Recent brain research seems to explain why “boys will be boys” and “girls will be girls.” Does this mean our kids are destined to play out gender roles, or do we ultimately have influence over their choices of toys, clothes and activities? Here’s the latest thinking, so you can decide on the best way to raise your child.

When I found out that I was going to have a little girl, I did something that, frankly, is a little embarrassing given my profession. I ran out to buy a frilly dress with matching hat and booties. Secretly, I was so happy to be having a girl because of the clothes, the dolls, the shopping we would do. But as an anthropologist immersed in the study of how people connect to their culture and environment, my behavior was a bit surprising. After all, my research caused me to veer away from boy/girl stereotypes and embrace gender-neutral rules of parenting—that boys can wear dresses if they want, that girls should play with trucks—because that’s how children reach their unique potential. Even so, I gave in to many girly stereotypes when my daughter was on the way, painting her room peach and lining up dolls in their fluffy dresses. Was I wrong to treat my daughter like a—girl? Just how much can parents influence their kids to follow the straight and narrow, or the winding road, where gender identity is concerned? I now realize that my actions were perfectly fine, because I have little control over how my daughter will ultimately self-identify when it comes to gender. Underlying some anxieties parents have when it comes to gender differences is the fear that if they do it “wrong,” they could affect their child’s sexual orientation. Relax: You don’t have that power. Letting your son try on a tutu won’t influence his future proclivities.

Like gender identity, sexual orientation appears to be biologically determined, according to gender expert Helen Friedman, PhD, a clinical psychologist in private practice and an associate clinical professor in the Department of Community and Family Medicine at St. Louis University School of Medicine. What we can do as our kids develop is give them space to explore different roles and decide what fits best. We can also model respect for differences when we see a boy play with a doll or a girl dress like a construction worker, so our own children can observe this without feeling the need to make fun of a twist on what is “supposed” to be. But even as we embrace gender variety, we need to understand how our kids’ natural tendencies are formed and shaped.

Vive La Difference

Recent science shows that gender differences beyond obvious physical ones are evident from birth and give way to real variations in boy and girl thinking and behavior. These variations can intensify during the school years, when the majority of kids self-select to identify with their girl or boy peers. Yet it’s clear that not every child sticks to the stereotypes: Some girls are into sports, some boys wants to draw and read, and some kids realize that they’re gay and will never follow most gender rules. I saw the young sons of some friends of mine routinely paint their nails with glittery polish and dress up in glam clothes, yet once in school both self-identified as boys. Because their parents sat back and simply watched as their kids crossed traditional gender lines, the kids didn’t feel pressure to conform but were free to explore individuality. Yet society was once content to let girls believe they weren’t as smart as boys and women that they were too emotional to handle a corner-office career. Boys, meanwhile, were told not to cry and that they’d better get a decent job when they grew up. But during the politically and socially turbulent 1970s, gender rules and roles were blasted apart, and parents began to question their value and origin. Certainly there are physical differences—how else could humans make more humans—but did this mean male and female brains were also different? The subsequent research indicates that, yes, children’s brains seem to push them into categories from birth.

Right from the Start

Baby girls seem destined to be social creatures, while boys tend to be action oriented, according to a batch of brain studies. Psychologists at the University of Cambridge have shown that in general, 1-year-old girls like to watch people talking more than their boy peers do, and they prefer the sound of the human voice to other noises. Researchers from Northwestern University and the University of Haifa used MRIs of older kids’ brains to explain where this type of difference comes from. During language tasks like spelling and writing, areas in the brain associated with language actually work harder in girls than in boys. Beyond language leanings, infant girls spend a lot of time looking at individual faces and making eye contact, and they also tend to show more empathy to others’ distress than baby boys do, says Cambridge researcher Simon Baron-Cohen. Meanwhile, infant boys are more inclined to look at groups of faces rather than just one and prefer gazing at a moving object like a mobile instead of a face. And as toddlers, boys show a greater ability to think in spatial terms—like 3-D—than girls do. This may correlate with their greater interest in moving toys like cars, trucks and other mechanical playthings and construction toys like building blocks. They’re also more apt to move around faster (running, jumping) and sooner, while girls win out in the fine-motor areas (coloring, writing). Studies of hormones indicate that the causes of many of these biological differences may be rooted in the higher level of testosterone in most boys compared with girls, suggests Baron-Cohen. Research has also shown that baby boys tend to be more irritable and have a harder time self-soothing than baby girls, and they don’t hear as well early on. Neuroscientists like Ruben Gur, PhD, at the University of Pennsylvania and Lise Eliot, PhD, at Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science in Chicago suggest that these innate differences affect the way girls and boys act and learn.

Individuality Above All

Based on the research, some parents might play to their baby’s natural tendencies, while others might want to buck them for the sake of gender equality by, say, placing a ball in their baby girl’s crib or talking even more to their baby boy. But my professional and personal observations tell me that most parents of newborns don’t do that. Instead, we focus on our baby’s individual personality. The research, however, comes in handy as a reassuring explanation when we need it: “My little boy has a hard time calming down. But hey, he’s behaving like little boys usually do.” Overall, though, most of this research hasn’t been followed into adulthood, so we really don’t know if any of these differences in infancy make a big difference later in life. We are concerned, however, about how the gender stereotypes might affect our children. So it’s important to realize that kids go through phases, especially when they’re very young, and it’s completely natural when a little boy loves nail polish (“It’s so shiny!”) or a toddler girl vrooms her truck (“Look at the wheels move!”). What they’re doing today they probably won’t do tomorrow. Plus, choices of fashion and toys can be superficial and not necessarily an indication of future choices. While I may have encouraged the superficial girly stuff with my daughter from infancy, I also wanted her to eventually become whoever she wanted to be. Mostly, I didn’t want her limited to traditionally female careers, like nursing or teaching, hoping she would feel it was her right to also consider becoming a scientist or carpenter. So I did my fair share of pushing her across traditional gender lines: I clapped as my toddler girl aggressively climbed up a bookcase and demonstrated an amazing sense of adventure. I raced after her, laughing, as she bolted out the door and down the driveway, clocking a four-minute mile. I’ve always encouraged her athletic ability and love of team sports as if she were on the way to the NFL.  Still, parents need to realize that there are other factors feeding our children’s developing gender identity. Peer influence and cultural styles, for example, both play a role in separating the girls from the boys (and if you believe researcher Judith Rich Harris in her newly revised classic treatise, The Nurture Assumption, peer environment trumps parental influence big-time). Peer pressure, of course, comes with school and exposure to other children. That pressure can be passive: My daughter had never thought about her hairstyle until preschool, but when she saw most of the girls had long hair, she wanted long hair, too. But it can also be aggressive: Now ingrammar school, she says boys make fun of boys who like to hang out with the girls (“No girls allowed!”), and the girls do the same to their peers. The process known as socialization is, in fact, often run by peers, which makes sense since kids spend most of their childhood with other children.

Breaking Stereotypes

Just like the research suggests, my girl is oriented toward language. She excels at the standardized language arts tests, and now, at age 11, she’s able to drop the words “genre” and “bifurcate” into a conversation like a newly minted PhD in English. But she also lives in a home where everybody reads, and, well, her mother is a writer, so her love of words might not be simply biological. Parents of a boy could certainly influence his love of words, if they choose, by reading to him often and talking in adult language. In keeping with another gender stereotype, my daughter has a hard time with math. Although no one in our household got beyond fractions, we have encouraged her to keep at it, which has paid off. This year she discovered that she’s good at logic problems and enjoys them. The lesson here for me, and for all parents, is that even when the stereotypes seem to be pressing down, there will always be places where they don’t fit exactly. In fact, my girl is “more like a boy” when it comes to science. In second grade she dunked a battery into water to see if it would still light a bulb, and recently she checked out Eyewitness Books: Chemistry from the school library three times—and actually read it. I have specifically encouraged this interest by talking about the science I teach and taking her to science museums because I know that many gender stereotypes about learning still hold strong. For example, girls are lagging behind in math and science. The National Assessment of Educational Progress found that although gender makes no difference in math performance during the early years in school, teenage girls start to fall behind boys. In general, as children become teens, gender differences grow exponentially, both biologically and socially. At that point kids acutely feel the pressure to adhere to typical gender roles. This is when they really need help and support. It’s no longer a question of who’s playing with dolls or trucks; it’s about education, achievement, possibilities, choices and making sure our kids are happy with themselves.

Rethinking Classrooms

These factors have prompted Leonard Sax, MD, PhD, the author of Why Gender Matters: What Parents and Teachers Need to Know About the Emerging Science of Sex Differences, to claim that boys and girls have different brains and should be taught differently and separately. Would most benefit from an all-boy or all-girl school? The Gender Public Advocacy Coalition (soon to be relaunched as TrueChild) says yes, so that all kids can fulfill their potential. We know that many girls lose their self-confidence in adolescence and many teen boys act up. Both those paths come about in a social atmosphere that compares the sexes. What would happen if there were no other gender around for comparison? Principal Lee Mansell of the Foley Intermediate School in Foley, AL, which has several single-sex classrooms, says there are fewer discipline problems as well as higher academic performance when kids learn alongside those of their own gender. Still, it isn’t always practical, or possible, to place your child in a same-sex school. And we have achieved some measure of gender neutrality without separating the sexes. Classrooms that offer kids small-group interaction and greater physical freedom—including more recess time—can help both boys and girls. Overall, gender pressure hits some kids harder than others, cheerleading parents help some kids feel they can choose their own destiny, and some kids are oblivious to the dictates of society and just do whatever they want.

What Parents Should Do

Ultimately, we probably can’t control our kids’ gender identity. But hardwiring aside, our parenting efforts may be best directed toward our children’s individual talents and desires, striving to let them become whoever they are. And we can’t overestimate the importance of role models in nurturing this idea. If our children are to make life decisions and achieve beyond typical gender roles, they need to see adults who have done just that—and who admire others who have done that. Girls need to see working mothers who are successful and happy, and boys need to see fathers who do the dishes and share in diaper duty. We have to show our kids the range of possibilities, and show it across gender lines. So we need to both embrace inborn gender differences and encourage kids to fight those differences if they feel like it. If your son wants to take ballet, you might focus on what the classes will do for his mental and physical health rather than worry about sexual orientation. If your daughter is a killer hockey player, think about the potential college sports scholarship rather than how feminine this is or is not. And if some kids are curious about what it’s like on the other side, well, dipping a toe into the life of the opposite sex won’t hurt them, and it might even bring an empathy that will serve them well in the future. After all, while science, research and experience may help us sort out some gender mysteries, we’re still a species with two sexes that are largely bewildering to each other.  Since we live in a culture where men and women work together, empathy for the opposite gender can only be a good thing both at home and at work. We also live in a time when big stereotypes have come undone: An African-American man has become president—and a woman came close. Lessons like this may be the most influential of all.

Dr. Meredith F. Small is a professor of anthropology at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY. She is the author of several books, including Kids: How Biology and Culture Shape the Way We Raise Our Children. Dr. Small also writes for many national publications and websites.