Can Gender Be Neutral?

Can gender be chosen by each individual, or is it assigned?  According to one couple in Toronto, each child should have the right to choose his or her gender without any external pressure from parents and society.  They named their youngest child Storm, and they have not told anyone, not even the grandparents, the gender of their baby.  See the full article here:  http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thelookout/20110524/ts_yblog_thelookout/parents-keep-childs-gender-under-wraps

Why do they want their baby to be genderless?  They feel that society puts too much pressure on children to conform to specific gender roles.  Kathy Witterick and David Stocker, parents of Storm, feel that Storm should be able to wear whatever color he or she chooses, and to play with whatever toys he or she wants.  They have two older children, both boys, who wear pink and have long hair, but they feel the gender neutrality is not complete because their gender is known.  They want to let Storm make his or her own choices about his or her gender, and to be able to decide when to share that information.  But have they truly left the choice to Storm?  Or have they already made a gender-related choice for Storm?

We all impose our beliefs onto our children.  Children look towards their parents for direction, and form their values based on the parents guidance.  This Canadian couple is trying to let their children make their own choices regarding their genders and not imposing the choice on them.  But in doing so, they are in fact imposing two values on them; one, that parents don't have the right to make choices for their children, and two, that gender neutrality is preferable over defined gender roles.  The question of whether parents should or shouldn't impose their values on their children and make choices for them is a moot point because it is impossible not to do so, just as it is impossible to be genderless.

"What's My Prize?"

Kids have a desire to be rewarded for every good deed.  My children are especially talented in negotiating prizes for the things they do.  When they score well on a test, I immediately tell them I'm proud of them, and the first thing they say is, "Can I get an Ipod as a prize?"  When I say good job cleaning your room, they say can we get ice cream since we did such a good job?  When I ask them to finish the book report they are working on, they say, when we finish it can we go to Toy's R Us for a prize?  They even want a reward for hitting a home run in baseball (although, granted, I offered this prize on my own, I was so proud!)

Rewards have their benefits.  People often need external motivation to complete non-meaningful tasks.  But I think the goal should not always be the reward.  The goal is to find intrinsic value in everything we do, and eventually the task itself should be the reward.  While my children receive many prizes for jobs well done (they really are great negotiators,) they also receive many speeches about finding satisfaction in the work itself.  The reward for a good grade in math is having a good grade in math.  The reward for cleaning your room is  having a clean room.  The reward for finishing your book report is having completed your book report.  And the reward for hitting a home run is a score for your team, and the lego set you've been waiting for (hey, as I said, I was REALLY proud.)  Kids are human, and they will need some external motivation, but these should be used as a tool to reach the final goal of finding meaning in the task itself.

Being human myself, I wonder, what's my reward for being a patient mother?  What about my prize for spending my free time building a lego tower with my toddler instead of reading my book, for contemplating with my older children the pros and cons of choosing flying as your superpower instead of chatting with my friend on the phone, and for reading to my daughter a disney princess book instead of getting a manicure?  But even as I write this question, I know the answer.  My reward IS being a patient mother, building a lego tower with my toddler, discussing superpowers with my sons, and reading a princess book to my daughter.  I wouldn't trade it for any other prize in the world.

Where did all this laundry come from?

The title for this post pretty much says it all, but I'm going to write it anyway.  If there is one thing I do more than the dishes, it's the laundry.  A mother's job is never "done."  We cook dinner, and it gets eaten, and then we have to cook dinner all over again the next night.  We clean the kitchen, which usually lasts about a couple of hours until the kids come back in for a snack.  We give the baby a bath, and sometimes the results of that job don't even last the day.  No matter how many snacks we prepare in a day, there is always someone who wants another, different snack.  No matter how many dishes we wash, there is always another dish waiting in the sink.  And of course, no matter how much laundry we do, there is always more.  A mother can sometimes feel like there is no sense of accomplishment in her job.

Yet at the same time, there is more accomplishment in a mother's job than any other job.  It is a job which is never completed, and yet it allows things to happen in a way no other job can.  I was reflecting on the fact that I've been washing and folding (and sometimes even ironing, but rarely) my children's clothing for over ten years, and I'm still not done.  That's right, after ten years of laundry, there is still more laundry in the basket in my son's room.  You'd think by now I'd be done.  I might feel like I will never accomplish anything at this rate.  But then I took a closer look at the laundry I was folding, and I noticed that instead of size newborn, they shirts were size 10.  I realized that although it seems like nothing was accomplished, so much was.  And if I wasn't folding my son's laundry, and washing the dishes he ate off, and making him another snack, he would never have grown into the boy he is now.

After a day of cleaning and folding, I look around the house and wonder how many hours until I have to start the process over again.  The constant turnover of housework doesn't seem to say much about all the work I've done.  But hidden between the piles of neatly folded laundry is the story of how far my family has come.

In Celebration of Mother's

Happy Mother's Day to all mothers and especially to my very own Mom.  While every day really should be "Mother's Day," and acknowledging how much we appreciate our mothers and love them should not only be done once a year, nevertheless this is a day to celebrate motherhood and recognize it's importance on a national level.  So to my mom, and to all mothers, thank you for being so awesome!