Gender
Big changes are afoot in the ways parents address gender with their young kids. I've seen little boys plié at Boys Ballet, watched girls dig up cicadas at Bug Camp, and witnessed my niece's friends playing Gay Wedding on their grade-school playground. Recent studies even indicate that two-to-six-year-olds are significantly less rigid about how they classify toys than they were twenty years ago, with modern boys being sufficiently liberated to believe that pretend phones and kitchen play-sets aren't just for girls.
But we all know that line about the more things change. In the midst of all this progress, there's been a retrenching. Recent books instruct parents to celebrate their boys' innate need for aggression and dominance. Girly Girl Camps have popped up in cities around the country, where young females can avoid all that grody sweating and running around, and revel in manicures and fashion shows. A Chicago summer program requires boys to sport a "masculine" hairstyle. And an Arkansas middle school mandates that girls wear a dress to their graduation. Read more from "The Gender Spectrum"
