Undisciplinary
Undisciplinary
Gender Open Parenting: A Path to Childhood Autonomy with Nanette Ryan
Dr. Nanette Ryan discusses gender open parenting, a model allowing children to determine their own gender in their own time without imposing gender expectations based on assigned sex at birth. According to Dr Ryan, this approach creates space for autonomy and protects children from potentially harmful patriarchal gender norms while providing them with knowledge to navigate gender in society.
• Gender open parenting involves non-disclosure of a child's assigned sex at birth except to immediate caregivers
• The approach differs from gender-neutral parenting and gender abolitionism by embracing plurality of expressions
• Three key elements: non-disclosure, creating inclusive environments, and education about gender norms
This conversation is based on Dr Ryan's recent paper:
- Ryan, Nanette. 2025. “Autonomy and Gendering in Childhood”. Feminist Philosophy Quarterly 11 (2). https://ojs.lib.uwo.ca/index.php/fpq/article/view/21632.
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Speaker 3:Reports of systemic racism in the healthcare system and COVID-19 has
Speaker 1:made the issue even more urgent. Welcome to Undisciplinary, a podcast where we're talking across the boundaries of history, ethics and the politics of health, co-hosted by Chris Mays and Jane Williams. Jane Williams, Welcome to another episode of Undisciplinary. Jane, how are you?
Speaker 2:I'm very well thank you, chris.
Speaker 1:Many complaints about the weather, but apart from that I am good Very good, and you have a nice haircut, I see.
Speaker 2:Thank you very much.
Speaker 1:We should, I think, think about going visual. I know we did have this conversation off air Terrible idea. Joe Rogan does it and he's got lots of people that listen to his podcast.
Speaker 2:Us and Joe. So we actually only spoke a few days ago, Chris, but since then we did, but don't reveal that to the listener. I know Our podcasts are carefully spaced. Something has happened. It is obviously 12 weeks now to the beginning of summer, because I keep getting ads in my socials saying Jane, it's 12 weeks until the beginning of summer. Have you thought about your bikini body? Oh right. And I am wondering if that is something that is happening to you.
Speaker 1:No, I haven't been asked about my bikini body, but I'm getting lots of advertisements about like insoles and heel issues and things like that.
Speaker 2:That I'm hotter than you. Yeah, well, maybe there's just more. Maybe they're like you know, this guy needs help with his walking or something like that, so that I'm hotter than you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, maybe there's just more. Maybe they're like you know, this guy needs help with his walking, or something like that, but no, I haven't been getting those.
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 1:But it is interesting what you get in your social media feeds which I guess somewhat relates to what we're going to be talking about today, insofar as the sort of social milieus that we exist in provide norms and incentives of what it is to be a particular type of person. So you, jane, obviously being a particular type of person that needs to be thinking about the bikini body three months out.
Speaker 2:Maybe I'll flaunt my body this summer.
Speaker 1:That's right.
Speaker 1:I don't think you're going to have a summer in Sydney this summer though by the way, to tell you the truth, I've heard that it's just going to rain the whole time, so, but yeah, I'm very excited this week or we're not doing it weekly anymore this month we've got Nanette Ryan. I briefly met Nanette at the Australian Philosophy Association Conference after hearing a presentation on the topic that we're going to be talking about today, which is gender open parenting, and we'll talk all about what that is. Jane, would you like to have the honours of introducing?
Speaker 2:Nanette. I'll introduce Nanette. It is my honour indeed. Dr Nanette Ryan is a research fellow at CBME, the Centre for Biomedical Ethics, and a member of the Paediatrics Ethics and Advocacy Committee that operates within the National University Children's Medical Institute in Singapore. Her primary research interests lie at the intersection of ethics and childhood development. Nanette held previous appointments at Singapore Management University and Monash University in Australia. She was also a visiting scholar at the Institute of Philosophy and Leibniz University in Hanover, germany, and she received her PhD in philosophy in December 2022 from Georgetown University. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 2:Hi thank you.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1:So you've traversed a number of different countries and educational institutions, so it sounds like quite an interesting academic journey, and we do like to start off by asking people about how they got to where they are and the kinds of questions that motivate them and interest them. So, yeah, we're wondering if you could tell us a little bit about your disciplinary or undisciplinary journey.
Speaker 3:Yeah, sure, but before I do, I want to tell you about what it means to prepare for a beach body in Singapore. So in our local mall there's a laser clinic, you know, for your hair, and there's a big statue out the front to encourage you to come in. And it's a hairy gorilla.
Speaker 2:I've got a photo of the gorilla on my phone. I know the gorilla. One of our group chats. He's the like icon.
Speaker 3:No way, and so this gorilla changes poses and, I think, also dons a bikini for that particular time in summer.
Speaker 2:Yeah, wow, yeah, it's quite odd being a hairy person in singapore right but I think we're digressing.
Speaker 3:So, nanette, sorry so, yeah, um, I didn't start out in philosophy at all. I actually started out in fine art and design in high school. I spent my school lunch times in the art studios and I had very supportive teachers who would allow me to smash glass and use whatever I like, to be creative in fun ways, and so it was a natural progression that I just I went to design school, um, and when I was there, I think I eventually got disheartened by the, the cycle of design and what felt like waste, like you're're constantly every season, new collections, new collections, making things, discarding things. And in one of our assignments we had to do a research paper and I ended up looking and becoming very invested in sweatshop labour and ethics, and so I decided to switch and I went to do fine arts and an arts degree at Monash, and I think in my first or second class I ended up giving my fine arts teacher such a hard time because we had this assignment and we were going to get graded on this assignment. But I was like, well, what you know, we're meant to make art, but what is art and how are you going to like, determine what is good art and assign it? And so I think he was very patient with me, but it was clear that, uh, you know, philosophy was what I was really interested in, um, and I took classes and it gave me the kind of like tools and frameworks to start like thinking about the questions that I was already asking.
Speaker 3:Um, and then during my undergrad, I went on exchange to Canada and I was lucky enough to take a philosophy class with Professor Shannon Day at Waterloo, and her class was on philosophy and gender, and so we were looking at things like the metaphysics of gender and feminist philosophy, and it included, you know, a late night screening of Hedwig and the Angry Inch with, you know, popcorn, and it was snowing outside.
Speaker 3:It was just like super exciting and introduced me to ideas that, you know, like I just hadn't thought of before. And for one of my term papers, I remember like sitting and thinking through ideas and writing this and it was. It was just that, you know, like a chair seemed like a collection of pieces arranged in a particular way, and when we call a chair a chair, we put limits on the chair in terms of, like, what we think it can do and what we should do, and I remember writing something like you know, rather than place those limitations like we should just see what those pieces can do, and Shannon was like super encouraging and like encouraged me to keep writing the paper and that just led into a path that continued to be philosophy forever and ever yeah, wonderful, and it's uh, the fine arts background is um something now that it might be a first well, it could be a first.
Speaker 1:But also your presentation at the uh Australian Association of Philosophy where I met you. Uh, a number of people, I think, maybe including myself commented on your wonderful slides. So the fine arts is continuing going to good use. Very good presentation, no-transcript. So I guess maybe just to start off with some sort of definitions and getting people sort of aware of what we are talking about, it'd be good to sort of get a working definition of what gender open parenting means and a little bit later we can get into maybe some of the further details about that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So before I tell you about the model, I just wanted to say that I was super excited to get this paper published because a number of my friends said this is a really hard topic, you're going to find it hard to get published and when I did I was like yes, so yeah, and it's also like super important ideas. I think so, yeah, really exciting, okay. So the kind of the key idea of the gender open model of parenting is allowing children to determine their own gender in their own time, and one of the key features is the non-disclosure of a child's assigned sex at birth and it's only disclosed, often to their like, immediate family or immediate caregivers or immediate caregivers, and it's offered as a response to what parents see as harmful gender norms and it's aimed to promote children's autonomy, especially in their gender expression. There are like a number of different parenting models that have a similar aim to kind of protect children from gender norms. So one is kind of a gender neutral parenting. Protect children from gender norms so one is kind of a gender neutral parenting Like the gender open model of parenting. Gender neutral parenting has different variations, but it's typically like it allows for disclosure of assigned sex and it's less about a child figuring out or crafting their own gender and expression and more about distangling current conceptions of gender from traditional gender norms, so like trying to get rid of the idea that girls have to be feminine and boys have to be masculine. Some gender neutral parents, in some of the reading that I've done, aim to or have tried to deny their children expression in traditional ways. So, um, in one of the books I was reading, there was a mother who didn't want her daughter to wear pink and didn't want her daughter to go to the prom because these seemed like conforming to traditional gender norms. Um, and she later felt regret about that because it was you, you know like constraining her child and also kind of dampening effeminate expressions in a way that she later recognized as being harmful.
Speaker 3:But there's also another model, and it's what you might call an abolitionist model, and so that's the idea that we should just do away with gender altogether and that, you know, for your child to declare a gender in their own time is actually, you know, a failure of parenting that, like you, haven't raised them well, because they still want to tie to the idea of gender. And this is actually an idea I've been debating with Professor Rob Sparrow about Like he is. You know he wants to abolish gender, but I think he's wrong and I'm happy to be on record saying that. So that's an ongoing debate that we're having.
Speaker 3:So back to the gender open parenting model. The aim is not to deny children gender or particular ways of expression, but kind of to allow a plurality of expressions where a child can choose one or none, all or like non-binary, and allow it to be kind of fluid if they want to, and even if they do declare it doesn't need to be fixed. It's more about, you know, flexibility and expression, and it also typically involves educational components, which we'll talk about more in a little bit.
Speaker 1:Great, I guess something to that. I'd be interested to know, like you were just saying, reading different things. Yeah, what's the? I guess data, if you like or like, are these people's like? I imagine there must be blogs and different sorts of ways people communicate these ideas, as well as more scholarly works. So, yeah, what kind of things are you engaging with?
Speaker 3:yeah. So I mean, it's still a fairly like new model of parenting and you know when it started. So one of the best books that I read on it is Chasing Rainbows and it's all about raising children in different ways that are, you know, non-traditionally conform, and so there are stories from parents about their own experiences and also you know children who are raised on this model talking about their experiences, their interactions with other children and how they managed it and how they feel about it, but there isn't robust data yet. Like, I still think that you know it's a little flourishing community of people who are like trying out ideas and trying to trying to do good parenting so, um, I was interested in this.
Speaker 2:I was talking about this topic with my own children, who are older now, and and they said, yeah, we've heard about this and so on, but that didn't exist when we were born. And I'm like like, yeah, it did, it totally did. I mean, it was a thing in my sphere 20 years ago. So it's interesting, I think, the idea that it is too new, I think, to have data on whatever those data would look like, I don't know, but I think it has been rumbling along in the background for a long time.
Speaker 3:um, I think you're right, like particularly gender neutral parenting. I think has, but I suppose I haven't, and you know this might just be, I haven't come across it yet but the, the non-disclosure in particular, like not revealing, uh something.
Speaker 2:It was for sure a thing, but it was a thing that existed on, like internet chat rooms, right. So that that's the only way I know about it. So that doesn't necessarily mean you know it's like just because people are talking about it or it's a little. It's a little sphere of of somebody's world. Maybe it is, wasn't, isn't in the academic literature, because I do remember talking with friends about, like how would that possibly work?
Speaker 3:yeah, and what did they say?
Speaker 2:what did they think? Oh, no, no, no, friends, we were all just like, yeah, no, absolutely no idea. These were ideas that I was reading about on the internet because, you know, like you, I had my kids, uh, in an environment where that I hadn't grown up in, and so I was getting a lot of parenting information and parenting advice, not from people who I've been close with forever, but, you know, from the internet. But 20 years ago, particularly so this there was a real circle of people in the motheringcom blog sphere, whatever, so that was a big thing, hey, yeah, but no, it was a thing, because I remember the conversations. We had no idea how it would work.
Speaker 3:That is super fascinating and, in particular, because looking at the news reporting of families who have done it more recently and you know recent generations like the backlash is just so strong, like you have physicians saying you know what you're doing is you're creating a monster, and like people are being heckled for it, and I just think like it needs to kind of, if it's been there for so long, it needs to be like push more to the surface and maybe like that, like that's what's happening, it's coming more into the public eye, but that there isn't research as well, or the research that I've come across, is interesting too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you so I know I mentioned joe rogan earlier in the uh piece and and maybe this is going to be a sort of another red flag, um, but this is more just to sort of you said you'd like to be more like joe rogan, I don't think I said that um, but yeah, for some people.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, I guess you know what is it. So you know what it is uh, from from reading your work and hearing you talk is that your patriarchal gender norms are harmful for children and that they should not be embraced by parents in their caring for children, but instead should be resisted. So you know, I guess for the listener who may not be totally on board with that, you know what are these patriarchal gender norms that are harmful in, particularly, I guess, in relation to child rearing. So, for instance, we could say patriarchal gender norms around employment, wage gaps, roles of women in society, those sorts of things. You know, we could say among adult people that that's a problem. But what are some of the things, in particular, I guess, in relation to child rearing, that is a problem.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely. So. I think understanding the ideology behind patriarchal gender norms, I think, is really, really important because, you know, the whole kind of ideology privileges mainly cis, het, white men and takes their kind of power and dominance as normal and natural. And then this comes through in ways that we interact with each other, how we expect people to behave and in terms of you know what kinds of behaviours are celebrated and what kinds of behaviours are shunned or punished. And so, in terms of you know, yes, employment, yes, positions of power, yes, structural issues I think you know why we should care about them as parents is that you know, like we want for one good, open futures for our children where they can pursue these ends. But in terms of more concrete things, like in childhood, why should we care about them? Well, you know it teaches and encourages like a particular way of behaving in children according to these norms.
Speaker 3:So you know, we have good data that shows. You know boys boys are punished for being more emotional than little girls. Little girls are spoken to more often than little boys. You know, you have examples where you know people, people don't know what the assigned sex of the child is and then they're asked to estimate. You know, like, how you know, likely, do you think this child is able to achieve the goals that there are some physical goal that they're set out to do, and people will routinely underestimate a child that they think is a girl as opposed to a boy.
Speaker 3:So you know, in so many ways, in terms of like what we allow children to play with, how we allow children to present themselves, what we kind of expect their social interactions to look like, you know, I'm sorry if there are parents listening, but I always find it really disheartening when my children are invited to parties and it's all one gender. And why is this happening? Why aren't we encouraging, you know, communities that are more diverse? So, just in so many ways that I could talk forever, it's limiting for children in terms of how we expect them to behave, what we allow them to do and how we encourage them to see themselves and their own capabilities.
Speaker 1:The party is a good example. I don't want to divert, It'd be good to come back to that because it is interesting in sort of child development and the sort of who they mix with and who they're encouraged to and who they choose to. But, yeah, thanks for that. So the other so you mentioned already some of the things that gender open parenting, like you mentioned, non-disclosure is a key thing, so there's also cultivation of environments I guess parties would be part of that and education. So yeah, I was wondering if you could sort of, I guess, flesh out a little bit these those three elements of what gender open parenting is. And perhaps, yeah, how does that relate to pushing back against these patriarchal gender norms?
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely so. You know, like I mentioned before the key. Well, one of the key features of this model is to not disclose a child's assigned sex at birth, and the idea is that you know, as soon as someone knows what the assigned sex is, they go into a process of gender anticipation. They will treat, talk about, prepare for that child in ways that reflect traditional gender norms. So we can see, you know, gender reveal parties are blue and pink. We can see, you know, gender reveal parties are blue and pink.
Speaker 3:Baby showers people will very often, you know, divide the colours and celebrate in gender typical ways, and so it starts off this. You know this chain of gendering that starts even before the child is born, and so the idea of non-disclosure is that you interrupt that cycle. Um, and so, as one parent said, you know, if, if no one knew the child's sex and no one could treat the child as a boy or a girl, molding them into the stereotypes of what they think they should be, rather, it's just a child that you need to interact with you know, it's a question about that one, because I'm really interested about how that works practically.
Speaker 2:And this comes back, I guess, to what I said before, but I feel like I was constantly asked oh, is that a boy or a girl? So then what's the response? And what's the response if, uh, um, if someone asks the child?
Speaker 3:yeah. So there are a number of things. I had a colleague ask me, like innocently and respectfully, if my child was circumcised, and I said that I wasn't prepared to talk about my child's genitals with someone else. Thank you. And you know, essentially when people are asking, particularly with babies, you know, is it a boy or girl? They're asking does your child have a penis or a china? And it's none of your bloody business, and I mean people will absolutely push back against that. But I think that if these are your ideals and you're strongly committed to it, then that's something that to prepare for In terms of you know what the child will say. There was a really a great example in Chasing Rainbows. A child came up to a parent and said you know, oh, your child, are they a boy or a girl? And the parent called out to them. They said are?
Speaker 3:you a boy or a girl, and waited. And then the child announced, and this parent was like, very happy just to be flexible with like, on whatever day, however, you declare like that's what we're going with. And so just to ask the child, a friend of mine, she raised her child on the gender open model. Mine, she raised her child on the gender open model and this is baby Fern. And Fern would just say I'm Fernie, I'm Fernie. And so I think that you know, if you're engaging in these conversations with your child, like these are things you can prepare for. And you know, as parents, we often have discussions with our child to prepare them for challenging conversations or challenging scenarios, that they're ready and not blindsided. And of course, we can't prepare for everything, but given that this is going to be such a big thing, it's important to have those conversations and talk about like, how is it you want to handle this?
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah. So the other thing you asked was about cultivating um environments, um, yeah, so there are a number of ways that um this is done. So one is the home environment, and so trying to aim to make it, you know, like gender inclusive and diverse, so you don't have what you see often, like boys rooms and girls rooms' rooms in blue and pink and you know specific toys, rather, you have all toys and all colours. I think one parent said you know, let's just make this house look like it exploded, like a rainbow, which sounds wonderful. But beyond that, it's also about building a gender inclusive, supportive community. So looking for schools that are going to like support the way you want to raise and support your child, supportive health care services, recreational activities and just communities so that children can feel comfortable in expressing themselves. And, you know, also seeing other people model ways that are gender diverse, like I am, and I don't know if they know how grateful I am, but, like many of my like non-traditional gender conforming friends, like when my children interact with them, I'm just like so delighted because I think, like you, are showing my child other ways of being. That is so valuable. And so finding these kinds of communities, the ways of being that are so valuable and so finding these kind of communities, um.
Speaker 3:And then the last one is, yeah, like direct education, um, not all parents who adopt this model um educate their children, um, in this way because they're worried about stereotype threat, um. So the primary idea is that you give your children gender literacy, like, how are you understanding gender, the nature of gender norms, how they shift over time, how they're flexible, and also just social norms generally, because I think when we take things as the status quo, you see it as kind of fixed and inevitable. But having these conversations with your children in ways that are appropriate for their age, so that they can understand how these things work, yeah, gives them space to then think about, like, how do I want to express my own gender? And it doesn't have to be the fixed way that I see it represented in so many spheres.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think the I mean we'll get to some of the objections later and I don't think this isn't an objection, but, as you said, like the age appropriateness of some of these conversations in relation to child development seems, yeah, a challenge. Like I was talking to my partner about this topic and she does a lot of work on climate change and student protests and these sorts of things conversation where you're because in some ways, I guess you're unmasking a reality that's presented to them, um, in both, whether we're talking about gender or, you know, um the fossil fuel world that we live in, uh, and that unmasking can be confusing, can be destabilizing and can be, um, challenging, depending at what age, and so I guess you're trying to safely socialize them into a different reality, um, but yeah, so suppose that you want to.
Speaker 3:you want to avoid this kind of, you know, unmasking and destabilizing, like I think that. Um, so my husband he's also a philosopher uh, josh luchak, he does climate, climate change stuff with regards to philosophy and ethics, and so we just I think I've always talked to our children in different ways or they've been around us when we've had these conversations, and we talk about politics and we talk about ideas. So, like this morning, my son and I were talking about, you know, the kind of the discussion between Netanyahu and what he said about Albanese and what, what governments will do to kind of distract people, to then push certain policies, and like he's eight, and we just kind of we talk about these ideas gently. And I think that you know, if you are cultivating these conversations early, there's no unmasking, it's just like we're trying to.
Speaker 1:we're trying to move through this world together rather than shadow realities not to derail the entire conversation, but the netanyahu albanese example was that in singapore's media, or was that more just because you would still be consuming Australian news media and those sorts of things? Or was that being reported on in Singapore?
Speaker 3:So it's very sweet Every morning. I so I play the ABC, I also play Reuters and sometimes NPR International, and it's just on in the background, and when I'm getting ready in the morning, my son will come and sit on the beanbag and we just we talk a bit, and so he'll, he'll listen and he'll ask questions. These are prompted by him. So, yeah, not not in the singaporean media as such no, okay, just be interested. Yeah, it might have been in the straits times, I think.
Speaker 1:Yeah, maybe it was okay, um, so one of the you know big, I guess the other big aspect of the paper. So one thing is talking about the gender open parenting, but specifically connecting this to autonomy and childhood autonomy. So it'd be great to hear you know why does GOP matter to or matter for, should I say, childhood autonomy, yeah, yeah or metaphor, should I say childhood autonomy, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:So I think that you know, on any plausible account of autonomy, what we need to make autonomous decisions is knowledge. We need to know facts about the world and I think that you know, with regards to gender, gender, open parenting does a really good job at you know, if done well, at giving children facts about social norms, about gender, so that they can you know reason and process and make, to the extent that they can inform, decisions about how they want to present themselves. And also, in order to make autonomous decisions, you need to be able to like reflect upon your ideas and like work through what you think about things. And so, providing safe spaces for discussion where children can ask questions, can see things, modelling, see ways of being modelled. It means that they get to think through their ideas to then support autonomous action, the ways in which they present themselves. Autonomous action, the ways in which they present themselves, um. But also, I think a really important way that the gender open model supports um autonomy is by creating spaces to try out expression, um. So it's actually tamar shapiro's idea.
Speaker 3:You know, one of the primary ways in which we like exit, the predicament of autonomy in childhood is through. Play is through like, trying on ways of being and this will be my word seeing what like resonates with you, to then form the kind of like identity framework that you then issue authoritative action from. So the idea is that you know if you're acting simply from inclination, from you know whim, that's not autonomous. What autonomy is, in the kind of global sense which we can talk about shortly, is to have a framework of kind of stable ideas of who you are that you then reflect on and act. And so, through play, through trying on ideas, different ways of being, um, the gender open model allows you to you know, furnish that framework or help, and then, in a more like everyday way, it allows children just to play with other stuff.
Speaker 3:And giving children more options means that you know they're more free to to choose things. And you, in order to exercise autonomy, you need real options. And then the last way and I think this is really important too is that on some views of autonomy, what you need is not just you know like real options and to reflect in things, but you also need in some sense a kind of like a moral identity to act with moral autonomy and if we think that you know acting kind of according to our identity, to act with moral autonomy, and if we think that you know acting kind of according to our own moral commitments is an important part of autonomy. What the gender open model does is model. You know courageousness, like you have parents who are pushing back against gender norms they face.
Speaker 2:You know ostracism and sometimes like violence, stigma and so you see parents who have like deeply committed ideas, rising to the challenge and creating space for their children, which that because you said I can't remember the actual words, but something along the lines of the gender open model allows children to arrive at their own feelings about their gender, their own identity. Kids do that anyway, irrespective of how they're raised. Do you think there's a difference? Do you think there's a difference, I guess philosophically, between like, if they're going to get there in the end anyway, do the means matter?
Speaker 3:I think the means really do matter because I think that the process is really important, especially at a young age, to kind of just think, to think through ideas and to show that you know this identity is is yours.
Speaker 3:This identity is flexible because you know, even if it's the case that you know, you decide okay, I identify as a girl. Like, you know that's yours and if you've been raised on this model, you can also know that if this doesn't resonate with me anymore, it's also my choice and even if the social norms say no, I bloody well know yes, and I think that really matters. Whereas, like, if you don't have the process, like you take it as like a fixed and a given and when you're really young, you're like oh, okay, this is how I'm supposed to be and this is how I'm supposed to like, and I get rewarded for this and it just it's far less flexible. And I think that this then has implications for how we see other social norms and other possibilities, and so, like, my optimistic hope is that and obviously it's going to bear out in time, and maybe there is literature, I'm not sure but that this will mean that people are more flexible in their thinking about what's possible for the future beyond gender so how, then?
Speaker 2:a future beyond gender? How does that position you, um, with respect to what you're talking about earlier with rob sparrow, about the idea of so what I?
Speaker 3:mean by beyond gender is not to do away with gender, but more just like to go beyond it to other spheres. That you can see other spheres as flexible as well. You know, just because things happen to be this way doesn't mean that they have to be this way, yeah.
Speaker 1:So, on the question of autonomy, or back to the sort of conception of autonomy, I should say, um, you know, there are obviously a whole range of different kinds of autonomy that we could be talking about, uh, you know we could be talking about economy autonomy in a kantian sense, uh, or relational autonomy, uh, but you sort of focus on two types of autonomy which I guess relate to those two that I just mentioned end-state autonomy and gradualist autonomy and they seem to, as you sort of outline in the paper, present different problems or solutions in relation to this idea of childhood autonomy. And I was wondering if you could just talk us through the end state autonomy and gradualists and what these do for your argument and why you particularly lean towards your ultimately, I think, develop a hybrid approach to autonomy.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so look, you're absolutely right. There are so many ways to carve up autonomy and to think about different kinds. Right, there are so many ways to carve up autonomy and to think about different kinds um. So I think that I talked about end state um and gradualist ideas as kind of um just overarching, um, overarching ways of carving up a large terrain, like I think you know there are some that think that um, autonomy is something that you achieve at an end state when you're mature. You know, after, like development and experience, you're a mature adult with autonomy and this reflects, you know, some of our laws and things that only give you voting power at certain times. An end state account would mean that gender open parenting is only valuable insofar as it serves ends in the future. So you might think about it like the you know, joel Feinberg's open futures model, where, you know, rights of autonomy are held in trust and we need to protect them for the future adult that you'll become. This would be problematic because, at least for this model, because what parents are claiming and what they think, and what I think is right, is that this model supports autonomy in childhood for children and for the future adults that they'll become Gradualist perspectives.
Speaker 3:Hold that, you know, autonomy is developed gradually over time in different domains, at different rates across children. It's not something necessarily that you arrive at a fixed end point. I think that most gradualist perspectives are hybrid. They hold that, you know, you develop it over time and then you reach a point where we would say you have full autonomy. But then within different gradualist perspectives there are kind of like different kinds that you achieve depending on the kind of the conditions.
Speaker 3:So one that I focus on is Amy Mullen's volitional account and also Robert Noggle's account of moral autonomy. And in Noggle's account he says that you know, like I'm considering what justifies paternalism towards children, especially when it seems like you know, their kind of agentic capacities rival, that, especially, you know, in early teens, rival that of mature adults. What could justify paternalism? And he says, well, they don't have a moral identity yet. And so he says gradualist but also endpoint, gradualist but also um end point.
Speaker 3:And so I I favor a gradualist and even a hybrid model, just because it seems to match. You know, what we observe in children. They have different degrees and, um, you know, I think that acknowledging this also demands that we have like moral duties of agency to children, like they don't just arrive when they're older, they don't just arrive because it's valuable. Then it's like well, actually you know children make choices. Children, you know, care deeply about things. And that they care deeply about them and you know stably, in the way that Marlon talks about, gives us reason to protect them, to respect those things, and not just as end states, and that includes with, I think, gender expression as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was just thinking about with my daughter and you know the phrase early on, that she was taught at daycare and that we also affirmed was you know, my body, my choice, or my body, my rules?
Speaker 1:And there I would say you know, I guess it's you know, that is, I would say, quite a solid, fixed sense of autonomy that was being developed, and then in other areas that would gradually expand. So, yeah, it is interesting to think about those different spheres in which a different kind of autonomy would be at play, in which a different kind of autonomy would be at play. I do wonder as well, though, you know, when it gets to the intersection with more empirical questions around childhood brain development and things like that. So, you know, I'm sure all of us have either gone to parenting courses or read parenting books, but you know one of the things recently that I, you know, just talking about children's capacity for decision making, and you know that their brains haven't fully developed to engage with some of these kinds of questions or decisions or desires, and um, the there may be a fleeting strong will for something and then, half an hour later, a no longer caring about that thing at all.
Speaker 1:um, so I guess there's that, that negotiation, or that um need for wisdom, really, I guess, to be able to work through those questions of a child's decision-making, and when is it something that they are? When it is in their interest to pursue that, I guess, and when it might be better directed somewhere else or completely ignored, like I do ignore the my body, my rules, when it comes to, you know, brushing your teeth all those sorts of things yeah, also, adults do that as well.
Speaker 2:Or those sorts of things yeah, also, adults do that as well. Though, chris right, yeah, I could be pretty desperately keen on doing something, and then half an hour later I've forgotten all about it.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. And I think, like in these circumstances, like you do need that wisdom and to you know, reflect on, like what is at stake. Like I think you know, sometimes it's just inconvenient to go with what the child wants, but like you need to like that they care deeply about something, even if it's fleeting, I think gives us reason to take that seriously, not necessarily to go along with it. Like if my child's like I do not want to brush my teeth and I care really deeply about it, I might wait a little while before I like force them to brush their teeth, but like that's something that I'm going to at least try and convince them that it's a really good idea. So, for instance, last night, my son he's like why do I need to brush my hair? And we brush his hair.
Speaker 3:He identifies as a boy. He's. He's like why do I need to brush my hair? And we brush, we brush his hair. He identifies the boy we brush. He's got long hair longer than me. Every night we always brush it. I'm like you know, we always brush it because if we don't it's going to be naughty in the morning and you're going to cry. But eventually we got there because we had that discussion, but obviously it's not always going to be the case that you can have the discussion Like don't run across the goddamn road right now, okay, and here are the reasons. But also, like my children are very, very good at pressing for reasons for almost all sorts of things and I think that's just a hazard of having two philosophers as parents.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that's a hazard of the occupation.
Speaker 1:So in the interest of time, because unfortunately we're going to have to sort of wrap it up soon it would be good to head to some of the objections to this approach, and maybe you know some of them aren't all just straight up objections.
Speaker 1:You know there might be some areas around the edge that we can discuss about as well projections in your paper, argument from privilege, argument from violence and argument from parental autonomy and also the argument from futility.
Speaker 1:And I mean you've alluded to some of these already and you know the obvious, awful ways in which you know LGBTQI+, non-binary and then children raised in these ways do experience violence in direct forms as well as social stigma and more indirect forms of violence is obviously horrendous. But one of the ones that I thought was, I guess, perhaps maybe wouldn't have come to people's minds immediately. So, by the way, if people so, the argument from violence correct me if I'm wrong here, nanette is basically you wouldn't want to sort of create this conditions under which you could be exposing your children to violence. So you probably should not adopt this model of parenting. But the argument from futility was, for me at least and Jane feel free to jump in as well but was sort of perhaps a more interesting one in respect of it not being, you know, so obvious. So yeah, could you talk us through the argument from futility?
Speaker 3:Yeah, definitely. So I think, like Jane was already touching on this idea, it's like you know, children declare their gender anyway and often they do it quite young, Like if the, if the data is correct, it's around three to four years of age. Children will say you know, I'm a boy, I'm a girl, and so you know, as soon as a child declares on this model like gender, anticipation is going to kick in, expectations are initiated and you might think, well, it's a whole lot of effort to go through the gender open model. What's the point if, within three years, all these expectations are then on your child anyway anyway? Um, and you know, it's unlikely that even non-disclosure is going to shelter your child from um, problematic, um, gender ideology. Like we live in a society that is just super saturated. You know, you, you go into a target or a kmart and there is a section for boys clothes and a section for girls clothes and inevitably they're just, they're so gendered it's ridiculous and trying to cross it is so yeah, so what's the point?
Speaker 3:And I think that the main thing is to acknowledge that it is a non-ideal situation. You're fixing a boat up shore the best you can, but it's also really to get clear on the aims of this model, and it's not to protect your child, you know, and to create a little bubble from gendered ideology, um, that's just unrealistic, like, rather, it's the aim to, like, educate your child to space, create um, to give them the opportunity to explore the best you can within a non-ideal circumstance. And also and this is not my idea, this is in other literature it's to give a softer space and landing for children who are not traditionally gender conforming to you know, like, this is how you are, this is a safe space. It's great, rather than what would be the kind of, you know, jarring and perhaps unmasking that you talked about, but just in a different direction. You know, here I am as I am and the world doesn't like match who I am. So it's a softer space. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean it is sort of what you were saying then and earlier about the parties and just my own observations, because it does seem that I guess a lot of the gender openness as talked about in the paper, it is those three or zero to sort of three and a half years where gender doesn't seem to be as defining feature, at least in my experience of raising my daughter, and that during those years she would be fine with. You know, her best friends were boys, girls, they would go to parties, all of that sort of stuff, and then it was only at that sort of age, four, still mixing, but then strongly identifying as a girl. And I mean I don't think I told you this story at the AAP, but I told somebody. But there's a really good book called Bodies Are Cool. I don't know if you've come across this book and it's more about diversity of bodies and celebration. So you know the refrain is you know fat bodies, skinny bodies, and it's more about diversity of bodies and celebration. So you know the refrain is you know fat bodies, skinny bodies, wiggly bodies, jiggly bodies, bodies are cool, and it goes through.
Speaker 1:You know trans bodies, bodies differently abled, all sorts of things, and she developed this little game that she liked to do, that on each page we would choose somebody to be, and it was interesting that it would have been about the age four or five that she developed this game and she would allow me to choose anybody on those pages, except for if it was visibly clearly a woman.
Speaker 1:So anything else was fine to play with, but it was. She had quite a fixed sense by the age of sort of five that that was a category that sort of wasn't crossed, um, not like she would. You know, she wasn't sort of scold me or anything like that, she'd just be like no, you can't pick that one. And then I could be a baby boy, I could could be, you know, a black man, I could be, you know, differently abled person, I could be trans presenting as man person. But yeah, so it's just in my observations and you know I haven't studied this area, but it does seem that from what you're saying that yeah, as the childhood development literature says, that around that age it becomes quite sort of fixed and also their friendships as well.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so you know I haven't looked deeply into the literature beyond this point either, because mainly I was focusing on, like, what's the process of the model. But interestingly that doesn't match my experience with my kids and it's striking because the kind of gender roles here, at least in my experience in local schools, are quite strong. So when my kids went to daycare when they were two, like sometimes they'd bring home paper and they'd be, you know, nurse, woman, uh, person, the military man, and the depictions were just very, very gendered. And you know my son like will be mistaken for a girl often simply because he has long hair, despite them being so strong, like for a very long time, like my kids play make believe games and would want to be the queen and other children would say you know, well, you can't be the queen because queens for girls, and so we'd have a discussion about it. I'm like, well, one, queens aren't limited to girls. There are many boy queens, obviously, and you know you can be what you want. And also this is a make-believe game. You can make-believe however you like.
Speaker 3:So I think encouraging, like the kind of discussions and ideas I think has helped that. And still, my kids don't have, um, just one gendered parties now that that may change and I'm not saying that my experience is representative of all other people's, but just that, like there's got to be, there's got to be room, and I don't. I don't think it's nearly as fixed as people would like to assume, I think, especially because that assumption props up a system of power that's very convenient to think that, oh, it's just natural and they're going to do it anyway yeah, I mean, I wasn't so much making an objection I don't think that is an objection I just more an observation around somewhat of a fixed sense of gender at that stage.
Speaker 1:So but yeah, I think that these things can be. You know, obviously I think we need to create space in a lot of areas for different expressions of gender and life, except for the monarchy and patriarchy as we teach my daughter, Queens, they can get beheaded by the people if they're not very good, I guess. Related to this, though and again, this I guess is more a sort of empirical question about sort of child psychology and development just to what extent is a stable conception of gender identity needed to flourish? And this, you know, it doesn't need to be cis male, cis female, just a stable sense of who one is in relation to, I guess, gender in the world. Is that something that is important as a condition of selfhood and autonomy? And also, when does that kick in? Because I do think it is nice in those earlier years when none of that seems to really matter so much in their social interactions, but does it become having some form of stability?
Speaker 1:is that a key part of sort of selfhood and identity and sorry autonomy?
Speaker 3:Well, so I think these are great questions and I think there are different components. So it's like you know, to what sense do we need a sense of gender identity for our own sense of personhood? And then, to what sense do we need a gender identity in terms of our, like, social interactions and flourishing? Because, you know, our world often is divided up into these social interactions and you get admitted into different groups or different communities, depending on how you identify. But I think that there are two things.
Speaker 3:I think the idea of stability and a stable identity is something that doesn't fit with the idea of the gender open parenting model. Like what you know we want to talk about is like flexibility rather than maybe not stable, but like not rigid. Your identity is not rigid and I think, too, that even on traditional conceptions of gender, you know, if you identify as a woman, like what that identity consists of, like that shifts, that evolves over time, like when I think about how I thought about my gender identity as a girl, as to how I think about it now, like that evolves, and so wanting something to be stable, like in what? In what sense? Is it just the title? Because, like the way in which I conceptualize gender now is just so radically different, like to think that it's like been stable yes, in some ways, but like do we need that kind of like weak thing that evolves over time for our identity?
Speaker 3:I don't know, but I think it's tricky and complicated. But what I do know is that if you know if gender is important to someone, we have no business in, I think, denying that or taking that away from someone. So you may think it's not important or not, but what you think in cases like that doesn't really matter. If it's important to someone, then you respect it. If it's important to your child, then you know you respect it as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, definitely, Jane. Any final questions?
Speaker 2:Oh look I've got so many thoughts't.
Speaker 2:I don't know that we've got time, but I I do want to weigh in really quickly about my own kids response to this. So I have two children, um who one's an adult and with the gender that was assigned to him at birth and he is strongly of the belief that he would love for gender to be eliminated entirely. So he's on the Rob Sparrow spectrum of things. The other one doesn't identify with the gender that they were assigned at birth and had all and wasn't raised in a gender open, with a gender open method.
Speaker 2:However, did come to all sorts of quite interesting sort of gender fluidity very early, and I do remember when they were like six or seven talking about soft toys and someone would say inevitably oh, is it a boy or a girl? It's a freaking soft toy, it's a giraffe, for fuck's sake. But my child would quite often say, depending on which toy was in question, it's a shim and that was a name that I don't know where they came up with that concept, but it wasn't from us, which is why to me it's a futility thing, because for me I'm like they get there, they get well, unless perhaps they're raised with particularly gender rigid um yeah, I was gonna say I reckon they they get there with you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, but I'm just yeah, I'm just saying I'm quite normal, by the way everybody.
Speaker 3:I think that maybe you're exceptional, like I. I think that you, that a space in which you would create would be like welcoming and supportive and would not punish your child for behaving that way. And so I think that, like, what's important about you know, thinking through these ideas, like I don't think that some, like parents, have a moral obligation to adopt this model, like I think that there are many, many paths that can support development, like I think you know many of the the authors who are like writing and practicing this model, weren't raised that way and nonetheless got there. And so I think there are many paths but objections to this idea. You know they're like you know this, this is a monstrous way of you know parenting and you know you shouldn't do it and it's harmful. And my project was to say, well, actually there are some really good things that can come from here, like if we value autonomy and we, you know, in the ways that Western society seems to like hold it up in such an important way.
Speaker 2:Like, well, this seems to do that and I think that makes it valuable, but not necessary I forgot when I went off on the shim giraffe is that I was talking to both my kids about the idea and your paper, because it was super interesting to me to read it, and the child, whose gender is not the same as the one that they were assigned at birth, said, well, that sounds like a terrible idea. Huh? I was like, okay, so, and they said that for them they imagined that scenario as being net harmful because, because the world's not like that essentially, so it's a little bit of a defeatist thing, right, they were like what happens when you go to school and if somebody doesn't know what you are, then they won't be friends with you, and so that that was there, and so now it's obviously not an issue because they're completely, you know, happy and thriving and all of that sort of thing. They were thinking about being a kid, not three more like seven.
Speaker 2:I think um, and I was super interested to hear that because I was like oh you know, maybe this is the thing that that is instinctively appealing to you and they were like no, it sounds awful. Well, so there you go. So I really want someone to have done some research. Basically about, about yeah, absolutely so.
Speaker 3:Look, I think you know um. So one of the things that I've been thinking about is like just that, like how, how demanding is this actually? And you know it's really like it's really going to depend on the situation that you're in. You know, um one of my colleagues, um, he's raised his daughter to be vegetarian and I said, you know was, was that challenging? Was it hard to um meet nutrition needs and whatever else? And he he said to me he's like, well, you know, it takes a village and a community to support. Like, all his family are vegetarian, his parents are doctors and things. So it was just easy.
Speaker 3:And so I think how challenging it is depends on context, and I also think it's important to emphasize that you know if your child gets to school and is is uncomfortable, you can have that conversation and be like well, you know how, how do you feel, how do you want to navigate this? Is there a way that you would like to identify in these spaces as all, how would, how would you like to navigate this process and do it shared so you wouldn't you don't drop your child in this circumstance with any pre-discussion and be like, there you go, you don't have your child in this circumstance with any pre-discussion, and be like there you go. You don't have a gender but and you're not even going to know other people Good luck.
Speaker 2:Call me no, and and that is a really great point Like this, this is it's. You know, we did not have a nuanced discussion of what this might look like For them. The non-disclosure part was really a thing that they couldn't really imagine what it looked like and, to be clear, neither had I imagined until we had this very helpful conversation.
Speaker 3:I just wanted to add too that, like some parents use their baby shower to announce we're doing the gender open model, this is what it is Get with the program family and then educated their family to create that supportive network which I think you know you're always going to have people in your family who are going to be the pain in the arse and not get with the program. But I think that there are ways to navigate it that make it easier and, you know, perhaps less difficult than what might be otherwise imagined.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you very much for the chat, nanette, and yeah, we, you know, look forward to further conversations and hearing about your work. And yeah, thanks again for being on the disciplinary. I'm sorry, so Thank you, thanks for watching.