) As an example: exploration of gender aside, this couple that's named their kid "Storm" has already chosen to shape their child's life in a certain way. Likewise with their choice of schooling. Giving a child more freedom in all these things can both help build a more vibrant sense of self, and dramatically increase the number of childhood regrets later in adulthood. Dispensation of this freedom, and all the consequences to go with it, was chosen by the parents, and not the child.
Begin Mo's rant below:
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Here is my comment on the "Parents Keep Child's Gender Secret":
I believe it's the parents' job to do what's best for their children. What "best" means depends on who the parents are. For me, I would want my children to be successful in the society, and keeping a child's gender secret is probably not going to help in making the child successful (not that it's impossible). As the article already states, the child has social problems since nobody knows if he's male or female.
I find what those parents did laughable because in my opinion, they are running an experiment that's probably gonna fail using their own child. Sure, you could say that they are sending a message to the world or whatever, but sacrificing a child for that is not worth it (for me, that is; wonder how much that child is worth to them :P)
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- Should children choose for themselves which family they grow up in?
No. How are children going to make the choice? How many choices do children have anyway? Would they one day say, hey mom, I want to be raised in another family? Except for very few cases where parents are obvious abusive, children should just grow up in whatever family they happen to find themselves in. It's the family's job to raise the child properly; and if the family doesn't do that, tough luck for the child.
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- Should children choose for themselves which specie they are?
What??? They are human. If the children don't like being human, they should learn to like it, perhaps with the help of parents and the environment in which they are raised.
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- Should children choose for themselves whether they should be born?
No. Parents decide, for biological reasons :P
It's the parents' job/responsibility to make sure they are able to adequately support a child before having one. Once they have a child, it's their job/responsibility to make sure the child is thankful for his/her existence :)
- Mo
Charles says:
Oh, it's on now!
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