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"Gender" changes with time. Some children born with male genitalia decide to be girls, some decide to be puppies, and some decide to be airplanes. To assign one category to a newborn is to limit that individual, which is wrong. Names change with time too, with first, middle, and last names replaced more or less often over the years.

Parents can be named incorrectly, in addition to the difficulties inherent in the common limitation to only two parents, sometimes identified as "mother" and "father" in an offensive and homophobic tradition fraught with microaggression. Even age can be a traumatic concept as the number of years since birth grows and passes through various phases in which the individual is unhappy with the chronological number.

The solution is simple. A birth certificate should not list the baby's name, gender, or date of birth. It should be limited to: "THIS IS TO CERTIFY THAT A BIRTH OCCURRED," without even the location, alleged parents, or attending physician. That a birth happened is all that a genuine birth certificate needs to say in our new, more flexible world.

My birth certificate and all three of my son’s have a form field for ‘male, or ‘femaele.’ Stupid me, all this time I thought it meant the sex of a newborn as determined by x and y chromosomes, not gender.

For the sake of clarity, a birth certificate should document the sex of an infant at birth. As for transgenders, if s/he wants to file a corrected birth certificate as an adult go for it.

I have stepped through the looking glass and cannot get back.

I think you're on to something. Why even have a birth certificate? Just assign a person a number at birth, and implant their microchip that will store all of their life information.

When the microchip dies, the person can be put out of their misery, too, by denying medical care. Very efficient and non-judgemental.

(we are getting waaay to close to this reality)