Nowadays, more and more parents are raising their children in a gender-neutral environment, where they decline to assign their offspring a gender and allow them to pursue whatever style of dress or type of hobby takes their fancy. However, this liberal approach to child-rearing has often proved to be controversial, and invoked the ire of conservative detractors. Whatever your stance on the issue, it's clear that we need to have a conversation about the way we raise our kids and what gender roles we place on them.

One such person who has opened up this dialogue is 25-year-old Charlie Hirons, who has recently been forced to defend her young son Riley-Prince's decision to wear a Disney princess dress. The five year old has been seen by his neighbours wearing the Cinderella gown ever since his birthday came around - even when he plays football outside.

But Charlie is keen to stress that she doesn't think her son wearing a dress is an issue. Although strangers often make comments about the boy's appearance when the family are out and about together, Riley-Prince has remained unintimidated by the judgements of others.

Charlie, who suffers from body-image and self-esteem issues herself, has stated in a recent interview that she finds her little boy's unconventional lifestyle choice inspiring, and claims that he has motivated her to be more fearless in life. "I’ve had people tell me I shouldn’t have let him wear a dress, and when we were out to dinner, people were staring and whispering" Charlie stated.

"It’s ridiculous that boys are meant to like one thing, girls another. Who cares if boys like pink, or if girls want to join the army? Just let them be themselves. There’s no need to make comments about my son, or how I bring him up. If you don’t like him, don’t look."

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Riley-Prince first started getting in touch with his feminine side after he asked his mom if he could get an earring, just like his stepdad Nathan Hirons. At the time, people criticised Charlie for piercing her child's ears at such a young age. Yet Charlie insists that it was the right thing to do, stating "I thought it was best to get it done when he was young and wouldn’t fiddle with it."

She added: "People have told me it was cruel and not his choice, but the way I see it, he’s grown up knowing no different. It was over in seconds and now he’s older, he loves his earrings. He calls them his pretties. Riley-Prince loves them. He always changes his studs to match Nathan’s. I’ve got a Batman tattoo, and Nathan has a Joker one. Sometimes, Riley-Prince asks Nathan to draw tattoos on him using face paint and biro, so we can all match. It’s really cute how much he wants to be like Nathan."

"Riley-Prince knows exactly who he is. He’s a very open little boy, and extremely mature and confident. If people ever ask him about his earrings or dress, he just tells them that’s what he likes. He’s good at standing up for himself. I’ve had body struggles myself, being a plus-sized girl at a size 22-24, but seeing him shrug off critics and be proud of who he is really inspires me."

Maybe Riley-Prince's dress sense is a little unconventional, but isn't a child's autonomy more important than fitting in? Maybe this is something he will grow out of, or maybe he's a pioneer among a new and more gender-fluid generation.

I lay in my bed last night and traced an invisible baby bump above my stomach, but I don't know if I ever actually want to have a baby.

From the moment little girls are old enough to play with toys, generally speaking, they're encouraged to play with dolls - dolls with frilly little dresses, dolls with big blue glassy eyes, and sometimes even dolls that cry.

Because the patriarchy is nothing if not good at preparing people for hetronormative roles before they even know how to think for themselves.

While attitudes towards gender norms have come a long way since I was a child in the early nineties, it does mean that I am one of the millions of women around the world who are at a ripe old childbearing age, but whose maternal instincts haven't quite got the memo.

And that's okay. It's okay not to want to children.

Now, before you think, 'Here we go, another woke millennial ranting about something that she'll probably change her mind about soon', please hear me out.

Seriously. I spent six years of my life writing a novel about motherhood and families. I've spent a long time thinking about this.

I like kids. Heck, I think I'm actually really good with them, but that's part of the problem.

I grew up just before the internet became a thing, and I genuinely dread to think how different my childhood would have been if I'd had access to any real social media before the age of 12.

This is me having internet-free fun as a kid:

Even when I did manage to get online, with dial-up internet and a big, boxy 90s computer, my access was restricted... and it was for the best.

The stats back me up on this one too, with the FBI reporting that half of all victims of online sexual exploitation are between the ages of 12 and 15.

And when I say the internet is dangerous, I'm not just talking about grooming, there's the possibility of online bullying or simply having your head filled with nonsense and unrealistic standards that no actual human can achieve, something that's left me, a reasonably fully-functioning human, in despair on more than one occasion.

Do I think I've got what it takes to protect a child from that? Honestly, no.

Children need more than just safety though; it is expensive to raise a child, from a financial and emotional point of view.

I'd want any hypothetical child of mine to have the best, or at the very least, to have the means and support available to them to give this life thing the best shot they can.

My mom stayed at home to raise me and my sister, and it saved us from countless problems: had she not been there, she'd have never noticed that I was getting bullied constantly in elementary school; had she not been there, maybe I would have wandered off into a dark corner of the internet and been subject to something unsavory.

I'm also honest enough to admit that I like having money and free time, and I'm not sure if that's something I'm prepared to give up for a mini-me (animals, on the other hand, just aren't as needy).

Then there's the issue of mental health, which is my biggest fear for any hypothetical child I might have.

I was tracing a baby bump above my stomach last night as I read Bryony Gordon's memoir, Mad Girl, about her battle with OCD and addiction.

While I'm lucky enough to have never suffered from substance abuse, I have OCD - a condition that makes my life a lot harder than what it would have otherwise be - and the thought of passing that on is just a massive nope to me.

It's proven too, with Medline reporting that there's a higher risk of first-degree relatives of affected individuals developing the condition.

But even if I take myself out of the equation, environmentally, the world needs us to stop reproducing at the rate we've been going at.

The world is already overpopulated and having just one child results in an additional 58.6 tonnes of carbon being emitted into the atmosphere each year.

Even if your heart is set on having kids, the greener thing to do is to have less of them.

The decision to have children will always be a deeply personal one, but because of my age, I'm feeling a creeping sense of pressure to get my skates on, or at the very least justify why it's just not for me. And I shouldn't have to.

Children are great, but you don't need to have them to be a productive and worthwhile human.

Maybe I will become a mom one day - and if that day comes, I want to be sure that I can give my kid everything I'd ever want them to have. But I'm also quite content to remain childfree.

A mother has ignited a heated debate after she encountered a "problem" after her son wanted to get some Minnie Mouse underwear.

To kick this off, Minnie Mouse is a character that can be universally loved by all and certainly isn't aimed at a specific gender.

So if an infant wants to show their love for the Disney character by donning some clothes with her on them, then in my opinion, they should be allowed to do exactly that.

Avni Shah, writing for the Huffington Post, found herself in a position where she was asked by her son to buy some Minnie Mouse underwear.

Walking around Target searching for what they wanted, Shah encountered the issue that the only underwear featuring Minnie was labeled "girls."

For boy-specific underwear, the characters available included male Disney characters such as Mickey Mouse and Pluto.

Undeterred by the labels, and determined to allow her son to wear what he wanted and not be swayed into telling her son that he can't have Minnie, Shah purchased underwear labeled for "girls".

Wearing them without a sense of "oddity or difference", Shah's son soon found himself on the receiving end of comments at school during potty time, when his classmates asked why he was wearing girl's underwear.

He later wore Disney Princess socks to school and soon realized that his classmates referring to him as a "girl" was meant as a hurtful comment and to make him feel inferior.

"Separating people into categories has an adverse effect on children’s worldviews, reinforcing at an early age harmful stereotypes," Shah writes. "Kids are set up early on to use limiting frameworks when addressing issues like gender, race and ethnic identity."

"My husband and I have told our son that people will not always understand his styling choices, but the popularity of his choices shouldn’t shape his preferences," she continued.

In the months after the incident, Shah's son went to school wearing "a tie-dye pink baseball backpack, My Little Pony figurines, and most recently, sparkly Skechers that light up in pink and purple hearts."

The writer finds herself trying to explain to her son that he is well within his right to wear what he wants and to not get bogged down by categories created by others - but she also wants to instill in him that people will often voice their opinions.

When the article was shared on Facebook it ignited a debate, as one person said: "Who cares? Honestly. If he wants to wear Minnie, let him wear Minnie. People want to prescribe their own social norms to everyone."

A second added: "We don't let our son dress up in girl stuff. We tell him that's for girls. And that's the end of the story," while a third said: "You say no those are for girls you are a boy they don’t make Minnie mouse underwear the boys parents are so afraid to say no to their children."

A fourth person said: "Let them wear what they want if other people don't like their choice that's the other person's issue. We are all unique individuals we should liberate ourselves when young."

What do you think?

Featured image credit: David Niviere/Kipa/Sygma/Getty

It's no secret that some of the major production companies behind children's animated movies tend to throw in risqué jokes every now and again. You know, to keep parents as entertained by the movie as their kid - they're the ones buying the tickets after all.

Some of the most wholesome Disney movies, for example, will have moms and dads cackling away while their youngsters watch on in oblivion.

And as far as Disney is concerned, Mickey and Minnie Mouse are as wholesome as it gets. But even they are not immune to this treatment.

In fact, one Disney enthusiast has taken to TikTok to share a discovery she made after she bought a mat adorned with an image of Mickey and Minnie Mouse.

On closer inspection, a particular part of Minnie's skirt resembled something quite "rude".

Michelle explained in the video text that she "picked up the cutest mat today and realized when I got home that something was 'up' with Minnie."

Needless to say, a number of people took to the comments to weigh in on the x-rated discovery.

One person had a lucky escape, explaining that they too had been planning to buy it.

They wrote: "I had this in my cart at Hobby Lobby but realized it wasn't 40% off. Glad I didn't buy it."

Another commenter recognized that mat from her work, writing: "Omg my job sells this mat and I will not be able to see it the same."

Carrying on the theme of not being able to "unsee" the "rude" addition to a supposedly innocent Disney mat, another TikTok user shared: "I had to watch this twice to see it. Now I can't unsee it."

But while many could not "unsee" it, others couldn't see it full stop.

"Please explain," said one user, while another asked, "What is wrong?"

User @alexiana did the less eagle-eyed viewers a solid by giving them this handy tip: "Look at her skirt, y'all."

When you take your child to daycare you expect them to be looked after, not ridiculed. However, for Jessica and Steve Rold, their daughter received the latter.

When the parents were picking up their two year-old-son from daycare with their infant daughter in tow, daycare staff took it upon themselves to issue some unsolicited parenting advice, telling the Rolds to dress their daughter "more girly" for the benefit of the other children.

According to the staff, dressing their child in pink means that they would be able to identify her as a female. But, rather than going home and ordering dollars upon dollars worth of baby clothes, these two came up with another idea.

Addressing the situation humorously, Jessica and Steve rolled up the next day with their daughter looking like this:

Steve posted the image onto Reddit and fellow fathers decided to come forward and contribute their experiences of raising their children in a gender-obsessed society. This man, for example, has a son who loves the colour pink and My Little Pony.

"My four-year-old loves pink. All his friends are girls and they all love pink, MLP, and princesses.... so my son loves to wear pink (he has exactly one pink shirt that he wears the moment it is clean), he begs to watch MLP the moment he gets home from school, and he talks about princesses all the time. I see our family visibly cringe. Its great."

While this dad's daughter loves Hot Wheels and Mine Craft. However, as he says, they are children, so let them have fun.

"I have a 5 year old girl. She loves Pokemon, Minecraft, and has said she wants a Hot Wheels track set for Christmas. She also loves MLP, Barbie, mermaids, princesses, and unicorns.

"Her lego sets include Creator sets, Lego City, Disney Princess, Lego Friends, both "Friends" style and traditional style super hero stuff, Minecraft, and Ninjago.

"Sometimes we buy her T-Shirts and PJs from the boys section. Actually we've been buying PJs from the boy section more and more, because its easier to find stuff that doesn't have those annoying little frilly things on the sleeves that feel scratchy and bother her."

Just let kids have fun and enjoy what they want.

Finally, this little legend loves to live the high life and is partial to a manicure.

"I have boy girl almost three year old twins. My son goes to daycare with all girls. He loves trucks, sports, riding bikes..doing boy things but he also insists when my wife and daughter get their nails painted that he gets his nails (toes as well) painted. Its pretty funny to see and we get a lot of comments on it from strangers but hey, hes happy."

It seems ridiculous that in this day and age, we're getting so hung up on the colour a child is wearing. Kids are kids - let them wear what they want for goodness sake.