For these parents, the decision to wait wasn't ideological -- it was practical.

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Daisy, a 38-year-old magazine editor from Brooklyn, could not be a prouder parent.

“We have the most adorable child in the entire world,” Daisy says without a blush.

But ask Daisy whether one-year-old Kay is a boy or a girl, and the answer is unusual: Undetermined. “We didn’t want to take a guess,” Daisy explains. “We're waiting for Kay to tell us.”

For Daisy, the decision to wait wasn’t ideological -- it was personal and practical. Daisy (whose name has been changed to protect privacy) is transgender, and uses the gender-neutral pronoun "they". So is one of Daisy’s two co-parents (the third happily identifies with the gender he was assigned at birth: male). Since Daisy and their trans partner didn’t turn out to be the girls their parents assumed they were, it seemed illogical to make the same assumptions about their child.

“With two of us going through gender transitions, it was so clear to us that gender is an incredibly personal thing,” Daisy says. “It's something you have to figure out for yourself.”



The Full Gender Menu

Once they’d considered the possibility that their child might turn out to be trans, Daisy says, it seemed natural to keep all the options open. “It didn’t make any sense to any of us to gender a baby who's too young to understand gender,” Daisy says. “We didn’t want to put our child into a box, even if they were later permitted to escape. Why not give that kid a blank space to fill in, rather than something to cross out and write over later?”

In practical terms, that means that Daisy and their partners dress Kay in everything from pearls and ruffles to bow ties and suspenders. Kay has both toy cars and dolls, and “they're happy to play with whatever we put in front of them,” Daisy says. As far as typically gendered clothes and toys are concerned, “We’ve given Kay a menu and said, ‘You can have anything on this menu, and if you want, you can have a different thing every day.’”



Arguing With Strangers

When strangers compliment Daisy on their handsome little boy or adorable little girl, Daisy doesn’t bother to correct them. “What's more boring than arguing with a stranger about a baby's gender?” Instead, Daisy just says, “Thank you.” Friends and family are invited to call Kay by “whatever pronouns come to hand.”

Besides, the point isn’t to raise a gender-free kid -- most children, though not all, end up with a strong and consistent gender identity, no matter how they're raised. Kay will grow up knowing people of all gender variations, Daisy says, and “at some point it may occur to them that they also have a gender.”

Daisy says they’ll be happy no matter what, as long as Kay is comfortable. “Taking pressure off my child and saying, ‘All these options are here for you and we’re good with whatever you pick’ -- to me, it’s the kindest way I can raise my child.”