Sunday, January 22, 2012

Smacking debate

http://www.itv.com/daybreak/lifestyle/familiesandparenting/thesmackingdebate/

The Smacking debate...should we or shouldn't we?! Personally I am against it, the law says you can smack your child as long as you do not leave a mark....but what do you think? With it being highlighted in the soaps recently daybreak looked into the issue the video clip is on the link above and worth a quick watch!

British couple reveals sex of child they raised as ‘genderless’ for 5 years

Fox News article!!...
A British couple who raised their child as "gender neutral" in a bid to break free from stereotyping revealed Friday that their five-year-old is a boy.
Beck Laxton and her partner Kieran, from Sawston in central England, referred to their son, Sasha, as "the infant" and dressed the youngster in ambiguous outfits to keep his sex a secret from friends and strangers.
They decided to tell people the child's gender after it became more difficult to conceal when he started pre-school.
Laxton, a 46-year-old web editor, told the Cambridge News of her reasons for raising a "genderless" child.
"I wanted to avoid all that stereotyping," she said. "Stereotypes seem fundamentally stupid. Why would you want to slot people into boxes?"
Even the couple themselves chose not to discover whether Sasha was a boy or a girl until half an hour after his birth -- and in an email announcing the birth they simply told family and friends they "had a baby called Sasha."
"I don't think I'd do it if I thought it was going to make him unhappy, but at the moment he's not really bothered either way," she said. "All I want to do is make people think a bit."
The couple is happy to allow Sasha to wear flowery clothes -- and sent family and friends a Christmas card with a photo of the boy dressed in a pink fairy outfit.
Sasha is encouraged to play with gender-neutral toys in the family's television-free home, Laxton said.
A couple from Toronto hit the headlines in May last year when they refused to reveal the sex of their baby, Storm, as they wanted to raise the child "to be free of societal norms regarding gender."

What do you think?...Is it really a great idea? Are they being kind and giving the child the choice of how they want to grow up or are they just forcing their opinion onto a child who is to young to understand?!
Personally I think if they wanted the child to grow up with non gender specific toys I can agree with that but to not tell people the sex of the child are they just storing up issues for the child in the future?!