One thing you may not have considered:
That when you take your boys to the boy store, they immediately gravitate to where they see other boys go and immitate their behavior. It's an animal instinct. Other parents in the toy store do not raise their children gender neutral, not most of them and you know this.

If one wants to give gender-neutral reared children options, they need to do it where children aren't scoping their surroundings looking for what other kids are doing. For instant, toyrus online. One can show them pictures of toys without any children playing with them, just the toys, with no boy/girl lables, just what the toys are, and see what the child chooses.

Ofcourse, this same method applies to more than just toys and favorite colors, but also favorite activities and future goals. Don't use the words "nurse" or "male nurse" because these words are automatically gendered, and they will know this from other people even if you don't tell them. Instead, describe the tasks before telling the technical terms and showing them people who perform these operations. Boys who prefer nurturing above inventing will show their "true colors" more easily without the influence of advertisements/"common sense" and without the incentive to conform to what their peers are doing. This may mean choosing gender neutral playdates for them until they have picked up their own identity and then intergrating them. This isn't about being mean or isolating/controlling them. As odd is it may seem, this allows you to better see what your children would freely choose without pressure from people who you as a parent can not control (teachers, their peers, other parents, even family memebrs). Your child has years and years to make friends that you didn't plan for them. Namely during middle school and high school when most "normal" kids begin doing this anyways. You know, the years when mommies stop forcing their daughters to go to girl scouts and their fathers making stop their sons join baseball teams (because they expect their children to take the wheel of their perscribed gender). But "restricting" your kids to other gender neutral kids during the early years may be the only way to ensure that your child at least has a foundation for independantly choosing the course of their future.

my guess is your sons had "gravitated" towards the "boys' toys" because that "gravity" was created by media or peers or any of the million of other cues in the environment swaying them towards the trucks, the cars, etc. - "behavior modelling" can be such a strong force in what we "choose" to do. i know that if i ever have kids and decide to raise them gender neutral, i am battling a whole world of forces working against - telling them things that even if i refuse to say (that "good girls do this" and "bad boys do that" or vice verse), they will hear it elsewhere. i hope that if i ever have kids that they will grow up to have or develop the smarts to handle the world :).

I'm just reading through to here so I'm posting even though it's an older post :), and I think a lot of gender perceptions are hard-coded in kids (well as far as likes and dislikes). I guess I could say looking back my parents were gender neutral. I learned about all things girly and all things boy-ish. I was an only child, so dad taught me how to work on cars, and mom taught me how to sew. To this day, I can't sew a straight line, but I can take the transmission off a car, it's what I like. I can wear a dress, and I look damn good in one (and mom used to love to put me in them since she could sew so wonderfully), but I'd rather wear tactical work pants and tennis shoes and I'm too lazy to fix my makeup.

I love dressing my daughter up for occasions and I do think she looks cute, if she ends up a girly-girl then awesome. If she's out working on her dad's motorcycle with him in a pair of overalls then that's awesome too. I guess we're gender neutral about activities more than the things we buy. I think kids are gonna like what kids are gonna like regardless.

On a side note: I had a little boy cousin that loved wearing dresses as a child. While I loved playing power rangers on the trampoline. Eh, I'm a little weird. haha

how true is that. We also did the neutral thing, based on trying to be ecological and the fact that if you have a 2nd child and it is a boy when the first one is a girl, trying to pass the clothes along don't work so well.

What I realised was that a) we were not able to keep a lot of the clothes anyway, although I did pass them along to 2nd hand store on the premise that they might keep some baby warm despite the stains and b) after a certain age almost all clothes for little girls turn pink or red or purple and all clothes for boys go a certain way and c) lastly, that girls will be girls.

No one ever teaches a little girl how to draw a heart, but they know and I never showed my little girl how to treat a doll like a baby, but she knows. It might be hereditary memory and it might take eons of generations to change this. Or it might just be down to genes and we have accept it.

But at the end of the day I can at least say that there will be no prejudice from our side if one of her friends want to play with cars, or she decides she want a motorbike instead of a scooter, and perhaps that is the real difference.

Interesting book here on the very subject of nature AND nurture combined to present the outcome of boys wanting trucks and balls and girls wanting tiaras and ponies.

Pink Brain, Blue Brain: How Small Differences Grow Into Troublesome Gaps -- And What We Can Do About It (by Lise Eliot)

http://www.amazon.com/Pink-Brain-Blue-Differences-...

I was in a drug store not to long ago with two of my three boys, when I overheard a little boy ask his mom if he could trade his Spongebob phone for a Princess phone. She responded with such shame and abhorrence when she said "No! That is for girls!" I was so annoyed with that ignorant response! My 3 year old son went through a period (like all kids with characters and movies)where he wanted Tinkerbell stuff. My husband and I were like "What the heck! If it makes him happy who cares?". We don't assign gender to toys or activities. All of my boys love playing with kitchens and dolls. It helps them understand that possibilities are endless. For the most part they do gravitate towards traditional boys toys, but even if they never outgrew Tinkerbell or "girly" stuff, my husband and I would never stop loving them and will embrace wherever life leads them if they are happy!

Mia - thank you for your comment. The answer to your question is easy: I believe what you're referring to is Sex assignment, and we are referring to Gender. Sex and Gender are very different concepts to us. Our children are fully aware that they are of the male sex, they know their male parts are called the penis, and they understand that female sex organs carry and deliver babies. My 3 yr old son can be heard saying "Mommy has the baby in her belly, and then she pushes, and takes it out." He's not confused at all. And when the time is right, when he is curious, we will explain to him how the male sex organ helps put the baby in the female belly.

Gender, however, is a frame of mind, and can be very separate from sex. We simply want to foster an environment for our children where they do not believe they are required to fill any certain gender roles based on their biological sex.

and to Sher: I do not "spend" any of my "time" on "teaching" my children gender neutrality. The point of our parenting philosophy is that we simply provide an environment free from gender stereotypes, which allows the children to develop their own interests. I don't know what could be more "chill" than that.

I'm watching Radical Parenting show as I write this. I'm a mom of 3 grown kids (2 boys, 1 girl) now a grandma of 3 - 1 boy, 2 girls.
All I can say is that all you new moms just need to chill and live life as it comes. Teaching them gender neutrality isn't the end-all answer. It doesn't take much outside influence to sway your child in other directions, far from your wise teaching. Don't worry about it. Life is too fast to honestly worry about such things. Honestly, I feel your time would be better spent teaching tolerance to your children. Then gender really wouldn't matter.

I understand and respect what you are trying to do (I'm a mixed race person so I find this to be the same thing.) How are you going to broach the subject of pregnancy and how only mommies get to carry the baby inside of their body and how daddies get mommies pregnant? It's kind of like how black people don't burn in the sun like white people do. There are some things that just can not be gender neutral. I'm very respectfully curious.

I'm the mom of a 15-year-old son and a 19-year-old daughter. My husband and I have raised them in a gender neutral environment since they were babies. My son chose to grow his hair out at the age of 9 and continues to sport beautiful long blond hair. For years he was mistaken as a girl almost every day. He would usually respond that "I'm a boy but everybody makes that mistake and I don't mind". When he was about 7, many of his girl cousins were receiving American Girl Dolls from my mother. He asked her if she would get one for him and she thought that if he wanted one, he should have one. He LOVED his Kaya doll and played with her often, making clothes for her and putting her to bed at night. From the time my daughter was tiny, I would read to her. I quickly realized that, at that time, there were very few strong female characters in children's stories. I regularly switched the male pronouns to female and often talked about the unbalance of gender characters in her books. I was so proud when at 5 she piped up that she especially liked the Frances books by Russel Hoban because Fances was a good, strong girl character. Now, we don't have to think about the gender issues as much, we just naturally live with gender equality in our family. Currently, my son loves babies and my daughter loves animals. Both of my kids identify as straight though we would have been fine if they identified as gay or lesbian. My daughter was member of the gay-straight alliance for three of her four high school years. Both of my kids have good self esteem and are relaxed and confident. I have no regrets with our parenting choices.

Gina, i have a confession. I was/am doing okay with gender neutrality with my boy. With my girl, it's so hard to resist all that pink cuteness!!

OMG I can't believe it. Watched your show last night and was amazed. My oldest boys are now 28 & 27. When they were little I pretty much did the same thing. The had dolls, played dress up, cooked on toy stoves and with me, etc. I truly believe that letting boys and girls play with whatever they want makes for better adults and parents. I have see my oldest boys be much more sensitive and caring to others.They also got along better with children of both sexes. My daughter, now 20, refused to wear dresses or frilly sox. She wore jeans and t-shirts and now she is the "princess" !! lol YAY for you and all others who believe in gender neutral parenting.

I have to give you so much credit for raising both of your children in a gender neutral environment. I had to struggle with my older 2 children for family mebers to respect my decision to try to raise them in a gender neutral environment (By the way the older 2 are now 19 and 17, the youngest is 7). Yes, my son was bought dolls when he asked for them and he was allowed to carry his dolls just as both of his sisters were. My daughter's were bought Tonka trucks when they asked for them. I am a firm believer in the fact that there is nothing that you can't do if you put your mind to it, including breaking the gender stereotypes. It is such a relief to see that others view the stereotypes as a negative influence on our children as well. Thank you for bringing this out more so that others may realize that it is not good to raise a child under the current stereotypes.

I did a little bit of this.

When my daughter was born, I tried to keep the frilly fou-fou stuff to a minimum. We lived with my mother so I was a little at her mercy from time to time. LOL. Overall, she liked all sorts of toys. She played with trucks, cars, baby dolls, stuffed animals.... until the birthday that she received a Barbie. Well, that's a lie. She was already gravitating toward "girly-girl" stuff a little bit before. It's all been downhill from there. LOL

With our little guys, they have some boy stuff, and some gender neutral stuff, but they also have their sister's hand-me-downs. It's nothing around our house to see a little guy dressed in pink jammies. Our toddler definitely likes his cars and trucks but he also periodically likes to carry around baby dolls. Our youngest is too young to have a preference on much of anything yet.

We are also a gender nuetral home. My boys have toy trucks and male dominated sports equipment, right next to their play kitchen and basinet full of baby dolls with bottle and cloth diapers. It was an important and necessary decision in our home as a 'lesbian' couple. My more masculine mate came out to me as being transgendered and wanting to transition from female to male. It only made sense that we were okay with gender nuetrality. So yes, my boys wear my heals around the house, carry 'purses' like mama, and ram their dump trucks into the walls repeatedly after a wrestling match over books about animals ;0)
.-= Betty B´s last blog ..the latest 'Amber Taylor' original =-.

Coming late to this party- just saw it linked.
I did the same thing as you- my first boy was welcomed into the world with a mint green room and yellow and green wardrobe. I only allowed gender neutral toys. I finally broke down with the trucks when I couldn't take his pointing and sqealing around REAL cars and trucks (every single one). He is obsessed with trucks still.

HOWEVER my second son was born into this house with 1000 toy trucks of his brother;s, and he never touched them. Didn't care.

My third son was also born into the crazy toy car house, and loves them.

So...while my first clearly was hardwired to dig trucks, the second boy was exposed to it and didn't care, the third was exposed to it and may have only cared b/c he was around them.
Add to the mix that they ALL love to pretend cook as well and occasionally breastfed their stuffed toys, and I really think it's still very much a whole lot of RANDOMNESS, and only a little bit of boy brain. Sure they ignore the dolls, but then they ignore some typical boy stuff too, so who knows. Toys R Us sure doesn't!

Here is a story my Mother has read to me my whole life.
http://etransgender.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=18...
Might not be a great site, but the story of calld
'Baby X'

Love your blog, thank you for all you do!

I totally agree! We didn't find out the gender for our first child, in part because I didn't want all things pink and girly if it was a girl, or sports-themed if it was a boy. I see blue as a gender neutral color myself, it's my favorite, so we did a blue and brown nursery theme with turtles. My son isn't a year yet and just plays with whatever he is given, but we'll see what happens as he gets older. I may buy him a doll as he gets a little older, and I'm definitely going to get him a kitchen set next year (one of my brother's and my favorite toys as kids), just to expose him to different kinds of play.

Although we found out the sex of our first child (a girl), we didn't tell anyone. I may love pink, but I also love green and yellow and red and blue. I had seen that those who told they were having girls pretty much got ONLY pink and girly things. We also did the green room with a jungle theme, but that was also because we planned to have at least another kid who would use the nursery, and who knows what the gender would be (turns out our second is a boy). And now our girl has a yellow room with Winnie the Pooh theme.

I don't know exactly what I believe in terms of nature/nurture, but I do know that I'm not going to pigeon hole my children before they can decide for themselves what colors they like and what toys they like. And I think that's perhaps the best we we can do.

My mom is a 3rd grade teacher adn she gave me this book: Why Gender Matters. At first I was totally rebelling against the author, but a few chapters in, I was totally hooked. A lot of good stuff about brain chemistry, and how it relates to learning styles....

Why Gender Matters
What Parents and Teachers Need to Know about the Emerging Science of Sex Differences
by Leonard Sax, MD, PhD
"Until recently, there have been two groups of people: those who argue sex differences are innate and should be embraced and those who insist that they are learned and should be eliminated by changing the environment. Sax is one of the few in the middle -- convinced that boys and girls are innately different and that we must change the environment so differences don't become limitations."
-- TIME Magazine, cover story, March 7, 2005

Praise for Why Gender Matters:

". . . a lucid guide to male and female brain differences. . ."
The New York Times

If I could do it again, I would have told everyone I was having a boy to avoid the onslaught of pink. But what can you do?

I am not overly feminine in any way, and yet somehow I birthed the girliest of girls. My two year old daughter has regular tea parties and loves dolls, adores ponies and told me at 20 months that she will ride horses when she is a big girl. She LOVES shopping and purses and I can't take her into a shoe store because she insists on holding each one on display. I hate shopping -- I have no idea how we're even related.

Anyway, I just wanted to let you know that we're experiencing the same thing here! :)

Gender neutral parent over here too. But it is only recently my oldest (now 5) is starting to show an interest girly things like dress up and dancing, although I actually think that has more to do with her starting to come out of her shell than identifying as a girl. Since I have a daycare I have a lot of gender neutral toys and I have always bought the girls neutral toys anyway. One year I got my oldest a wooden truck full of wooden animals and it was her favorite toy. My youngest is a little bit more into girly stuff. For example, she will actually wear a tiara during dress up and pretend to be a princess, but neither of them ask for Cinderella shoes or anything like that. They do watch cartoons but like Diego just as much as Dora and since I don't buy commercialized toys very much they don't even know My Little Pony dolls exist. I tend to buy most of their toys at craft fairs. They don't need much since there's the daycare toys, so when I get something for them only it's extra special. Today I just bought them both wooden cameras. They saw them and loved them. I tend to think children can stay gender neutral if parents don't go the commercial route, but since my girls watch cartoons, I'm not completely sold on my own theory. Luck of the draw?

I, too, am striving for gender neutrality as much as possible. We decided not to find out the sex specifically because we wanted to avoid being inundated with blue & fire trucks or pink & princesses. Lots of family was disgruntled about it; my stepmom was particularly bewildered. "But how am I going to shop? How will you be able to decorate?" (Decorating being a much bigger parenting priority for her than for me, clearly.)

We have yet to see how this will play out. I'm inclined to agree with Colleen that there may be subtle environmental things at work here, cues in language and so forth. With your sons, I believe they've been in day care, right? I think influences and expectations from one's kids' care providers can have a HUGE impact. If one's home is completely gender neutral, but their social environment is the standard dominant culture's, that could be tough to override.

Ultimately, I can accept that there may be some innate gender differences, though I DEFINITELY feel that society exaggerates them. We'll see how I feel about this if Lily winds up aspiring to be a fairy princess.

You would probably like to read this book:
http://www.amazon.com/Pink-Brain-Blue-Differences-...

I bought it recently and I am a few chapters into it. The author reviewed many, many studies about what impacts the way kids brains' work. Including what hormones do even before babies are born. It is very interesting. So far it seems that much of the gender identity stuff is biological. Kids also are interested in doing what their older siblings do, no matter what sex they are.

I have 3 girls, one 6 and 2 yo twins, and I never really thought about gender neutrality. With my oldest we didn't know her gender until just before she was born, so all of our baby "equipment" was neutral jungle theme. Then when the twins came, everything had just been handed down, so it was all neutral also. I've always let them pick their own toys and never tried to push them in any particular direction. It turns out my oldest, who just recently started refusing to wear dresses, loves all things boy. She would pick to play with her Star Wars figures or her Marvel superheroes over her Barbies 9 times out of 10. So far the twins haven't shown any preference one way or the other. They are happy playing anything their big sister is playing, but I will be curious to see what they gravitate toward.

I don't have children yet but I have lots of younger siblings and work(ed) in a daycare setting. And I have no answer. I tried my best to "raise" my 3-5 year olds in the daycare gender neutral, and convince them that they could all do whatever they wanted despite of their gender. But, only girls came wearing skirts to school, and the guys didn't. There were definite differences, both in the way they're raised and in the way they acted. But I tried not to have a problem with it, the girls could wear pink and the guys blue, as long as it was a "separate but equal" thing... as problematic as that is. Because yes, the majority of the kids believed that certain things were for girls and others for boys, but I don't think they valued the masculine things over the feminine ones. THAT is the crucial point, I think.

At least I both had boys refuse to wear pink mittens from the extra basket because it was for girls, and a girl refusing to wear a grey striped sweater from the same basket... but this is something that I struggle with, and probably still will by the time I have my own children.

My son has remained pretty neutral, he likes flowers and gardens and animal stuff like cloth jug bugs and sock monkeys. He did have a doll he liked, but we took it away cause it freaked us out every time we saw it lying on the floor in the dark was like a horror movie. And he enjoys cleaning toys, he loves to clean with his mommy!

We've tried to be neutral, especially with my daughter, the firstborn. I tried to avoid pink and frilly and princess and all that jazz. But, like your sons, she is not gender neutral AT ALL. She wants girl colours, and sparkles, and Barbie-Dora-Cinderella everything. I don't sweat it too much, because I was the same way as a 4-year-old and I grew up to be an engineer who doesn't wear make-up. I also know that, at this point, it's her choice. I didn't push it on her, in fact I resisted it, so I might as well respect her wishes.

As for my son, I'm not as concerned with him. He's only 15 months so he doesn't show any preferences yet. However, if some of his clothes are sports-themed it only sort of balances the fact that nearly all of our toys and books are very girly. Having an opposite-gender older sibling definitely has a gender-neutralizing effect on the kid, in my experience.

I know what you mean Colleen - maybe it's some subtle environment cues... or maybe they're just born this way. All I know is that whatever I did didn't work.

We did the same with Finn, with the same result. You have to wonder, though, if is is a biological gravitation toward gender bias, or if there are subtle social cues that they pick up on so early it's programmed despite their clothing and room decor, etc.

I remember in school learning about how people play 'differently' and have different expectations, even using different describing words, or having different expectations based on gender.

Not trying to get all 'book-y' on you here, but I guess it's something I feel like I don't have the answer to, regardless of my parenting. My gut says 'biology', but I have to wonder if that is just me not wanting to admit my idea of 'gender neutral' didn't work.