For children, parents are of central importance in guiding what it means to be a boy or a girl and a sexual being. The gendering of children begins before they are even born, as evidenced through parents’ preparatory behaviors of selecting gendered names, bedroom colors, clothing, toys, and more (Coltrane & Adams, 2008). After birth, children enter a world where gender distinctions structure much of the social life around them. Scholars have examined how children’s gender and sexuality are constructed and institutionalized through schools (Martin, 1998; Pascoe, 2007; Thorne, 1993), youth organizations (Denny, 2011; Fine, 1987; Messner, 2009), popular media (Hamilton et al., 2006; Martin, 2005; Riggs, 2008), and families (Hill, 2002; Kane, 2006, 2012; Risman, 1998). A small body of work has placed sharper focus on parents’ complex reactions to, and explanations for, children’s gender nonconformity and finds that boys are typically afforded less leeway than girls (Kane, 2006; Meadow, 2018; Rahilly, 2015). Unfortunately, much research on children’s gender and sexual socialization overlooks fathers (Halpern & Perry-Jenkins, 2016). This knowledge gap likely reflects the fact that mothers continue to do more childrearing than fathers overall (Bianchi, 2011). Still, with men taking on a greater share and variety of childcare today, it is important to further interrogate how they interpret, explain, and contribute to the gendering of children.

Parenting discourse about how to raise children has spread widely with advances in digital media technologies (Blum-Ross & Livingstone, 2017; Lupton et al., 2016). Research on “mommy bloggers” has shown how mothers use blogs to form communities, document family experiences, and discuss struggles related to expectations of intensive motherhood (Friedman, 2013; Song, 2016). Piggybacking on the success of mommy blogs, some fathers are now using this medium to exchange stories and advice about fatherhood (Ranson, 2015; Scheibling, 2020a, b; Scheibling & Marsiglio, 2021). The North American dad blogger community has been particularly vocal about encouraging men to expand their caring capabilities by defying narrow definitions of masculinity and gender roles (Scheibling, 2020a). We do not know, however, whether or how these fathers hold similar views of gender for their children, as they hold for themselves. How do dad bloggers create and share meanings for children’s gender and sexuality online? Do these meanings complement or contradict cultural discourses about fatherhood and masculinities? What are the risks and benefits of fathers blogging about gendered childhoods? Answers to these questions will elucidate public and private tensions surrounding father involvement in children’s gender and sexual socialization.

This article presents a content analysis of 122 blog posts about children’s gender and sexuality written by 36 fathers over the past twelve years. Using Kane’s (2012) “gender trap” typology as a conceptual framework, both bloggers and their narratives were analyzed for how they support and/or challenge heteronormative gender 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. When writing publicly about children, dad bloggers appear apprehensive about pushing hetero-gendered boundaries—especially for sons—which may reflect the social devaluation of femininity and concerns about protecting their children’s online presence. Before illustrating and discussing my findings, I outline sociological insights about gender, sexuality, parenting, and social media to provide theoretical scaffolding for the analysis.

Heteronormative Accountability and the “Gender Trap” for Parents

This study is framed by social constructionist understandings of gender, sexuality, and family. Rather than being a product of physiological traits, gender is viewed as a “routine, methodical, and recurring accomplishment” in everyday life (West & Zimmerman, 1987, p. 126). How individuals “do” gender is guided centrally by cultural norms about masculinity and femininity that are grounded in a heteronormative logic that positions males and females as complementary opposites (Pascoe, 2007; Schilt & Westbrook, 2009). Considering that the combination of a heterosexual marriage, a gendered division of labor, and biologically conceived children creates a “family” in a traditional sense, gender and heteronormativity are often done and taught through the “many family rituals that celebrate differences between men and women” (Coltrane & Adams, 2008, p. 25). Although these rituals can be resisted or “undone” by family members as well (Deutsch, 2007), social pressures implore us to uphold the heteronormative gender order or provide accounts when we transgress it (Meadow, 2018; Schilt & Westbrook, 2009; West & Zimmerman, 2009). Because the Internet is a communicative and voyeuristic social space, parenting blogs are also bound by public accountability pressures and norms. Blog posts are thus conceptualized as “accounts” where fathers narrate interpretations of, and explanations for, their family life to others (Goffman, 1959; Orbuch, 1997; Scott & Lyman, 1968). When writing about their children, fathers are accounting for their identities or behaviors in the face of dominant expectations and rules about gender, sexuality, and childrearing.

Kane (2012) refers to parents’ accountability to these dominant expectations and rules as the “gender trap.” Drawing on 42 interviews with parents of varied ethnicities, sexualities, and classes, Kane (2012) observes considerable diversity in the ways parents reinforce, reconfigure, or reject heteronormative beliefs in raising their children. To illustrate and distill this diversity, five gendering configurations were developed: “naturalizers” considered gender and sexuality to be rooted in human biology; “cultivators” supported the gendering of children through heteronormative role modeling; “refiners” combined biological and social explanations for gender and sexuality; “innovators” encouraged gender and sexual flexibility in children with little concern about pushback from others; and, “resisters” strongly opposed gendered power structures with reservations about social accountability to them (see Kane, 2012, pp. 11–12). It should be noted, however, that these configurations are not truly mutually exclusive since many parents draw on a contradictory amalgamation of biological, psychological, social, and transgressive explanations for gendered childhoods (Meadow, 2018; Neary, 2021; Rahilly, 2015). Nevertheless, Kane’s (2012) typology provides a fruitful conceptual framework for capturing, categorizing, and unpacking differences in fathers’ online accounts of children’s gender and sexuality.

Children’s Gender and Sexual Socialization

How are children taught to “do” gender and heteronormativity, anyway? Young children start to learn gender and sexual accountability through explicit and implicit sex category labeling of toys, objects, media, clothing, and types of play (Coltrane & Adams, 2008). Upon entering school, gender distinctions become more crystallized and policed. Beginning in preschool, teachers contribute to the gendering of children by regulating embodied interactions through rules about what is proper behavior for boys and girls (Martin, 1998). These early distinctions are sticky; children quickly begin to draw gendered borders themselves when engaged in mixed-gender play with peers (Messner, 2009; Thorne, 1993). As children learn more about sex and dating, the co-construction of gender and heterosexuality becomes even more prominent. Boys often enforce masculinity through “sex talk” that denigrates effeminacy and homosexuality (Fine, 1987; Pascoe, 2007), while girls often view heterosexual attraction, romance, and relationships as central to womanhood (Martin, 2009; Thorne, 1993). However, reflecting the broader devaluation of femininity, hetero-gendered restrictions tend to be firmer for boys than for girls. Within our patriarchal society, boys remain rewarded for gender-typed behavior whereas girls, by comparison, are given more latitude and incentive to pursue traditionally masculine extra-curricular activities, academic programs, and careers (Hill, 2002; Kane, 2012; Messner, 2009). Crucially, whether children fortify or “cross” gender borders in public life also depends a great deal on how these roles and behaviors are socialized by parents in private life.

Despite gender-neutral childrearing becoming more culturally accepted, popular parenting media encourage heteronormative gender socialization by assuming that children are cis-gendered and heterosexual (Martin, 2005; Riggs, 2008). These cultural texts are important for how they contribute to parents’ toolkits for gendering their children. Most parents—including those who hold liberal attitudes about gender diversity—still attempt to mold and monitor the development of their children’s gender and sexual identities (Kane, 2012; Meadow, 2018; Rahilly, 2015; Solebello & Elliott, 2011). Rahilly (2015) describes parents’ strategies ranging from “gender hedging” to curtail nonconformity to fostering “gender literacy” by teaching children about variance and inclusivity. These narratives highlight contradictions in how parents negotiate protecting versus accommodating their children in different settings. Similarly, Neary (2021, p. 519) finds that middle-class parents articulate an “ambivalent mix of decisiveness, compromise and second-guessing” in their accounts of supporting transgender and gender-diverse children. Amidst increased complexity and shifts in the gendering of children, two patterns remain clear: (1) many parents continue to feel a strong degree of gender accountability for their children—especially in public; and, (2) heterosexual men tend to be the most concerned about nonconformity and homosexuality—especially in boys (Elischberger et al., 2016; Kane, 2006, 2012; Neary, 2021; Solebello & Elliott, 2011). Evidently, heteronormativity still pervades childcare advice and practices even alongside growing awareness and tolerance of gender and sexual fluidity.

The reach of heteronormativity extends into a diverse array of families. Lesbian and gay parents can still feel pressure to uphold heteronormative parenting mandates out of fear of increased stigmatization and bullying of their children (Averett, 2016; Berkowitz & Ryan, 2011; Goldberg, 2009). Race and social class also intersect to influence parents’ gender ideologies and childrearing approaches (Averett, 2016; Hill, 2002; Kane, 2012). Hill (2002) explains how conflicting race and class positions create contradictions in how African American parents engage in racialized gender socialization—with Black fathers being supportive of daughters’ economic self-reliance and mobility, but intolerant of sons’ participation in feminized activities. Because minority fathers may hold conservative beliefs about gender roles and masculinity (McLoyd et al., 2000; Offer & Kaplan, 2021), they may also be likely to endorse and ensure heteronormative childrearing in their families. At the same time, sexuality, race, and class may have little impact relative to the “directionality” of children’s gender transgression (Meadow, 2018, p. 47). That is, fathers’ approval or disapproval of gender nonconformity may hinge primarily on whether it is their son or daughter who is behaving atypically. With boys and men standing to gain a “patriarchal dividend” (Connell, 2005, p. 79), a variety of fathers may continue to perform traditional gender socialization and hold their sons accountable for “doing” hetero-masculinity.

Fatherhood and Masculinities in Parenting Blogs

As an online community of predominantly white, heterosexual, and employed fathers, dad bloggers possess a substantial amount of social capital that colors their orientation toward paternal roles and responsibilities (Scheibling, 2020a, b; Scheibling & Marsiglio, 2021). Aligning with middle-class ideals of involved fatherhood (Wall & Arnold, 2007), dad blogs often advise fathers on how to participate more actively in the daily nurturance of their children (Ranson, 2015; Scheibling & Marsiglio, 2021). As a networked public, these bloggers also leverage their influence to advocate for structural changes—like paid parental leave and family-friendly workplace policies—to facilitate father involvement and advance gender equality (Scheibling, 2020b). In their view, a main barrier to achieving change is the glorification of masculine norms that extol competitive work and aggression over care and sensitivity. In online discourse, dad bloggers condemn traditional masculinities by highlighting the harmful effects that trying to be a “real” man can have on the physical and mental health of boys and men (Scheibling, 2020a; Scheibling & Marsiglio, 2021). By sharing stories, images, and videos that display nurturance and emotional expression, dad blogs help to normalize “caring” constructions of fatherhood and masculinity. For these reasons, the dad blogger community bears similarity to other groups of pro-feminist men (Ranson, 2015; Scheibling, 2020a). Given their communal norms and goals, most blogging fathers appear to hold and promote progressive beliefs about gender and sexuality.

The little existing research on dad blogs has centered on the digitally mediated construction of fathers’ own experiences as parents. Yet fathers not only blog about themselves; they also blog at length about their children. By shifting focus away from men’s “fathering visions” and toward their “child visions” (Marsiglio, 2004), important questions arise concerning how fathers assign meaning to their children’s identities and behaviors on social media. For one, if dad bloggers are considered pro-feminist men, do they articulate and extend pro-feminist ideals for their children? Some work finds that children reared in feminist households adopt their parents’ egalitarian views (Risman, 1998), while other studies show that parents’ gender ideologies do not always map neatly onto their children’s attitudes and actions (Halpern & Perry-Jenkins, 2016; Kollmayer et al., 2018). Moreover, since dad bloggers have pushed back against media stereotyping of “bad” dads and “toxic” masculinities, do they also push back against heteronormativity in popular discourse about child socialization? Ultimately, how do fathers account for children’s gender and sexuality online? Further inquiry is needed. A case study of dad blogs is unique in its ability to disentangle threads woven around expectations for fathering, the gendering of children, and accountability in digital public spaces.

Method

The data used in this study comes from a broader and ongoing ethnographic examination of the “Dad 2.0” community (see Scheibling, 2020a, b). This network of dad bloggers has grown over the past ten years in conjunction with the annual Dad 2.0 Summit (dad2.com) where they gather to connect with other digital influencers, brand ambassadors, policymakers, researchers, and activists. To determine which bloggers were associated with this community, fieldwork was performed at the Dad 2.0 Summit from 2016 to 2020. With a list of bloggers met or referred to through the gathering, around 1,500 blog posts from 45 fathers were collected and archived. Although this sample is not generalizable to the greater population of fathers—or even to dad bloggers across the world—it is a rich and wide-ranging collection of blog posts written by a specific network of American and Canadian fathers. Thus, the sampled blog data is restricted to, and reflective of, this burgeoning Dad 2.0 community.

Purposeful sampling was conducted to find dad blog posts about children’s gender and sexuality, specifically. This was done by first performing keyword searches to locate posts that included any mention of “gender,” “sex,” “sexuality,” “masculinity,” or “femininity.” Then, this initial sample was narrowed down to those that focus on children by adding search terms like “children,” “kids,” “boys,” “girls,” “socialization,” “toys,” “dolls,” “play,” and “clothes.” In total, there were 122 posts written by 36 fathers between 2009 and 2020, but with 62% of the sample being from 2013 to 2015. The length of the posts ranged from about 300 words to over 3,000 words, with most entries being around 1,000 words long. Reflecting the demographics of the dad blogger network, most of these men appeared to be white, heterosexual, and employed, which was determined by biographical information included on each website. Nevertheless, this sample did include two non-white fathers (6%), four gay fathers (11%), and eight stay-at-home fathers (22%). Furthermore, given the assumption that fathers’ role in child socialization can vary depending on whether they have sons or daughters, the gender of the bloggers’ children was also recorded. At the time of data collection, fourteen bloggers had sons only (39%), eight bloggers had daughters only (22%), and fourteen bloggers had sons and daughters (39%).

Even with this sample limited to the Dad 2.0 community, there was some diversity in the social status of these fathers, their work–family arrangement, and the focus and style of their writing. The blog posts included were therefore expected to reveal both similarities and differences in fathers’ accounts of children’s gender and sexuality. All blogs included in the sample were active at the time of data collection, but due to the instability of online worlds, certain posts or sites may now be inactive or deleted. The overwhelming majority of these fathers use their real names in blog content and across social media accounts. Blogs were thus treated as public documentary data and bloggers were cited when presenting quotes in the analysis. However, to protect the privacy of individuals who were not the blog author (e.g., children, partners, friends), all other real names mentioned in the posts were blinded. Research ethics clearance for this approach was approved prior to the data collection phase.

With the final sample of bloggers and posts established, a directed qualitative content analysis was performed (Hsieh & Shannon, 2005). A “directed” approach guides the analytical process by using an extant conceptual framework as a schema to code the data. In this case, Kane’s (2012) “gender trap” typology was used to analyze how the gendering of children was “naturalized,” “cultivated,” “refined,” “innovated,” or “resisted” in fathers’ online accounts. Each blog post was first coded to mark different meanings for gender and sexuality and then categorized for which of the five gendering configurations was most aligned with the narrative overall. To ensure consistency in the coding, inter-rater reliability was sought for the application of these configurations, since they represented a predetermined list of codes rather than emergent themes developed from open coding (see Chatfield, 2018). A graduate student research assistant was debriefed on the study focus, Kane’s typology, and the dataset. Then, a code application test was created using Dedoose qualitative analysis software. This test required applying the five possible codes to data units from 25% of the full sample (n = 31), which is an appropriate proportion for determining inter-rater reliability based on recent guidelines (O’Connor & Joffe, 2020). Upon completing the test, Cohen’s kappa values demonstrating acceptable agreement were generated. The frequency distribution of blog posts in the “gender trap” typology, along with Cohen’s kappa and percent agreement values, are presented in Table 1.

Table 1 Gendering Configuration of Blog Posts Based on the “Gender Trap” Typology
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Each blogger was then assigned one of these configurations, as well. This was determined by counting the number of posts per gendering configuration written by each father. Most fathers could be easily categorized based on the frequency of their coded posts—though three fathers were labeled as “refiners” due to possessing a roughly equal number of posts with opposing configurations (e.g., “innovating” and “cultivating” gender). Adding this layer of analysis was useful for noting differences and contradictions within each father’s set of narratives. In addition, the gendering configuration of each father was counted for whether they had sons only, daughters only, or sons and daughters. These descriptive statistics illustrate important patterns related to socialization based on child’s gender. The frequency distribution of bloggers in the “gender trap” typology is presented in Table 2 and the frequency distribution of the gendering configuration of bloggers by their children’s gender is presented in Table 3.

Table 2 Bloggers’ Gendering Configuration Based on the “Gender Trap” Typology
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Table 3 Bloggers’ Gendering Configuration by Their Children’s Gender
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The final stage of analysis consisted of a deeper qualitative examination of the data. This process involved moving beyond the deductive application of Kane’s categories to interpret thematic patterns that are linked to and crosscut the gendering configurations. Following guidelines for qualitative media analysis (Altheide & Schneider, 2013, p. 71), all posts were re-read while writing “minisummaries” of meaningful recurrences, key similarities and differences in thematic meanings, overlaps between the five categories, and comparisons to concepts and findings in the extant literature. These procedures were conducted using Dedoose, which enabled the assignment of sub-codes, the attachment of written memos to posts, and the extraction of textual excerpts. Once this analysis was completed, demonstrative quotes were selected and exported. The final product of this analysis presents quantitative and qualitative findings from dad blog posts about children’s gender and sexuality. Building on this analysis and Kane’s (2012) “gender trap” theory, the concepts of sticky essentialism and ambivalent (de)gendering were also developed.

Results

Dad bloggers appear to support gender and sexual flexibility for children with varied degrees of apprehension or contradiction. The few fathers who naturalized gender (n = 3; 8%) argued that socializing children to fit gendered and sexual norms was pointless because these identities are biologically determined. Fathers who cultivated gender (n = 4; 11%) displayed an ideological preference for heteronormativity and often imagined their children in “proper” hetero-gendered roles in the future. Fathers who refined gender (n = 12; 33%) presented conflicting accounts of gender blindness, questioned the influence of parental socialization, and reluctantly allowed some nonconformity. Fathers who innovated gender (n = 10; 28%) encouraged role modeling gender atypicality to children, but with stricter limits set for sons compared to daughters. Finally, fathers who resisted gender (n = 7; 20%) connected conventional gender socialization to persistent structural inequalities, but also feared public repercussions for “undoing” gender. Across these configurations, it was common for dad bloggers to express ambivalence or anxiety toward children’s gender socialization. What follows is a more detailed portrait of these themes, as painted through a variety of excerpts from dad blogs.

Naturalizing and Cultivating Gender in Heteronormative Visions

With dad bloggers conceptualized as a group of pro-feminist men, it was unexpected that a few fathers provided biological explanations for children’s gender or sexuality. Trey, for instance, displays a politicized view of gender essentialism in critiquing a news report about a couple who are raising their child to be non-binary. To Trey, this childrearing approach is counterintuitive because “gender is something that’s already chosen.” He speculates about negative consequences for the child and ulterior motives of the parents:

The family is only fueling stories and innuendo that will follow this child for the rest of their life. It’s also possible that the family is just doing this to gain attention. Perhaps they’re seeking some reality show contract. Either way, this is spineless PC parenting at its high or low point.

Mitch provides a similar rationale to Trey. He writes about the inefficacy of encouraging kids to be gender-diverse because their preferences stem from biological predispositions. He claims, “You can deny this type of sexism all you want, but there are inherent traits in boys and girls, that is why they are different. Why do girls prefer pink and boys do not? DNA!” In another post, he discusses his son’s “natural affinity” for guns as part of his genetic, “straight male code.” Here, he not only naturalizes his child’s interests in gender-typical objects, but also assumes that his young son is heterosexual. Although these kinds of narratives were rare overall, it is notable that all naturalizers in the sample had sons only. It is therefore possible that certain fathers may enforce a “harder” essentialism for sons when they are only in the presence of boys (Messner, 2009, p. 169).

Other fathers articulate a “softer” essentialism whereby a wider range of gendered choices are recognized and accepted, but still explained through a heteronormative, binary logic. Chris confesses that his toddler-aged son enjoys engaging in nurturing behaviors such as “babywearing” his stuffed animals and pretending to feed, soothe, and put them to bed. While he is somewhat supportive of this behavior, he shores up his son’s cis-gender identity by reminding readers that “there are many ways to be ‘all boy’.” Yet it was even more common for cultivators to articulate heteronormative fathering and child “visions” by imagining their young children growing into hetero-gendered roles or relationships in the future (Marsiglio, 2004). Recalling his vision of if his wife gave birth to a girl instead of a boy, Brandon notes:

When we found out that we were about to have another boy, part of me was upset. I wanted to be the dad who questioned the boy that is about to take my daughter out on a date. I wanted to stay up late waiting for her and been asking a thousand questions when she came home from her first date. I don’t own a gun, but if we had a girl, I would have one just so I could hold it at the front porch waiting for her to come home.

Similarly, Creed shares a story about his five-year-old daughter being called a boy’s “girlfriend” at daycare. He projects into the future: “I imagine chiseling myself into the dad that no boy would mess with. I imagine standing at the door breaking boards with my pinkie in a tank top, with a prison number tattooed on my neck […] My daughter is NOT your girlfriend.” In these visions, then, fathers position themselves as crafters of their son’s “hetero-masculinity” and protectors of their daughter’s heterosexuality (Solebello & Elliott, 2011, p. 304).

Like naturalizers, cultivators tend to assume that young children are born cis-gendered and heterosexual. In heteronormative visions, fathers’ own masculinity is often co-constructed in conjunction with their children’s gender and sexuality. That is, successful fatherhood and masculinity is seen to rest on “proper” heteronormative role modeling to children. These types of posts also communicate a key paradox in the way parents approach child socialization: they strive to guide the construction of their children’s gender and sexual identities while still believing that these identities are largely innate and fixed (Averett, 2016; Kane, 2012; Rahilly, 2015). However, the use of humor and sarcasm in several posts suggests that these fathers may not, in fact, be fully committed to this logic or childrearing approach. This nuance, combined with the frequency distribution of codes (see Tables 1 and 2), demonstrates that staunch endorsements of biological determinism and heteronormativity are not overly prevalent in dad blogs.

Refining Gender Reluctantly

The large number of refiners in this sample account for the gendering of children in inconsistent and uncertain ways. Some bloggers, like Dan, include simultaneous gendering and degendering in their childrearing advice. Instructing readers on how to raise sons, he directs, “Teach him to be a man’s man. Show him how to be brave and tough around the guys. Then, remind him on the ride home that it is okay to cry.” Buzz mentions trying to teach his sons about socially constructed gender differences with hopes of weakening their gender boundaries. Unfortunately, he finds that his boys so often continue to act in gender-typical ways, thus questioning whether his strategies have proved futile. Recounting his sons’ rambunctious behavior during a family photo shoot, he writes:

I tell my boys as often as I can that girls can do anything boys can do. We talk often about how there are no “girl toys” or “boy toys” there are just “toys.” I try to raise them in a world where everyone is equal regardless of gender, race, or whom they love. And yet, boys will be boys.

Dave, on the other hand, is a bit more introspective in his efforts to untangle the biological and social grounds for his children’s gendered behavior. He admits to being “a hypocrite” in applying his progressive gender ideology to child socialization. As a “feminist father,” he struggles to make sense of why his son acts like “such a boy”:

When he throws, well, anything (occasionally a ball, but usually something else) wherever it will do the most damage (the TV, a row of framed pictures and my head are popular targets). He can also weaponize anything from a stuffed animal to a banana. “Ugh, you are SUCH A BOY!” is me calling my son a violent, semi-dangerous idiot (who I love more than life itself). Being a boy is not an excuse for his bad behavior. When he hits or kicks his sister, he gets in trouble. When he plays too rough or is just being generally destructive, my wife or I let him know that it is unacceptable. But I would be lying if I said his gender isn’t a lens through which I view his personality.

Posts like these illustrate how there can be clear discrepancies between parents’ gender role attitudes and childrearing practices (Halpern & Perry-Jenkins, 2016; Kollmayer et al., 2018). Although some bloggers are forthcoming about their own bewilderment in interpreting their children’s actions, they nonetheless articulate and extend contradictory explanations for gendered childhoods.

It is striking how many fathers express deep ambivalence toward attempting to be gender-blind or perform gender-neutral parenting. John had vowed to encourage his daughter to play with gender-less toys, but to no avail. He explains:

Sure, we tried to go with gender-less toys. We also tried going with toys marketed to both genders. We swore our baby girl wouldn’t be covered in pink. We failed. She loves pink. She wants to be a princess. She wants to be a fairy. She wants to have tea parties […] I can’t control what she likes.

Richard also recalls his motivation to minimize the “icons of femininity” (e.g., Disney princesses, “girly” toys and clothing) that his newborn daughter would be exposed to (Kane, 2006, p. 159). To his frustration, his friends ignored his “mandate” by giving him “pink onesies, blankets, picture frames and the dreaded princess outfit” at his baby shower. As his adherence to a gender neutrality mandate weakened, he began to view conventional gendering as less detrimental and more innocuous:

Ask a little girl these days about her thoughts on the Cinderella and you’re more likely to hear about how cool it was that she could talk to mice than anything implicit about gender inequality. Great strides have been made when it comes to women’s rights and, while there’s certainly still a lot of work to be done, the only problem I have with my daughter dressing up as Cinderella or Rapunzle is that she wears the outfit for five days straight until it can stand up by itself.

In a similar way, Oren explains that parenting is just one conduit through which children are socialized and wonders whether early gender-neutral childrearing could have lasting effects in a rigidly gendered society. He writes:

Maybe we don’t matter at all. Never did. Maybe our kids’ personalities—their blue and pink and everything in between—will be shaped less by our best intentions than by the intentions of the popular kids in their schools, the real decision-makers when it comes to future social norms. And if that’s the case, then maybe we should just let go. Let her play with her Barbie. Let him watch his X-Men. As long as we encourage them to switch toys every once in a while.

For refiners, then, the lack of clarity on what are the primary drivers of gender and sexual identities creates mixed feelings about enforcing or rejecting heteronormativity in daily parenting.

Certain other fathers express gender blindness by emphasizing children’s personal agency. For example, in presenting a list of tips for raising girls, Jason advises fathers not to “succumb to the pinkification of girlhood” while also clarifying that toy and clothing choices do not “need to always be gender-neutral” and that they should let their daughter “be an individual and make her own choices.” Using rhetoric around individuality and choice is one way that refiners can avoid contentious debates about biological versus social grounds for gender and sexuality. Like many fathers in Kane’s (2012, p. 34) study, these bloggers often describe following children’s lead reluctantly while using biological determinism as a “fallback” explanation for failing to get gender neutrality to stick. As we can see, regardless of being for or against heteronormative child socialization, these fathers are conflicted about how strongly to engender or degender their children and whether their efforts will be inconsequential in the end.

Innovating Gender for Daughters versus Sons

Innovators go further than simply experimenting with gender-neutral childrearing and instead share their motivation to model gender role atypicality to their children. These fathers believe that actively encouraging these behaviors will be beneficial for children’s well-being. Overall, however, it was more common for fathers to write about encouraging gender flexibility and opportunity for girls than for boys. Doyin is a prime example of an innovator who breaks down the “myth” of “being girly” and describes his intent to expand gender borders for his daughters:

I’ve learned that being a girl can be whatever the hell a girl wants it to be, and I will never limit them when it comes to that. Additionally, I want to introduce my daughters to other women who are crushing it in male-dominated fields (executive leadership, sports journalism/broadcasting, coding, law enforcement, etc.) so they’ll understand that it’s possible to do anything that their little heart’s desire.

Moreover, one trending campaign—#LikeAGirl—was supported by several bloggers who emphasize redefining what it means to do something “like a girl.” Joel implores, “Let’s stop using the phrase like an insult and start using it as a compliment. Women have strength, confidence, and power to be admired,” while Chris B. explains that his daughters taught him that “it takes an equally strong father to realize that his daughters, while precious and beautiful don’t have to be delicate porcelain dolls that we put upon a shelf. We can raise them to be strong and intelligent, sensitive and assertive.” Each of these men discuss how the social devaluation of femininity can be resisted in socializing children. Yet, by focusing more on innovating gender for daughters than for sons, traditionally masculine attitudes, values, and behaviors continue to be exalted by fathers, even if only implicitly.

Some bloggers endorse gender and sexual fluidity and equality overall, but still draw limits to nonconformity for their sons. Clint, for instance, shares a story about how excited his son was to be making bracelets with a group of friends at school. Upon realizing that his son was the only boy in the group who was making bracelets, he felt considerable worry:

[My son] said that Jake got his bracelets from some girl who thinks he’s cute. This, I would have been comfortable with. If Mandy or Sandy or some other girl had given [my son] a bracelet, I probably would’ve given him a high five. That’s my boy! I’d have thought. But that wasn’t the case. He was going to make jewelry. He was playing with a girl’s toy. […] in that moment, I didn’t think as much about his sexual orientation. I worried more about him being a boy in elementary school doing effeminate things. This really scared me.

Even though Clint eventually supported his son’s harmless bracelet-making and felt proud of the “culture change” his son inspired at school by crossing gender borders, he still experienced competing pressures to attenuate his son’s gender innovations. Similarly, Oren confesses reaching a breaking point while watching his two-year-old son play with a friend’s older daughter. He writes:

When she gave him a toy brush to use on her unicorns, I thought, “Why Not?” When she asked him how he’d like to dress her barbies, I thought, “Well, he looks like he’s having fun.” But when she took his hand, walked him to the kitchen, pointed at her collection of mermaid fridge magnets, and asked, “Which mermaid would you like to be?” I dragged him back to the toy cars.

Like Clint, Oren determined a threshold of gender flexibility that he would allow for his son, despite being outspoken about his distaste for gender stereotypes as a stay-at-home father. Notably, no posts about daughters had as explicit of a line drawn to cordon off limits to their gender and sexual expression. Noticing this discrepancy in other dad blogs, Mike R. is an outlier in asking, “Why can’t boys be #LikeAGirl?” and stressing the need for fathers to tell sons that “it’s okay for a boy to look up to a woman as a superhero.” These accounts provide evidence that fathers remain chiefly concerned with gender boundary maintenance for sons (Hill, 2002; Kane, 2006, 2012) and that boys’ accomplishments of normative masculinity remain bound up with heterosexuality (Connell, 2005; Pascoe, 2007; Solebello & Elliott, 2011).

A significant exception is three of the four gay fathers in the sample who did not appear to set clear restrictions for boys and expressed little fear of the judgment of others. Feeling ready to teach his son to confront gender and sexual discrimination, Brent declares:

I know by heart the script to dismantle gender stereotypes. My arsenal has long been loaded to fend off narrow-minded relatives or strangers who say my son shouldn’t want to dress up like Elsa or know all the words to “Shake It Off.” If my son was queer or effeminate? Nerdy, reclusive or just plain shy? Piece of cake.

In addition, Jerry shares a story about his son wearing a dress to a restaurant and the waitress calling him a “beautiful” young woman. Unconcerned about accountability norms, he replies, “Thank you, but this guy’s a boy. He just wanted to wear a dress today.” Given how these men may have had to suffer acute gender policing and homophobia in their own upbringing, they are well-equipped to raise children to be resilient and to resist heteronormativity themselves (see Averett, 2016; Berkowitz & Ryan, 2011; Goldberg, 2009). This finding also demonstrates the importance of examining how fathers’ sexuality shapes their gender role attitudes and childrearing practices.

Resisting Gender and Accountability Dilemmas

Resisters oppose gendered norms and distinctions for their children most strongly. Unlike innovators though, these fathers have an even deeper concern with heteronormative accountability. Aaron outlines the many ways that he encourages gender nonconformity for his son and daughter at home: from interchanging colors and toys, to clothing and games. He has a firm conviction that minimizing gender difference in childhood will benefit his children later in life, yet his fears of how others may treat them in public causes him to question the outcomes of his resistance. He admits:

I continue to feel a thrill anytime [my son] talks about bending conventional gender norms […] I want to be a part of rewriting the narrative of how boys and young men are “supposed to act” and I love the idea of working together with my family toward that goal. I’ll admit, however, that I sometimes feel nervous when [my son] says he wants to go to school with painted nails or wearing a pink shirt. Our home is a safe place for him to express himself however he would like but I’ve seen enough of the world to know that not everyone else has the same sentiments about gender expression that [we] do.

A few bloggers share stories about public confrontations over their child’s violation of dominant gendered expectations and rules. Recalling how an older man once fat-shamed his young daughter and told her that she would “never get married” if she kept eating all of her Halloween candy, Lorne decries:

This societal sickness that steals female empowerment, wrecks self-esteem and replaces them with a desperate need to compare themselves bodily and matrimonially, to starve themselves to death, to sit in therapists’ offices bemoaning that they’re 30 and not yet married. WHAT THE EFF IS WRONG WITH YOU???

Chris F. also links the conventional gendering of girls to detrimental health and body image consequences. Explaining how Barbies can be used as a “teaching tool to talk about eating disorders” and sexual health with girls, he asks readers, “Did you know that if barbie were a real woman she would have such a low percentage of body fat that she would be unable to menstruate?” These fathers thus use blogging for advocacy and knowledge mobilization around how gender, sexuality, and beauty norms intersect to oppress young girls.

Other resisters clarify how powerful social inequalities stem from the ways children are raised to be “proper” boys and girls. Drawing connections to the gender pay gap and structural sexism, Mike J. questions:

How can you raise kids—male or female—with a sense of fairness in a world in which some people get paid 30 cents less than others for doing the same job? In a world in which some people are harassed and abused and taken advantage of and raped and then ignored or dismissed or called liars when they ask for help? The big stuff is important—discrimination, harassment, equal pay, the glass ceiling—but the small stuff is where it starts, and that’s where I’m starting. I’m laying a foundation early by teaching my little boys to be nice to the girls in their class, to the girls on the playground, to the girls at the park. By teaching them to respect their opinions and to listen when they talk.

In a similar way, Aaron G. views structural work–family inequalities as rooted partially in childrearing. He argues, “We let boys go through life thinking things like involved parenting are a woman’s job, and then clutch our pearls and wonder why there are so many absentee fathers. And on the flip side, perhaps there are so few female CEOs because they’re too busy taking care of kids at home.” Chris F. is even more impassioned in listing the dire consequences of heteronormative gender socialization for boys, specifically. He exclaims:

Let’s recognize that “rape culture” is an outgrowth of the violence that we men are taught to use to gain “respect” or demonstrate that we fit within the male definition […] This violence is encouraged by society. We need to push back against all male violence […] It starts with us dads modelling positive behaviours. It starts with employers and mothers encouraging men to take parental leave and government/employer policies that make parental leave possible.

Unlike many of the other bloggers, these fathers conceive of gender as an institutionalized and oppressive social structure, rather than simply an identity, performance, or biological outcome. By disseminating these arguments online, they are leveraging digital technologies and networks to challenge the heteronormative gender system publicly.

Discussion

When writing about children’s gender and sexuality, dad bloggers often oscillate between endorsing and rejecting heteronormativity. In Kane’s (2012) terminology, most blog posts articulated “refining” and “innovating” gender through stories about the challenges of gender-neutral childrearing, allowing children some freedom of choice, and setting boundaries around nonconformity. Since several bloggers and posts were assigned to each configuration, there was notable variation in fathers’ interpretations of children’s gender and sexuality. Some of this variation can be explained by the different social statuses of the bloggers. Sixty-three percent of the stay-at-home fathers and 75% of the gay fathers in the sample were categorized as “innovators” or “resisters,” suggesting alignments between less traditional gendered role-identities and liberal gender socialization attitudes. Put differently, because stay-at-home fathers and gay fathers have challenged certain heteronormative expectations and rules themselves, perhaps they are more likely to support gender diversity and border “crossings” among children. In addition, fathers with daughters were more frequently categorized into progressive gendering configurations than fathers with sons only (see Table 3), which lends credence to the claim that girls tend to be granted more gender flexibility than boys (Hill, 2002; Kane, 2006; Meadow, 2018; Rahilly, 2015). This variance across and within the bloggers’ posts exhibited both complexity and inconsistency in how fathers describe the gendering of children.

A major distinction throughout these narratives was in the way dad bloggers described the socialization of daughters compared to sons. Fathers seemed generally enthusiastic about daughters pursuing masculinized activities and careers, demonstrating how the cultural valuation of masculinity and devaluation of femininity continues to frame fathers’ accounts of gendered childhoods (Coltrane & Adams, 2008; Hill, 2002; Kane, 2012). Conversely, many fathers set distinct limits to “hedge” nonconformity in sons (Rahilly, 2015) and admitted discomfort or disapproval when sons crossed imagined or real borders. This study thus provides further evidence that fathers police the gender and sexuality of boys more closely than girls due, in part, to the “fragility of maleness” relative to femininity (Meadow, 2018, p. 53). Yet the “resister” fathers who were most opposed to heteronormative child socialization frequently outlined the social costs of reproducing hegemonic masculinities (see Connell, 2005). Fathers who were unconcerned with gender norms underscored the pliability of femininity for girls, whereas fathers who were highly concerned with gender norms underscored inequalities inherent to male hegemony and the dangers of teaching boys how to “man up.” In other words, fathers who conceptualized gender and sexuality as intersecting and inequitable power structures were outspokenly critical of how these structures are shored up by men, masculinity, and patriarchy.

Although few bloggers “naturalized” gender or expressed a steadfast commitment to a heteronormative childrearing philosophy, biological predispositions still often explained away children’s behavior that did not align with parents’ socialization values or strategies. Regardless of whether they denounce gender rigidity and homophobia, many fathers continued to rely on and reinforce the assumption that children are cis-gendered and heterosexual until proven otherwise (see Martin, 2005, 2009; Riggs, 2008). This is additional proof of just how taken-for-granted “doing” gender and heteronormativity in families can be (Coltrane & Adams, 2008; Schilt & Westbrook, 2009). What is more, these findings demonstrate that sticky essentialism informs how fathers interpret, negotiate, and explain the gendered lives of their children. Even for fathers who are accepting, if not supportive, of gender and sexual diversity in children, heteronormative and essentialist logics tend to stick—especially when fathers need to account for children’s interests or behaviors that contradict their own gender ideology.

Finally, the majority of these narratives across gendering configurations signaled considerable contradiction, confliction, or hesitancy when it comes to the gender and sexual socialization of children. Many fathers were not convinced that children’s gender and sexuality could be shaped by parents and expressed frustration, confusion, or anxiety related to conflicting parenting discourses about the purpose or value of gender-neutral childrearing. Overall, dad bloggers’ accounts of child socialization philosophies and practices are defined by ambivalent (de)gendering. When fathers described gendering children in traditional ways, they often communicated reluctance or mixed feelings toward gender accountability that they recognize as socially sanctioned but also constraining children’s freedom and livelihood. When fathers described degendering children, they often questioned their choices and shared worries about protecting their kids and dealing with backlash from other people. The prevalence of ambivalent (de)gendering suggests that many fathers are not comfortable with fully rejecting a heteronormative approach to childrearing due to competing explanations for the origins of gender and sexuality, and perceived negative consequences that children and families can suffer for violating hetero-gendered boundaries.

Limitations and Future Research Directions

Although parenting blogs provide a window to gaze into the family life of others, these posts should not be viewed as true reflections of fathers’ participation in childrearing. Prior research has documented that parents’ attitudes about gender do not always predict their parenting practices or how children adopt gender ideologies (Halpern & Perry-Jenkins, 2016). Dad bloggers are also not representative of most fathers in the United States and Canada. In fact, they are a unique cross-section of fathers who are highly invested in crafting and maintaining a public face of fatherhood that enhances their social and digital capital. This discourse about children’s gender and sexuality is influenced by the group norms of the dad blogger community and the broader "culture of fatherhood 2.0" (Scheibling, 2020b, p. 825). For these reasons, the findings from this study should not be read as generalizable to all fathers or all dad bloggers. Future researchers could use quantitative network analyses to measure and track the discourse of a greater number of parents across social media platforms. Moreover, conducting interviews with bloggers and blog readers would allow for a wider extrapolation and interpretation of these mediated public texts. The themes from this study could be used as the basis of an in-depth interview guide designed to further assess fathers’ perceptions of child socialization and accounting for children’s gender and sexuality online.

Practice Implications

This study has important links to social, digital, and health implications. When parents limit their child’s gender expression and discourage gender-atypical identities, behaviors, and relationships, the parent–child relationship and children’s well-being can suffer (Elischberger et al, 2016; Hill & Menvielle, 2009; Meadow, 2018). If fathers continue to enforce these limits onto their sons through the role modeling of hetero-masculinity, not only is the humanity of boys significantly constrained, but gender inequality can become marbled into future generations. Dad bloggers can be seen to both confirm and disrupt these trends. On the one hand, blogs provide a resource for fathers to learn about gender and sexuality in childhood, and work through accountability dilemmas as they exchange advice with others. Moreover, the findings from this study suggest that most dad bloggers extend liberal attitudes about gender and sexuality, which may contribute to generating more inclusive and egalitarian parenting norms in the future. On the other hand, by writing about their family online, they are introducing new risks that may compromise the agency, privacy, and protection of their children (see Blum-Ross & Livingstone, 2017). These types of posts can position fathers as targets for criticism from anonymous trolls, men’s rights activists, and online hate groups. With these threats in mind, dad bloggers may feel an acute pressure to construct normative identities for their children on the Internet. This new digital accountability may pose a significant obstacle to advancing public support for gender and sexual diversity.

Conclusion

To conclude, this study illustrates persistent and emergent accountability dilemmas that fathers face in interpreting the gender and sexuality of their children and sharing those interpretations with others via social media. Ambivalent and contradictory accounts of gendered childhoods suggest that even a group of pro-feminist blogging fathers may fall into the “gender trap” in raising children, thus exposing the stickiness of heteronormative logics and parenting mandates. When writing publicly about children rather than themselves, these fathers appear more apprehensive about, and inconsistent in, assigning gendered and sexual meanings to identities, behaviors, relationships, and activities. Despite these tensions, dad bloggers are still using social media to negotiate and discuss the personal, familial, and social-structural complexities that interweave to shape children’s gender and sexual socialization. By expanding dialogue about these issues online, they can encourage other parents to rethink their own beliefs about childrearing, gender, and sexuality in productive ways.