Gender-neutral parenting: blurring the line between boys and girls
Meet the mums and dads sweeping aside limitations society has placed on children based on their gender, allowing them instead to blossom outside the confines of an outdated category
Christina Kotsamidis-Ventouras didn’t bat an eyelid when her younger son picked out a top with a pink motif from the girls’ section of a store during a recent shopping excursion in Hong Kong. She immediately bought it for him.
An early childhood educator, Kotsamidis-Ventouras takes a gender-neutral approach to raising her sons, Dimitri and Leonidas. They are encouraged to explore and celebrate all aspects of their personalities, not just what is expected by society.
“For my sons, no toys, colours, interests or activities are off-limits. Gender-neutral parenting – or gender-inclusive parenting, which is the term that I tend to use – is not about the avoidance of all things hyper boyish or hyper girlish in order to live a life of neutrality. It’s about destroying the senseless limitations society has placed around our children based on their gender and allowing them to develop and thrive without having to be squeezed into a box or category,” says Kotsamidis-Ventouras, who implemented numerous gender-neutral ideas in her classrooms before taking a career break to care for her children.
According to Sophie Dunstone, a clinical psychologist at Southside Family Health Centre, the best kind of child-raising encourages exploration, imaginative play, positive self-regard and resilience that is not limited by gender.
“Gender is a part of identity. It contributes to a person’s sense of belonging and sense of self. Throughout child and adolescent development there is a continual process of both finding your individual self and how you belong to the group,” Dunstone says. “Difficulties arise when a parent is rigid, authoritarian and unresponsive to a child’s needs.”