Stay-at-home father Jay Deitcher prided himself on “blurring gender lines,” a trait he tried hard to pass along to his own young son. So he hid the kiddie clothing that sported footballs and instead gave his son a baby doll to push in a stroller on their walks, Deitcher explains on Today online.
And then his 2-year-old discovered tractors, and the gender-neutral charade was over. “I had to make a choice,” Deitcher writes: “buy him clothes with pictures of heavy machinery on them and make the kid happy, or force him to wear shirts emblazoned with fuzzy animals to appease me.” Deitcher fought it at first, trying to interest his son in other directions, but nothing worked, and finally he gave in, letting his son immerse himself in the traditional boy-world of machine-oriented clothing and toys.
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