It wasn't long ago that children's lifelong dreams were divided along a gender-based reality: boys dreamed of becoming firemen or astronauts, but in fact had the pick of pretty much anything they liked, while girls were expected to marry and have children and, if they couldn't manage either, to become teachers, nurses, or lingerie salesladies at The Bay.

Children were raised differently, too. Girls wore dresses - pink, naturally. Boys wore blue. Girls attended ballet classes, boys got muddy at the park.

As a parent in the 90s, I dare to believe things have changed - but not all that much. Yes, the choices are greater. Many professions have now become gender neutral. The role models for our daughters have increased. But certain stereotypes seem determined to persist.

Recently we encountered roadwork. "I want to be the backhoe driver," one of my sons declared. My daughter said, "I guess I'll direct the traffic."

Always on the lookout for gender-related stereotypes, I said, "But you could drive a backhoe, too, if you wanted to."

"No," she said, "only boys do that. The girls are the ones who hold the stop signs." It was hard to argue with the evidence right in front of us.

Unfortunately, this sort of reality can be damaging to a child's eventual choice of career - not because my lifelong dream is for my daughter to drive a backhoe, but because it gives her the notion that there are limits, that life is categorized by what a girl can do and what she cannot. Children assimilate what they see and take it as the rule, not realizing how many exceptions there are, or that there can be exceptions in the first place. For example, it's hard to explain to my daughter why, on the sports she sees played on television, there are never female hockey, soccer, or baseball players.

"Women can play those sports, just like men," I try to reassure her.

"Then why don't we ever see them on tv?" she asks.

Just wait till you start watching Hollywood movies, I thought. That's when things really get pathetic. Sure, women get to be lawyers and doctors and business executives - but they are almost always scripted to screw up, and end up primarily as the love interest rather than as an intellectual force with which to be reckoned.

I'm thankful that my doctors have always been women. At least my daughter will have learned that medicine is a possibility - because it's not enough to tell her she CAN be a doctor. She has to see other women doing it for her to believe that.

Because of the prevalence of these gender-related stereotypes, I have tried hard to eradicate them where I can in our family. On any given day, our children are as likely to see my husband doing the dishes or cooking dinner as they are me. While we do tend to divide chores with practicality in mind (which means he gets stuck with most of the yard work), I have made a point of volunteering to push the lawn mower, just to show my kids that the way things are is not the way they have to be. And once when my husband was out of town and we still lived on the farm, all our chickens escaped from a broken coop; I made sure to fix it within sight of my kids, if only to show them that I could.

But the results have been unpredictable at best. When from a young age my daughter declared she would not wear frilly dresses, I gave a silent cheer and pulled out the blue jeans. Now she is six: she loves frills and pink and hair clips and nail polish, none of which she has learned from her short-haired, plainly dressed mom: with four kids I barely have time to cut my nails, never mind polish them.

Again, with no prodding from me, my sons play with trucks and tools, they pretend to cut down trees and shoot cougars. They are REAL boys. When they come in from playing outside, they need to be hosed down. They wouldn't touch a doll unless it was made of chocolate and then they would delightedly bite off the head first, then proceed to cover the walls with brown handprints.

How did this happen? When my daughter was a toddler, I bought her trucks, too. She wouldn't touch them. She gets as muddy as her brothers, but she's not out shooting cougars; she's organizing houses for everyone to live in. It makes me wonder if some of our career choices and preferences in life stem as much from our testosterone levels as from our environment. Maybe there's something about operating large machinery that just doesn't resonate for women.

Nevertheless, I've had some limited success. My daughter wouldn't be caught dead in a ballet class; she prefers to play soccer. When she grows up she does not want to be a nurse or a florist. She wants to be a marine biologist.

"Do I have to have kids?" she asked recently.

"Only if you want to," I said.

"Do I have to have a husband to have kids?" she continued.

"No," I said, wondering what I was actually encouraging.

"Good," she stated flatly.

On the other side, one of my sons is leaning towards gymnastics and another loves to dance. If he expresses an interest in ballet I'll be the first to encourage him and hope like hell the teasing he might encounter won't persuade him to give it up in favour of fighting fires.

I'm not trying to fight against nature. If my boys all become astronauts and my girl decides to arrange flowers, that's fine. But I want them to be able to make their choices based on their own happiness, with the knowledge that everything - absolutely everything - is available to them and that no one will classify them based on their gender. And even more importantly, that they won't classify themselves -and restrict themselves - on that basis.

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