Chubby-cheeked and fair-haired, Storm Stocker has the expression of permanent puzzlement familiar to parents of four-month-old babies.

But then this child has a lot to think about: such as whether he or she is a boy or a girl.

It won’t be much help turning for guidance to Storm’s brothers: Jazz, five, with long pigtails, a pink ear stud and sparkly pink dresses , and two-year-old Kio, with collar-length hair and a penchant for leggings.

Everyone who meets them thinks they are girls.

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Boy or girl? Storm, in red, gets a cuddle from his - or her - older brother Jazz

Still, even if they do sound as if they were named after family hatchbacks, Jazz and Kio got off lightly. Their parents David Stocker and Kathy Witterick have something more extreme for their third child.

In a move that has earned the Toronto couple the dubious title of the world’s most politically correct family, they are raising Storm as ‘genderless’.

The midwives who delivered the child had no uncertainty about Storm’s sex — the baby isn’t a hermaphrodite. It’ couture wedding dresses couture wedding dresses;s just that the parents will be keeping it a secret until the child is old enough to ‘choose’ which gender he or she is most comfortable living with. Apart from the two siblings, a family friend and the two midwives, no one knows if Storm is biologically a girl or a boy.

The rest of the couple’s friends and family — even the grandparents — were sent an email that announced: dresses for brides mother ‘We’ve decided not to share Storm’s sex for now — a tribute to freedom and choice in place of limitation.’

The couple admitted their wonderfully po-faced missive was initially met with silence. One can only imagine the emails and phone calls that passed between their loved ones as they digested this bizarre plan.

The couple say no one they told had a kind word to say about their decision. The grandparents were annoyed that they had to explain to friends that their grandchild was more of an ‘it’ than a ‘he’ or a ‘she’.

Some friends accused the couple of imposing their ideology on the child; others chided that they had condemned Storm to a life of bullying.

But, naturally, the parents weren’t dismayed. Repulsed by a world of what they see as pushy parents, they believe very young children can — and should — choose who they want to be, free from social norms about being male or female.

‘I am saying to the world: ‘‘Please can you just let Storm discover for him/herself what s(he) wants to be?’’ silk cocktail dresses online  ’ says Witterick.

Or, as her husband puts it: ‘What we noticed is that parents make so many choices for their children. It’s obnoxious.’

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Maybe baby: Storm Stocker with his or her father David

Those who know them insist Stocker, 39, and Witterick, 38, are well-meaning and devoted to their children. But in the interview they gave before the thunderclap of outrage sent them scurrying to close the curtains on their bizarre household, they emerge as beyond parody.  

Stocker, a progressive teacher, wrote a textbook, Math That Matters, which urges teachers to stop using everyday objects in maths questions and instead work with issues such as homophobia, poverty, child abuse and racial profiling to ‘spark discussion’ and increase students’ interest in ‘social justice advocacy’.

(Sample question: A Chinese worker who makes my shoes earns what percentage of the price I paid for them?)

Their last family holiday was two weeks in Cuba staying with local families to learn about the wonders of Marxist revolution.

In their cluttered family home, Witterick says she was put out when, after the birth, the first question from ‘even the people you love the most’ was to ask if she’d had a girl or a boy. Well, yes, people do tend to ask that, but as Stocker adds, charmingly: ‘That the whole world must know what is between the baby’s legs is unhealthy, unsafe and voyeuristic. We know — and we’re keeping it clean, safe, healthy and private (not secret!)’
Indeed, you don’t usually have to pry about gender, but that’s because you can work it out from other evidence.

But Storm’s parents are offering no clues. The child is dressed in gender-neutral red and the couple are so determined to fight the ‘tyranny of pronouns’ that, after considering ‘ 2011 prom dresses Z’ (pronounced ‘zee’), mum refers to Storm as ‘ chapel train quinceanera dresses chapel train quinceanera dresses;she’ — but ‘imagining the ‘‘s’’ in brackets’.

It’s hard to believe Storm’s brothers will not blurt out the secret. Having said that, they don’t seem to have a packed social life. Jazz is home-schooled (his mother uses a system called ‘unschooling’ in which the child is taught something only when he asks about it).

Given that he loves his pink dress because ‘it really poofs out at the bottom’, you can understand why he finds the idea of going to school ‘upsetting’.

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Unconventional: Kathy Witterick, right, with two-year-old son Kio. Behind her is husband David Stocker, holding Storm as Jazz looks on

There are already signs of trouble ahead. At the local playground, two little girls refused to play with the ‘girl boy’, and a shopping trip ended in humiliating retreat when an assistant balked at the idea of selling a feather boa to a little boy.

Revealing not a jot of self-doubt, Jazz’s parents insist their decision to go the whole gender-neutral hog with Storm came after Stocker found a book in his school library called X: A Fabulous Child’s Story.

It’s about a child with ‘no gender’ who plays football and weaves baskets.

The child ignores bullying and ends up stunning experts with how well-adjusted he/she is.

The story will strike many as naive, but Storm’s parents found it ‘compelling’.

The great irony, of course, about this family’s scorn for gender is that they’re obsessed with it. Even before he was weighed down with Storm’s secret, Jazz was showing signs of confusion.

One of his favourite books is 10,000 dresses , the tale of a boy who likes to dress up. And in a birthday card to his father, he wrote: ‘I love to do laundry with Dad.’

Granted, not all little boys want to play with toy cars, but are fashion and washing clothes normal enthusiasms for a five-year-old?

The parents insist they are giving their children freedom to express themselves. Critics tend to see a pair of crackpot liberals indulging in crude social engineering. When they went public with their decision, Stocker and Witterick may have assumed readers of the liberal Canadian newspaper the Toronto Star, would applaud, but instead hundreds emailed to express their horror.

‘This is a perfect example of why you should have a licence to have children,’ erupted one reader.

And the shockwaves have moved across Canada and beyond.

Perhaps this outlandish world of gender-free parenting would be comical if it weren’t for the fact that experts fear it could be damaging.

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'I am saying to the world: "Please can you just let Storm discover for him/herself what s(he) wants to be?"' says mother Kathy Witterick

‘To raise a child not as a boy or a girl is creating, in some sense, a freak. It sets them up for not knowing who they are,’ says Dr Eugene Beresin, a child psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Dr Harold Koplewicz, a leading U.S. child psychiatrist, said he was ‘disturbed’ that well-meaning parents could be so misguided.

‘When children are born, they’re not a blank slate. We do have male brains and female brains,’ he says. ‘There’s a reason why boys do more rough and tumble play; there’s a reason why girls have better language development skills.’

For him, ‘the worst part of the story’ mother of bride dresses mother of bride dresses; is that the two older boys have to keep Storm’s gender a secret — an act that other experts say will make them ashamed.

Intriguingly, this experiment may not be unique. In 2009, ball prom dresses a Swedish couple announced, to a blaze of publicity, that they were raising their two-year-old child, Pop, wedding dress sample sale online wedding dress sample sale online as gender-neutral. Even now, we don’t know if Pop is a boy or a girl.

A more tragic case suggests the biological facts are difficult to suppress. In 1966, David Reimer, a six-month-old boy from Winnipeg, Canada, lost his penis in a botched circumcision.

A psychologist persuaded David’s mother he could be raised as a  girl, so his genitals were partially converted to female ones. David became Brenda, but complained  he never felt female. In 2004, he committed suicide, aged 38.

As for the Toronto experiment, experts doubt the parents can keep up the charade, particularly as studies show we cannot help but treat boys and girls differently.

Storm’s mother says that if people want to take a peek when she changes a nappy, ‘that’s their journey’. The question of whether her youngest child will use the gents or the ladies is still some way off.

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Brides are not letting gender stand in the way of asking close friends to be part of their special day.

JARROD Lukies was surprised and a little confused when he was approached by Raquel Handley (nee West) to be her male attendant — or bridesman — on her wedding day.

"I thought she was joking, tulle skirt dress prom " the Cobram-based farmer says. "I didn't know whether I'd have to dance with a guy or a girl; whether I'd have to carry flowers tony bowls prom dresses , go to the hens', that sort of thing. But it was a great experience."

It's a situation, according to Bride Magazine fashion editor Kirstie Armiger-Grant, that has become more common in recent years. While attributing much of the trend to Hollywood rom-coms such as My Best Friend's Wed-ding (1997), beautiful bridal boutique beautiful bridal boutique Made of Honour (2008) and Sex and the City 2 (2010) prom dresses red prom dresses red, she says wedding and gender traditions have "loosened up", particularly in the past decade.

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Karly Forshaw added to the bridesmaids bridesmaids at her wedding with a 'bridesman', best mate Luciano Balloi. Photo: Simon O'Dwyer

Another factor is that couples are paying for their weddings in full. "Many brides don't necessarily want the wedding organised along traditional lines by their parents; by paying for it themselves they have total control, including having a close male friend in their bridal party if they wish."

Ms Armiger-Grant believes a societal shift where "children are no longer raised with a 'boys in one corner and girls in the other' mentality," and the age of the "metrosexual" have aligned men's and women's interests and resulted in an increase in meaningful, non-sexual friendships.

But, summer mother of the bride dresses for a wedding she adds, the more traditional gender differences can help ensure a bride's day runs more smoothly. "Having a male in a bridal party can avert the whole 'Bridezilla' thing. A guy is less likely to get caught up in the emotion of it all and be a good grounding influence.

"I've had some women say a male perspective is nice because they're more brutally honest . . . Plus they're good at all the logistical stuff."

Melbourne-based Karly Forshaw and Cameron Barnes are one couple who embraced the trend in more ways than one. On their wedding day earlier this year, wedding outfits wedding outfits Karly had her best friend of 11 years prom dresses 2012 , Luciano Balloi, as her "bridesman", while Cameron was flanked by his "groomsmaid" Hayley Pearce.

"He is somebody who I'm closest to in my life," says Karly of Luciano. "I couldn't imagine him not being there with me."

Karly says their break with convention didn't please everybody. "Some of the relatives couldn't take it seriously. They were worried it would take the attention off us; that it was too much of a novelty."

But the doubters were won over in the end.

"Luciano did all the girls stuff, even trying to catch the bouquet, and Hayley posed with cigars for a groomsmen photo.

"People could see the support they were giving each of us. It was clear he was there for me — sale wedding dresses dublin sale wedding dresses dublin; in fact he was probably more emotional than the female members of the bridal party."

Luciano says he hadn't realised being a male bridesmaid was possible. "Especially coming from Italy and being used to somewhat more sober Catholic weddings. But I was honoured to be asked — I would have worn a dress for Karly!"

He says he "loved the experience — and doing all the girly stuff".

Karly says people shouldn't worry about tradition and etiquette when it comes to their wedding day. "It's so important to think about who is important to you, and who you want to be surrounded by on the day. Don't let anyone dictate how you should organise your own wedding."