A new generation of parents are refusing to assign their children a gender at birth with the growing trend slammed as a ‘scary experiment’.
The parents are instead allowing their children to decide whether or not they are a boy or a girl regardless of their physical anatomy.
They avoid using gendered pronouns when their child is born and refer to them as ‘they’ or ‘them’ with the genderless babies known as ‘theybies’.
Some parents have opened up on the new trend while experts have warned about the consequences in an upcoming 60 Minutes segment set to air on Sunday.
The trend comes after it was revealed Australian taxpayers were forking out for a new education program that teaches children doctors ‘decide’ gender at birth.
A new generation of parents are refusing to assign their children a gender at birth with experts slamming the growing trend as a ‘scary experiment’ (pictured, one of the parents in the upcoming 60 Minutes segment)
One mother explained they wanted to give freedom to their child to choose their own identity.
‘We didn’t assign a gender at birth … We’re not trying to eliminate gender, we’re just really helping kids find their own path to it,’ she said.
Another parent added: ‘I’m letting this little person be who they want to be.’
The parent revealed they had received some backlash from the public with strangers on the street confronting them about it.
Sky News host Erin Molan described the trend as a ‘little bit scary’.
‘You don’t want to tell parents how to parent,’ she said.
‘But I mean, even to the extent that it’s an experiment, which was just a direct quote there – I don’t think kids should be used in that kind of way. This stuff is going too far.
‘If your child, by the stage and the time they get to a position where they’re mature enough and think that they are not the gender they were assigned at birth, then deal with it then. Do what needs to be done to make sure that child is happy and fulfilled.
‘I just think it’s unnecessary and actually a little bit scary, the experimentation because when your kid leaves your home and enters the real world, they’re going to be confused.’
Developmental experts have warned the parenting trend could backfire once children are exposed to the wider community.
Chicago Medical School professor of neuroscience Lise Eliot told NBC News the children would struggle to fit in.
‘Once your child meets the outer world, which may be daycare, or preschool, or grandparents – it’s pretty much impossible to maintain a gender-free state,’ she said.
‘And depending on how conventional your community is, you could be setting your child up for bullying or exclusion.’
The growing trend comes after it was revealed in December an Australian taxpayer-funded campaign is telling children doctors ‘decide’ gender at birth.
The Australian Human Rights Commission has produced Let’s Talk About Bodies, Identity and Sexuality, which is aimed at schoolchildren aged 8 to 12.
The parents are instead allowing their children to decide whether or not they are a boy or a girl regardless of their physical anatomy (pictured, one of the children featured in the 60 Minutes segment)
The AHRC says the video and an associated workbook teaches kids about ‘gender, sexual identity, and diversity’.
But it has come under fire from opponents who branded it ‘queer utopia’ and ‘woke gender ideology’.
‘It is bizarre that the AHRC is introducing concepts around sexual orientation to kids in years three to six,’ researcher Kit Kowalski told the Daily Telegraph.
‘What eight year old needs to know about pansexuality?
‘There is inappropriate sexualised imagery used throughout the video, particularly in the part dealing with the Mardi Gras.’
The video opens with footage of Sydney’s annual Mardi Gras parade showing crossdressing revellers in flamboyant costumes dancing through the streets.
Children are told in the video the march is a celebration of the ‘diversity of people’s bodies, gender identities and sexual orientation’.
The youngsters are told about intersex and transgender people, and defines gender identity as ‘how you feel on the inside’.
It also says that some people have a different gender identity from the ‘sex that the doctor decided when they were born’.
Critics of the video say a foetus’s sex is observed in the uterus during pregnancy and not decided by doctors after birth.
The video also explains that some people are ‘pansexual’ who can be sexually or romantically attracted to others regardless of their gender identity or sex.
***
Read more at DailyMail.co.uk