Baby's an It (call of the obstetrician?)

[Wilson Gray]

Just a leftover, possibly-flawed memory, but it seems to me that when
I was but a tad, a child fully ceased to be an "it" only when it
reached puberty, at which time it truly begins to matter what sex it
is. A *particular* child ceased to be "it" much sooner, of course. But
a random child could continue to be referred to as "it" for a pretty
good while.

Did you see that child run into the street?!
Yes! It could've gotten hit by a car or something!

Even though the child's clothing made its sex obvious.

Once upon a time, pre-pubertal boys wore knickers - in the AmE sense,
of course - long pants, or short pants. Pre-pubertal girls wore
dresses or skirts and it wasn't considered necessary for them to wear
tops when at the beach or in other such-like circumstance. But they
could *not* wear pants of any kind - except for snowpants in the
winter and these were worn under their dresses and removed indoors -
until they became teenagers. Then they could wear short-shorts or
jeans in informal circumstances. Junior high, high school, and college
did not constitute sufficiently-informal circumstances. Behind The
Cotton Curtain, female fieldhands even wore dresses at work,
regardless of their age.

Of course, the use of "it" simplifies one's grammar. When writing a
paper on babies or children, authors can simply use "it" instead of
using "he ... her," "she ... him" or other grammatical asininities in
a silly effort not to appear genderist, as though the 99.44% of the
population that has no interest whatsoever in scholarly papers of any
kind would give a flying fox at a rolling doughnut about this
"problem" with the English language.

-Wilson



On Tue, Sep 9, 2008 at 8:42 AM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
> Subject:      Re: Baby's an It (call of the obstetrician?)
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Does this arise from it's being difficult with babies of tender age
> to determine their sex by external observation?
>
> Joel
>
> At 9/9/2008 11:54 AM, Lynne Murphy wrote:
>>--On Monday, September 8, 2008 11:00 am -0400 Wilson Gray
>><hwgray at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
>>
>>>Are there many - or any - people still around who learned as I did
>>>that a baby is an "it" and not a "he" or a "she"?
>>
>>'Dunce' blogged about this a few months ago, noting it as more British than
>>American in his experience--in mine too.
>>
>><http://newpics.org/david/AreBritishChildrenMoreNeuterThanUSChildren.aspx>
>>
>>A 60-something English friend of ours persists in calling our 8-month-old
>>daughter 'it', but then he corrects himself because he's been taken to task
>>for it many times.
>>
>>Lynne
>>
>>
>>Dr M Lynne Murphy
>>Senior Lecturer in Linguistics and English Language
>>Arts B135
>>University of Sussex
>>Brighton BN1 9QN
>>
>>phone: +44-(0)1273-678844
>>http://separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com
>>
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-----
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