My little boy likes trucks. My little girl likes pink. And that's okay!

I tried to raise my kids gender neutral. They had other ideas.

Children will play with whatever their hearts desire.
(Image credit: iStock)

My 9-month-old son has spent the last 15 minutes spinning the wheels of a toy stroller he flipped on its side. Before that he was "driving" a small yellow car with a bite-worn smiley face. His 3-year-old sister, meanwhile, is making Lego stew in the kitchen while her freshly bathed baby doll balances on its head and left leg. What a perfectly manicured picture of gender-normative bliss.

But I'm a little surprised that this is where we're at. When my daughter was born, I went out of my way to give her gender-neutral everything. I hid the pink, cutesy clothing we received from well-meaning family members and made sure that no "girl toys" snuck into her collection. She didn't get a doll or a miniature Ikea kitchen until she was well into her second year, and then I reasoned that it was fine because I would absolutely give those things to a boy. Yet when I could no longer resist the invasion of "girlie" items, she was beside herself with joy. The cars and trains we'd been shoving in front of the kid for so long had bored the diaper off her and now, finally, we were giving our pink-starved princess the good stuff.

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Ruth Margolis
Ruth ​Margolis is a British ​journalist living in the U.S. Her work has appeared in ​The Guardian, ​The ​Daily Telegraph and BBCAmerica.com.