If you pick this book up, its likely you already know intuitively some of the things they go over in this book if you plan to raise your child free of gender stereotypes: don’t buy clothes that say “Daddy’s Princess” for your baby girl or clothes that only have trucks or dinosaurs for boys. Don’t assume your daughter wants to wear pink and your son wants to play in the dirt. However, there are plenty of real life examples that I had never given much thought to. For example, Brown points out that books with animals as characters are usually male, and she makes it a point to give them both male and female names when reading to her kids. She also points out that girls may have difficulty with visual-spatial tasks (video games, building with blocks, etc) simply due to lack of exposure and not because their brains are wired differently than boys’ brains are.

It’s a quick and easy read, but there are a lot of big ideas in this book. I’d say discussing it with someone else will be eyeopening, because gender stereotypes are so woven into our brains, and while I do agree that boys and girls are different and will grow up to be different, they shouldn’t be limited just because of their gender.