My favourite study - sorry, don't have the reference to hand or time to look it up right now - concerned what parents and others present said to newborn babies *in the delivery room* (sic!) It was radically different, depending on whether the newborn was a boy or a girl, and this could not be accounted for by any actual observable differences between the babies. That conditioning starts so early that there is no hope of knowing whether there are in fact innate differences between boys' and girls' toy preferences etc., or whether it's all conditioning.

I feel a certain relief at having a boy, and a certain guilt about having that relief - it seems to me that the issues are easier in raising boys, but then I wonder whether I should think that. When he was tiny he had several hot pink items of clothing, but now I no longer dare dress him in pink. I encourage him to imitate me doing household tasks; but I'm aware that this is normally imitating me, not DH, because I do most of them! He won't get guns or barbies from us; if he had any interest in any of the stuffed animals he has, I might be more inclined to buy him a doll, but he hasn't. He loves cars and vehicles of all kinds. I've certainly encountered generalisations about what "the boys" and "the girls" like doing from the staff at his nursery, so even if I'm not giving him the gender stereotypes - and I'm sure I am, actually - he's getting them from there anyway. I think all I hope to do now is to make him aware that they *are* stereotypes, not rules.