The host of Top Chef:
If you can't accept your child for who they're telling you they are, then you have no business being a parent.
— Padma Lakshmi (@PadmaLakshmi) March 31, 2021
What Lakshmi describes above is “parenting.” Letting your kids decide who “they are” is to abdicate one of the most vital aspects of the job. I will rarely accept what children are “telling” me “they are,” because most of the time they tell me they are Princess Ariel or one of The Avengers. The kids we vigilantly watch — to stop them from running while giggling into the street and killing themselves or snacking on some unidentified nuggets they’ve unearthed in the sandbox — often aren’t mature enough to comprehend the importance of showering, much less the social and physical implications of picking an incongruous sex. Even if you’ve convinced yourself of the fantastical notion that sex is merely “a label initially assigned by a doctor at birth,” as Lakshmi has, the idea that a prepubescent child should be dictating such things to adults is extraordinarily irresponsible. Kids have parents to stop them from doing stupid things.
Well, some kids.