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I've listened to a song called "Big girls don't cry". A very famous one. And in its lyrics there is the expression: "I'm gonna miss you like a child misses their blanket". After listening to the song I asked myself if the right way to say it wouldn't be: a child misses its blanket. Once the word child is singular and neutral, no gender. I hope I have made myself clear.

Nicolas Leskiu
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    "it" is usually not used for people (and when it is, often it's intended to "de-humanize" or imply that the person isn't really a person, for whatever reason). As for "their", you can look up "singular their," which is generally considered correct these days. – Esther Aug 26 '22 at 17:05
  • @Esther I see. So "their" can be used as a singular word. When I first saw it, I understood it as "well, child is either a girl or a boy, so she's singing their to mean both options, even if the noun is singular. Is my conclusion somewhat correct? – Nicolas Leskiu Aug 26 '22 at 17:12
  • For other people as out of touch as me, this is NOT the Four Seasons song, but another song of the same name by Fergie. It might be worth pointing that out in the question. But, like I said, I'm probably just way behind the times. Google puts the Fergie results above the Four Seasons ones. – Juhasz Aug 26 '22 at 17:15
  • @NicolasLeskiu the "they" here is singular and does not indicate any plurality. It is just used as a singular pronoun to refer to a human while remaining ambiguous about gender. – Esther Aug 26 '22 at 17:16
  • @Esther got it! That's what I was trying to say. "Their" is used to keep the ambiguity about gender on the word "child". Thx!! – Nicolas Leskiu Aug 26 '22 at 17:19

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In the past, its was a perfectly normal way to use the possessive with a child. You can often find it in older writing, perhaps as recently as 70 years ago. Like German Kind, it was neuter.

Nowadays we reserve English's neuter gender for inanimate objects, plants, and usually — but decreasingly — animals. I expect most people would find it a little odd to hear it used of a child. (That said, some people still do so; I do personally, out of force of habit from reading too many old things.)

As the comments say, "their" is a common and usually unremarkable way to refer to the possessive of a gendered thing whose gender is unknown, whether child or person.

(The debate about whether to use "their" or "his or her" or other options is broader in scope than this question, but I agree with Esther that it's widely used and accepted, even if it's a hobbyhorse of pedants to criticize it.)

Luke Sawczak
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  • I think this controversy arises because English nouns have lost their gender. Although they may denote male, female or neuter creatures/objects, the words themselves lack gender, unlike those in other languages. So while it's now conventional to use their rather than its possessively for a child, this never arises in Portuguese where the word criança is feminine, regardless of the sex of the child being referred to. For example, to talk about a child, whether boy or girl, always requires the feminine article or a feminine adjective. – Ronald Sole Aug 26 '22 at 22:45
  • @RonaldSole Yes, very good point. There's no ambiguity with German das Mädchen, for example. The word shows its gender through many agreements, not just through the possessive. – Luke Sawczak Aug 27 '22 at 00:33