In the news this week was a story of a couple from Canada, who gave birth to their third child four months ago, a child they named "Storm."  The parents already have two boys, ages five, and two. New baby Storm's gender, on the other hand, is a mystery.

Storm is being raised as a gender-free baby.

When I heard about this couple, I had to smile.  "Naive young things" I thought.

As the day went on, this news story stuck with me and my mind meandered back twenty years or so, to my oldest son's early years. I was an Eager Young Parent too, then. I knew my child would be superior due to my innovative parenting ways -- and my son was not going to be raised with any of that gender stereotyping either. Not my child.

Aren't Eager Young Parents...darling?

I got caught on the proper term there for a few moments.

Consider "darling" to have a similar meaning to "bless your heart,"  the ubiquitous Southern response that can actually mean what it says...or, it can mean almost anything else, including, "Why, you poor dumb things."

Those Eager Young Parents, thinking that with their child, the wheel WILL be re-invented....why, bless their eager, young hearts. 

Back in my early parenting days, in my zest for becoming Best Hippie Mom Ever, also to avoid sneers from my social circle:  my sometimes environmentally fascist hippie sisters and brothers, I went to great lengths to be a good parent.

I used only cloth diapers on my babies, then endlessly washed cloth diapers -- but disposable diapers fill landfills, seep toxic material to my baby, and are ruining the world!

I hand-made every bit of baby food, then, every bit of our food in general -- canned food is missing important nutrients my brilliant baby needs, and is ruining the world!

I began to garden from scratch -- all other vegetables, all other food! isn't fresh enough to supply my baby's mind, and the chemicals they use on mainstream food are ruining the world!                                                                

(While I still think so on this one, learning how to hand grow rice in my backyard is a tough one. Anyone out there have tips on creating a flooded rice paddy in the suburbs?) 

I even had a go making my own organic whole wheat bagels from scratch  -- because the hand-ground flour has more nutrients for my family, and I was crazy by this point, ruining my world!

I also hand-made my own baby carrier to strap my beautiful baby around my waist (babies shouldn't touch the ground until they're a year old!), and I refused to use a crib for my precious boy.  My child might be traumatized looking at life from behind (crib) bars!

My son also had baby dolls, in hand-made shoebox beds, for all the nurturing qualities he had. This was to be fully expressed by his rocking all the dolls, and two handmade Star Babies, to sleep...or so I imagined.

 Son had wooden trucks as well, and other traditionally boy-oriented toys and games. He was even given a toy chainsaw as a toddler, all bought with increasing frenzy by my alarmed then-husband, who was not a fan of the enlightened methods I swore by, who had his own thoughts about what his super baby was supposed to be like. 

It.....I.....got worse. 

By the time Oldest Son was two and a half, I thought it was time for him to learn some housekeeping skills.  Not real cooking yet-- I waited until he was four for that.  He couldn't reach the vacuum handle at age two and a half either, so his non-entry into early gender-free housekeeping was frustrating (I should have thought of the duster! He could dust!).  I was already looking forward to the compliments from his future wife on my son's stellar skills around the house.

That I assumed he would marry is only the beginning of the strangely traditional views I had of what my enlightened super baby would be like when grown. 

Youngster had better get started on something, I thought, or else he'll just play all day...and his brain will go to mush. He'll start thinking traditional boy thoughts and be a terribly old-fashioned, typical, traditional boy.

Oh no. 

I decided Son needed a play stove and oven.  If this sounds somewhat normal, I will say that this was the late Eighties, in rural Oregon. We lived surrounded by loggers and ranchers and goat farmers. Two and a half year-old boys in our neighborhood played with toy logging trucks, rode horses and four-wheelers with bigger siblings, and were learning how to stay on the tractor in the back field -- not one had a toy stove to play with. 

Unlike our house, the local boys also had buzz cuts by this age. My boys all had to wait until age three for a "big boy" hair cut. There was a Sampson-and-his-Power-came-from-Hair quality to my thought that all boy babies should keep their hair uncut until toddlerdom was safely past. Superior children are formed this way, you know. 

I also insisted that no plastic toys were allowed anywhere near my child, and as the wooden upscale play kitchens were (and are) ridiculously expensive, a homemade version of a play stove and oven would be made for my child.

I daydreamed that one day Son would be so appreciative of how willing his Mom was to create an enriching environment for him!

So, I made a play stove. With a toy oven. There was an opening door for the oven and there were four "coils" for the stove where Son could cook his creations. The temperature knobs really turned and I outfitted the new kitchen with wooden utensils I had from the "real" kitchen.  I added the tiniest cast-iron pan I had for Son's cooking adventures (Did I worry about smushed toes from his dropping that cast-iron pan? No, I didn't. Practical parenting had not yet entered my lexicon) and I gave him small amounts of real food to create with.

Did you know flour and water make glue??

I learned that during this short-lived phase.

When I had finished creating the perfect spot for my son's burgeoning culinary talents, I stepped back to see how he would enjoy all the details I'd thought of. Would he bake or stir-fry first? Would he even notice the apron to wear that I had hung nearby? What would this brilliant two year-old  imagine and create??

My excitement was eventually justified. My sweet, sunny child, when he woke up from his nap and first laid eyes on his new kitchen, went running straight for it with a gleam in his eye, his curls bouncing as he ran. I smugly noticed that he had run right past his toy trucks. See? Boys can be just as happy with any kind of toy, they aren't hard-wired for.....

Wait.

What are you doing, Son?  

Son??

Strange rumbling sounds came from my son's throat as he gleefully began to open the oven door.

"But, you haven't baked anything to put in the oven yet!" I thought. 

Too late.

By then, Young Son had climbed right inside that toy oven. His little head had popped up right through one of the stove's cooking coils' spaces. As the coil itself fell into his lap, he grabbed it, turned it on its side like a steering wheel, and then...

...Young Son drove that toy stove and oven away, honking on his pretend semi-truck horn as he drove out of sight.

Good luck to you on that gender-free parenting, Storm's Eager Young Parents.

 Good luck to you too, Storm.