Should Children be allowed to choose their Gender?

I remember being young and being asked what I wanted to be when I was older, my answer at the time was consistent for a while until I was old enough and realised that I no longer wanted to be a doctor. Eventually, having gone through primary and secondary education, I realised my passion was not connected to the medical field and as a result I had to figure out my career path with the right advice. Now looking back, it didn’t seem practical that I could confidently choose my future career at a young age without sufficient experience. I think it is safe to say that most children change their minds about their profession throughout their lives and that should be completely acceptable.

If children are to be trusted to make decisions about such important decisions that are detrimental to their upbringing, then should they not be able to choose what they eat, what time they go to bed or who they want to marry from an early age. I don’t have to ask your thoughts, because there is no way an infant would remain healthy if they were allowed to choose what they wanted to eat. Now if you had asked me as a teen what time should my bed time be limited to, I would never have slept because there was so much to do after midnight, of course not taking into account what effect it would have on my mental and physical being. What if children had to choose their husbands or wives at the age of five, would society deem this as acceptable? Of course not, a child does not have the capacity to make such important decisions.

So why do we not allow children to make more important decisions at a young age? Well, that is why God made parents, who are there to teach their children what is right from wrong. Parents have the responsibility of nurturing a child in becoming respectable adults. Ideally it is the norm for parents to choose which aspects of life are appropriate for their children and in doing so they can confidently monitor their child’s development. As far as I can remember, my parents made decisions such as what I would eat, they would make appropriate rules such as bed times, they also would prohibit me from being exposed to things that would be detrimental to my mental or physical health and even decided when was appropriate to discuss certain topics such as ‘the birds and the bees’. However, it appears that the roles of parenting are now in the hands of the state and parents are at risk of losing the rights to their children.

I remember a time when being a child was not so complicated. Children are now exposed to things that they are not fully able to comprehend. Television programmes, social media, and other mediums are infiltrating the minds of our future generation which seem to have a correlation with a rise in mental illnesses in our young people. I believe we take it for granted that the minds of our children are impressionable and they are like sponges being soaked with whatever is plunged into their subconscious. Why are institutions trying to inflict their adult opinions on those who are too young to make sensible opinions on matters beyond their capacity. It is time we let children be children and leave all the adult decisions to those old enough to distinguish their path in life.

In conclusion, there is a clear consensus that children are indecisive and asking them to make decisions about topics such as gender at such an early age has the potential to cause chaos. Children cannot be trusted to make decisions that may affect their future and parents need be given the leverage to make important decisions on behalf of their child. What a child is exposed to at a tender age has the ability to impact their development positively or negatively and institutions should not have to make these decisions without the proper input of a parent’s involvement. With the increase of mental illnesses amongst young people, I believe we are to be careful what is being introduced to our future generation. I say it’s time we get back to allowing children to be children again because our future depends on it.