In our media-centric age, stories and commentary about children’s gender socialization are exchanged online. Yet we know quite little about how fathers interpret the gender and sexual identities of their children and share those interpretations with others via social media. In this article, I present findings from a qualitative content analysis of blog posts about children’s gender and sexuality (n = 122) written by American and Canadian fathers (n = 36). I apply Kane’s (2012) “gender trap” typology to analyze how dad bloggers support and/or challenge heteronormative gendered identities, behaviors, relationships, and activities for children. Most of these fathers present anxious accounts of experimenting with gender-neutral parenting, imagining their children in future roles and relationships, permitting nonconformity in girls versus boys, and connecting childrearing to broader social inequalities. I develop the concepts of sticky essentialism—to demonstrate how essentialist logics permeate fathers’ explanations for gendered childhoods, and ambivalent (de)gendering—to explain fathers’ mixed feelings toward heteronormative gender socialization and accountability. To conclude, I discuss risks and benefits of fathers blogging publicly about children’s gender and sexuality.

在我们以媒体为中心的时代，关于儿童性别社会化的故事和评论在网上交流。然而，我们对父亲如何解释孩子的性别和性身份并通过社交媒体与他人分享这些解释知之甚少。在本文中，我介绍了对美国和 加拿大父亲（n = 36)。我应用 Kane (2012) 的“性别陷阱”类型学来分析爸爸博客作者如何支持和/或挑战异性恋的性别身份、行为、关系和儿童活动。这些父亲中的大多数人都焦虑地讲述了尝试性别中立的育儿方式，想象他们的孩子未来的角色和关系，允许女孩与男孩的不一致，以及将育儿与更广泛的社会不平等联系起来。我发展了粘性本质主义的概念——以证明本质主义逻辑如何渗透到父亲对性别童年的解释和矛盾的（去）性别——解释父亲对异性恋性别社会化和问责制的复杂感受。最后，我讨论了父亲公开发布有关儿童性别和性取向的博客的风险和益处。