Not "would get sacrificed" -- does get sacrificed. All kinds of literature on Tiger Moms, What America Needs From Its Parents, blah blah.

I'm also fairly sure parents want to minimize the amount of self-parenting their child has to do.

And I believe that's about the biggest mistake there is. I know several actual parents on hubski feel the same way -- actually the #parenting tag has some of my favorite discussions. But if you let your son play with dolls the odds are just stacked against him ... maybe that's realistic, maybe it's cruel. Two sides of the same coin.

How would you respond if your son grew up and asked, 'Dad, what the heck was the deal with being all weird about dolls and shit? I liked those.'

I would never deny my children the chance to experience something solely on the basis of gender. The bias I am trying to get over is rather: deliberately exposing them to toys that have traditional gender identities. So your hypothetical would never occur -- else children would be asking their parents that every day. I never asked my father about dolls when I grew up because we never discussed them when I was young.