Gentle parenting and the link to gender identity

As revealed at the Human Rights Review Tribunal in NZ.

You may not have heard of ‘gentle parenting’ but you almost certainly have seen it in action after it became a very popular style of parenting from the mid 2010s.

Gentle parenting puts the child at the centre of relationships. Validating the child’s feelings and showing them respect are core values of the gentle parent.

Done well, gentle parenting uses calm persuasion to socialise a child, rather than shouting and punishment. Alongside empathy, gentle parenting aims to have age-appropriate expectations and boundaries, all managed without emotional power struggles.

So far, so good…

Unfortunately, gentle parenting is not always done well. Done poorly, it teaches children that all their perceptions and preferences are valid, no matter how out of kilter they might be. Children are singularly in charge of their own lives.

Gentle parenting done poorly leaves children with no guardrails and allows them to run amok without stopping to consider the needs of others. As described in a recent Listener column by an unidentified primary school teacher (The Bonkers Generation),

“No longer is it mainly the sibling-free kids who act as though the classroom consists only of you and them. Teaching manners, turn-taking and spatial awareness is now arguably as pertinent and urgent as teaching numeracy and literacy.”

The link between this parenting style and gender identity may not be immediately obvious but it became striking during the evidence given by Professor Alexandra Gunn* in support of Wellington Pride at the Human Rights Review Tribunal (HRRT) in Wellington in July.

For a refresher of the case being heard at the HRRT, read The Curious Case of Pride vs the Lesbians by Garwhoungle.

Since September, the public has been forbidden to report on the testimony at the HRRT but, with closing arguments being presented to the Tribunal this week, the suppression order has now been lifted. The evidence that follows is a summary of notes taken in the public gallery by RGE in July and is not a verbatim record of the testimony from Professor Gunn.

[*Professor Gunn works at the University of Otago in the fields of early childhood education, inclusive education, teacher education, and assessment.]

Child-centred choices

Professor Gunn’s testimony was revelatory. It was her repeated use of the words dignity, respect, mana and acceptance in relation to very young children that disclosed her gentle-parenting style child development philosophy. Gunn believes that a pre-schooler should be affirmed as the opposite sex if they express that wish because ‘they know who they are’.

How a pre-schooler would know ‘who they really are’ without adult interference remains a mystery.

Gunn states that gender identity is an internal sense of self, developed through experience from birth. Although she agrees that colour choices and toy preferences are not indicators of a boy or girl identity, when asked what ‘living as a girl’ means, she talked about clothing and hair styles. Asked to supply an example of a cross-sex gender identity that did not include a stereotype, she could not do so.

Gunn agreed that people might make an assumption that a boy acting in a stereotyped ‘girl’ way had a ‘girl’ gender identity but she said they could be wrong and the important thing was to ask the child.

Relevant to the case before the HRRT, Gunn would also seek clarity from the individual to determine whether a boy with the gender identity of a girl saw himself as a lesbian.

Asked if it is responsible to let a young boy believe he’ll one day have a vagina, Gunn said it would give him a sense of future possibilities and would be mana-enhancing.

Gunn views acceptance of a child’s impossible dreams as evidence of listening to them and showing respect and kindness - a solid gentle parenting standpoint.

Sex vs gender identity

Professor Gunn has created an artificial divide between sex and gender to try to give some coherence to her philosophy. She says that ‘sex’ is male and female and ‘gender’ is boy and girl. Pronouns are for gender, not for sex.

Using this partition, in Gunn’s view it is possible for a male child to be a girl and vice versa. If a boy says he is a girl, it is not the place of others to say he is wrong. Instead they should work on understanding and changing their perspective. She believes that everyone has the right to self-identify and not allowing a boy to live as a girl in the way he chooses is denying him respect and dignity.

Gunn does not agree that gender identity beliefs are based on stereotypes or that gender identity is an ideology. She says gender is a personal sense of identity - an individual reality and expression - and that people who deny a child’s gender identity are responding to them in a hostile way.

Gunn acknowledges that there are those who do not agree with her position. She says they are not being asked to ignore their own beliefs, but to appreciate that there are different life experiences and it is insightful to accept another person’s difference.

Individual gender perceptions trump the reality of sex in Professor Gunn’s world.

‘Doing’ a gender identity

Gunn asserts the right of parents to ask for their child to ‘do’ their gender at school in the way that makes sense for them. She says preferred pronouns and open bathroom choice have positive benefits for gender non-conforming children. She does not see any harms or potential for conflict unless the school denies children access to the bathroom that is ‘right for them’.

Gunn doesn’t think that affirming an opposite sex identity is denying others their own view that humans cannot change sex. She thinks that children should be taught to be open to diversity and acquiring new knowledge. Asked if teaching children that they can change sex is a failure of our system, Gunn wasn’t sure and said she was ill-equipped to respond because her expertise is in gender identity.

When pesky reality tries to trip up gender ideology, retreat is the best defence.

Experts with blinkers

Gunn, along with a number of the other expert witnesses for Wellington Pride were unwilling to answer questions about the Cass Review* because they had not bothered to read it.

Other questions Gunn declined to answer on the grounds that she is not an expert included ones about the exponential rise in trans identification in teenage girls, the over-representation of children with autism in gender clinics, and the evidence that the majority of children grow out of gender dysphoria if left alone to go through a natural puberty.

Not being an expert in gender identity disorder, or a psychologist, or a gender theorist, was the excuse Gunn provided for declining to answer several questions. Even the question of whether people can change sex was supposedly outside her scope.

Gunn stated her training is in children up to the age of eight. In her evidence and in her day job that includes training early childhood educators, she is willing to endorse childish fantasies which funnel young children away from reality, without having expert knowledge in how those actions will affect them as teenagers or young adults.

[*The Cass Review is the world’s most comprehensive investigation of gender medicine for minors which found “remarkably weak evidence” for medical intervention for gender distressed children.]

The toll of gender identity

Professor Gunn believes in gender expansive teaching - that there is no right way to be a boy or girl - and so does RGE. We agree with her that gender diversity is not something to stifle. But being gender diverse does not turn someone into the opposite sex.

Taking a gentle-parenting-gender-affirmation approach to the fundamental truth of sex is indisputably harmful.

While proponents of child-centred identity choices think they are developing honest and caring relationships, in reality they are teaching children that they are isolated units whose wishes should take precedence over everyone else’s.

Some of the end results are:

• A lack of boundaries - children learn that they are entitled to make unreasonable demands of others.

• Coddling - constantly validating wishful thinking or body dissociation prevents children from developing resilience. Protecting children from opposing points of view does not prepare them for the real world.

• Obscuring natural consequences - children believe they can pause puberty without understanding that their cognitive development and fertility will also be affected.

• Holding unrealistic beliefs - young children who still believe in Father Christmas and the Tooth Fairy are easy to convince that humans can change sex without difficulty and with no negative consequences.

• A high emotional toll - adults are required to suppress their own emotions and beliefs and to respond empathetically to children’s desires, knowing that can lead to medical harm.

Sex is an intrinsic, immutable fact that children only fully understand to be constant by about the age of seven. Disrupting that cognitive development with affirmation of falsehoods is irresponsible parenting or teaching and is anything but gentle in the long term.

By Fern Hickson