Finding out the gender of their unborn child was an option earlier generations didn’t have.
I believe this isn't true. It might not be as accurate, but there was definitely methods such as Ancient Egyptians predicted baby gender by urinating on barley. http://uir.unisa.ac.za/handle/10500/8786
Tons of people now organize gender reveal celebrations, where the parents-to-be cut into either a pink or blue cake to learn their future baby’s sex along with a crowd. And some expectant parents now even have ultrasound parties where their family and friends gather around while a technician wields what seems like a magic wand so they can watch as the baby’s privates are revealed on a computer screen right in their living room.
Even though this seems like a cheerful event that is to be celebrated by many happy families, at the same time they are also putting certain expectations on the child on how they will turn out to be once the gender is revealed, and that the child will be forced to act certain way because of it. Gender can be one thing, but sexuality can mean another. The child could be a boy but would still like wearing girly clothes or playing with dolls. However, if a family is already expected the child to be certain way, they will refuse the child to act feminine. And this is a problem in society nowadays. In society, when it comes to shopping, weather it be buying clothes or toys, these products segregate the two genders and set standard of how to act in a society according to your gender. For example, if you go to a toy section for girls, you will see a lot of girly dolls, or kitchen toy sets, or nurse toy sets, very elegant and feminine, which basically means that as a girl, you should just stay home and be a housewife, or do some other girly jobs such as being a nurse, meanwhile on boys section have a lot of violent like kind of toys such as guns, or sword, or toys like big trucks, or construction building toys, toys that represent you are a man, and man fights, man drives big trucks and they also work in a construction site while looking very buffed doing it, and that how society wants a boy to act like. It’s morally wrong. In Gender Schema theory, it states that by the age of 2 children already have a sense of gender identity and begins to process. And by the age of 6 or 7 according to cognitive development theory, that acting like one’s gender is internal, and gender role behavior is intrinsic. This means early on, children already consider and question their own sexualities, and thus I believe it is important to be supportive if the child happens to question their own sexuality, so that the child could grow up possibly healthier mentally and physically.
“A lawyer,” I often answered. Or, “a doctor.” Occasionally, I’d say, “a rock guitarist.”
Although I agree with Kandel's philosophy about keeping the child's gender a secret until the delivery, or that not stuffing the images from social media and fashion company's advertisements of how to act and dress accordingly based on one's gender, I believe that Kandel has made a contradiction to herself at the answers to the questions: "do you know what you're having?". "Doctor", "lawyer", "a rock guitarist", were her answers. Even though she believes that her children should have the right over their own genders, Kandel still expects her children to live certain way. Growing in an Asian household, parents always expect me to be certain way and follow certain career path, even though the career path wasn't me, I still followed so that I could fulfill their expectations about me. And for me, making your child to live certain way that is not who they are, either it be sexuality or career path, they're the same difference.
And most it seems want to find out what they’re carrying before the baby arrives into a gender-specific world of pink and blue everything from birth announcements to diapers, tiny tees to toys.
I agree to the author's point that, entitling children to specific trend just because of their gender, isn't morally correct. I believe all of this is simply due to either nowadays social media (such as the Kardashian), or big company's marketing teams, who are trying to promote these stereotype and imprint them in people's head, just so that the people who are parents, or someone who are trying to buy gifts for baby shower parties, can buy their products. In 19th century, boy fashion started trending sailor suits for young boys which contain the color of white and blue. Due to the popularity of this trend, more and more people associated with color blue to boys, thus became popular and wisely used til this very day. However one there is one point, which I would love to express is that, there are reasons for the signs, and the colors that represent these genders. The reason they exist because simply due to the fact people are social animals, they like to communicate, and this is another form of communication. The color blue represents for boys, and the color pink represents for girls, and it has been like this since these two colors have been established as the colors of boys and girls in the 1940s.