I wanted a daughter, too.
One day when I was in middle school, and assistant principal stepped into our classroom as an emergency substitute teacher and read us the story of Baby X from Ms. Magazine. You can probably find it online with a little searching. You'll easily find a summary of it. Anyway, that story made a big impact on me.
You might find it interesting to see what a modern human development textbook has to say about gender, among other things. This isn't the same one I read a decade ago for my university course, but it's completely free to read online, and I've been enjoying it to refresh my memory and see what's new:
pdx.pressbooks.pub
"Kids: How Biology and Culture Shape the Way we Raise Children" by Meredith Small has a bit to say on gender as well. Her book on babies was assigned reading in addition to the textbook for my university course, so that's what drew me to her book on kids:
The bottom line is that part of gender is innate and part of it is related to our cultural constructs. It's fine to let boys play with toys our culture typically associates with girls. Girls toys are often better for building fine motor skills, and boys toys are often better for building gross motor skills. Actually, you don't even really need to give toys in the first place, but toys bring me joy, so I give my kid toys that will bring us both joy and let him spend his allowance on anything that sparks his interest but not mine.
We don't give the kid an allowance for chores, by the way. We just give him a dollar per year of his age per week to teach him about budgeting. Giving him money for chores would erode his intrinsic enjoyment to help. He loves cooking, mopping, taking out the trash, laundry, he even does dishes when the dishwasher is too full for all our dishes, even though he doesn't handle them very well yet. If he's on his tablet and sees me cleaning the toilet, he abandons the tablet and comes over to help. Likes to be a “helper” is actually a 4-year milestone on the
CDC's developmental milestones list. The problem is when we push kids away from trying to do things because we want them done quickly and don't let them try things their way. I highly recommend reading "Hunt, Gather, Parent: What Ancient Cultures Can Teach Us About the Lost Art of Raising Happy, Helpful Little Humans" By Michaeleen Doucleff. It talks about how important autonomy is for kids and the difference between autonomy and independence:
Also, please summon me anytime you want to talk about parenting, because sometimes I might miss things like this when the kid keeps me away from the computer.
