Why Philosophers(or maybe just Swedes) Shouldn't Have Children

Now, I'll admit at the outset that neither gender studies or philosophy are my academic strong suits; I hope to rectify the latter someday even if the former has yet to really draw my interest. Nevertheless, this compels some comment even from such an ignorant as myself:

A Swedish couple have decided to keep their child's sex a secret, in the hopes that it won't be pigeon holed into any gender roles from the outset. It's public name would appear to be 'Pop'.

Now, I'm fairly sure that the parents are not in fact academic philosophers, and my point may have been better made if I titled the post 'why philosophies shouldn't have children'.

Philosophies, by which I mean those systems of thought that share common grounds and goals and evaluations of human nature/activity(like pragmatism, or utilitarianism) occupy, to me, a middle ground between the abstract and the concrete: they have as their subject a very concrete issue(i.e., humanity) and pontificate on it's essential nature and right ordering in a kind of intellectual vacuum, from which educators, politicians and parents may pluck particular insights as they wish.

But that careful disassembling of theory for the sake of practice should be, and I think often is, conditioned by the realities of day to day life. And while I've no objection to someone living out their own life experimentally, using a child to showcase or prove a controversial aspect of a contreversial and not at all concrete theory borders on irresponsible. That gender roles are to some degree(likely a big one) conditioned socially doesn't change the fact that Pop will be growing up in a gendered society, and unless they want to raise it/him/her in some kind of bubble there will be examples for it to identify with a emulate, voiding the whole intent of this experiment: Pop's uncoerced choice of gender, wholly apart from it's biological sex.

Apart from the fact that none of us grow up in that intellectual playground of the philosophers, I'd also like to point out that Pop's parents are really rolling the dice as to its appearance. Barring an androgynous maturation on Pop's part, biology may break the code of silence first.

I don't doubt that these people love Pop very much, but I do think this is a wrongheaded venture. As one of the experts interviewed the in the article said, child rearing is about the needs of the child. Growing up in our admittedly imperfect world, I think Pop would benefit more from an education that affirmed his/her gender while outlining the limitations of what society decides is appropriate behavior for you as opposed to what you yourself feel drawn to do or commit to.

I'm sure there's more to say, but I've got too many blanks to fill in with regard to the actual theory behind all this. I'd be interested to hear others thoughts though. ^_^