I don't have kids so I can only speak from my own experience as a child, but I'm a girl who was often more attracted to boy things than girl things. I think that was due to a combination of "hard wiring" (estrogen / other chemical levels) and who my friends were. Growing up I had 5 close playmates, 2 of which were girls, 3 of which were boys. With the girls I played make believe and dolls, with the boys I played Mortal Kombat and "the blindfold game," which involved one person being blindfolded and the other ones trying to hit them with pillows without being tagged. (AWESOME GAME, btw. Just gotta make sure you have rules that keep people from getting hurt.) I considered myself a tomboy growing up, and while I have gotten "girlier" as I got older (dress and act more feminine, love to dance, cry more often at cute/sad things, etc.) I'm still less "girly" than many of my peers. (Hate shopping, don't wear makeup, etc.) But my parents never steered me that way. In fact, they sort of thought I should be more feminine than I was/am. So I do think there's an element of "hard wiring" involved. That said, I also believe society creates perceptions of what a man or what a woman should be. And as Giyen pointed out, in different cultures (Asia, but also Africa, Latin America, etc.) those perceptions can be even more stringent. (Latin "machismo," Asian "deference," etc.) But I've seen the trend of being (IMO) overly PC -- calling children "friends" instead of "boys and girls," for example -- and I admit, I think it's silly. I think what's more important is, regardless of stereotypes or societal expectations, letting your individual child know that they can be whoever they want to be and it's okay.

Holy crap, my first reply posted three times. Why?! I just wanted to add to my first point - it is really impossible for us to definitively say something is "hardwired" since none of us are raised in a vacuum. Do you all think that it's possible to pin our gender differences on something immutable and inborn, when we are ALL exposed to cues both spoken and unspoken, subtle and not, from the moment we arrive on this earth?

This is such an interesting topic. I grew up as a tom boy, playing all kinds of sports and having mostly male friends. I also loved Barbies and dolls, but those were things that I usually played with alone or with only one other female friend. As a teen I was a cheerleader (because I loved it), but rejected all things pink, frilly or otherwise "feminine." My daughter is much the same way. I was shocked at how "physical" a baby girl could be--I just wasn't expecting that. And she has no fear. She is tougher, stronger and (dare I say) more "masculine" than my 11 year old step son. On the other hand, she refuses to wear anything but skirts and dresses (with shorts underneath and tennis shoes so she can still play football with the boys), and loves a touch of lip gloss so she's pretty. I very much like this balance, and it works for her. She knows she can do anything, it just sometimes requires a wardrobe change. :) My step son violently rejects all things girlie and won't even give his own mother (let alone his step-mother-I don't even ask anymore) a hug or kiss. Once, he had a friend spend the night and my older step daughter (16-years-old) snuck into his room in the middle of the night and put makeup on the boys as they were sleeping. When they discovered it the next morning it was pure chaos. He had a major meltdown; cried and screamed (SCREAMED!) for most of the day and was so angry he plotted revenge on his sister for several weeks. We thought it would pass, but when it didn't we had to intervene and make him get control of his anger. This bothered me immensely because, even though it was a joke and all in fun, he took it so seriously and felt that it threatened his "manhood" in some way. Is it Nature vs. Nurture? I think it's both. @BeingSuper

This gender stereotyping is endemic in society. I see it everywhere. I find that it's worst with parents of boys. It's as if it's OK to gender-neutral with a girl but it's not OK with a boy. Maybe there is a little bit of latent homophobia here. It's as if the moms and dads are afraid that their sons will become flamboyant lounge singers if they don't dress them in khakis and only buy them guns, action figures, and keep harping on how tough their little one is to anyone who will listen in the playground. I don't buy that most of it is hard-wired. Yeah, your boys didn't want to play with a doll at the age of three. Of course. What if they had dolls around from birth? My daughter is 15 months and does not play with the two dolls gifted to us a few months ago. All that said, boys and girls are different. That's natural. That's unavoidable. I wish they were allowed to just be rather than pushed into rigidly defined stereotypes from birth. I don't care when people mistake my daughter for a boy if she happens to not wear pink, flowers, or frills. Most moms of boys that I know would care if that happened to their little boy (and they would then break out the truck t-shirts and camo-gear).

My 15 month old son has both dolls and trucks, and goes for the trucks every time. He's even learned the "vroom" sound, etc. And no one taught him that! So, I've given up in the area of toys, he can play with whatever he wants to. I agree with Karen though, I can't stand when people assume one can't or shouldn't do something just because they are a man or a woman. And I will encourage my son to do whatever it is his heart desires. If he wants to be a nurse? Fine. Stay-at-home dad? Cool. NFL player? Well, then we'll have to talk about that one ;)

I once had a lady stop in the mall and ask me why I was feeding my son food from a pink bowl. I was like, "it was the only one clean, lady." Ridiculous.

I think some gender stereotypes are hardwired. I think people want to deny it because first of all, it's politically correct, and second of all, gender stereotypes do result in disadvantages, mostly for women but for men too. My son is absolutely CRAZY about trucks, cars, buses, anything with wheels. He also loves to play ball. He has many stuffed animals but mostly ignores them. My husband and I know nothing about trucks. He has many books, but strongly favors his 2 truck books. The fact is there is some truth to gender stereotypes. But I agree that this is a problem when it comes to children's self esteem, and when adults have reactions that show a gender bias. Bwankel's story about the pink bowl is classic. Who cares if a boy eats out of a pink dish? I believe that gender stereotypes are becoming less strong, and they will continue to do so. When I was little, I remember that my sister didn't know that a woman could be President. I don't think there are many little girls or boys nowadays who don't think a woman could be President!

My suspicion is that gender differences are hardwired, as well. However, it is not possible to state that as fact, since it is not something that can be tested. Also, there is no way to isolate what those differences really ARE. If kids were raised in a test tube of sorts, isolated from gendered treatment and the world at large, then we could say what qualities are essentially male and which are female - but short of that, no.

I've only been blessed with one child, a son. Let me admit up front that I over think things due to the "one egg in the basket" thing. Last year, at the age of four, he asked for ballet lessons, influenced by a love of the Nutcracker Ballet. I fretted at first, worried that he couldn't predict the potential social consequences. (Another time, he wanted a Dora backpack, and I feared he'd get slammed at pre-school since his boy peers tend to have aggressive X-Men type lunch boxes, etc. We went for a colorful, cartoon-free one instead. He relented, but he was sad, asking me, "Who wouldn't want to be friends with Dora?") I shouldn't have worried about the dancing, though. No one teases him (thus far), and he really enjoys it. He's tall and broad for his age, and an Italian-American friend of mine with a son of smaller stature had said to me, "If your son can't dance, what the hell kind of world will my son live in?" I teach college, and my students from Latino backgrounds think it is ridiculous that American men DON'T dance. I agree with the comment that we have lots of latent homophobia in our American culture, but we've decided to not play into that fear of social teasing. Should I have gone with the Dora backpack, too? Maybe. I want him to be a lifelong feminist, so I don't want him to get negative messages early on that make him think our judgment isn't reality based. As for what's hard-wired or what's nurture, I think it's a combination. After his very first ballet lesson, I asked my son if he enjoyed it. "Yes, I like it," he said, "But they didn't teach us how to kill the Mice King with our swords at all."