If you name your son Slash, are you signing him up for a life of delinquency? If you name him Chris, can you rest assured he'll be a good kid? According to a new study, yes. People with "bad boy names" are often ridiculed by peers and face discrimination in the workforce, the study claims. The names they give -- Alec, Ernest, Garland, Ivan, Kareem, Luke, Malcolm, Preston, Tyrell and Walter -- don't seem too bad-ass. For a real bad-ass list, check out 100 Totally Boss Baby Boy Names. Tecumseh? Rambo? Now we're talkin'. What do you think about the study? Do you buy it?

Baby names on Parenting.com:
Most unusual picks in the top 1000 U.S. names
Bad celebrity associations
More baby names

Anyone who has taken a Women’s Studies course in college learns that gender is a social construct -- that from Day One, girls are dressed in pink, handed dolls, and expected to be sweet and pretty. Boys are wrapped in blue, given toy cars, and taught to be tough.

But anyone who has kids knows that that’s a big blue truck full of crap. My sons can stare at pictures of tractors, monster trucks, diggers, excavators, concrete crushers, fire engines, police cars, mobile cranes (you get the idea) in a book for hours. Sure, they’ll accept a baby doll and pretend to feed it a bottle…for about half a minute. Then they club the poor thing on the head with a truck. Every parent I know has something similar to say about the gender-based leanings of their kids.

But still. This story about a Swedish couple who refuses to identify their toddler’s sex, in hopes of letting the child grow up without the limits of either gender, gave me pause. Only a few people who have changed Pop’s diaper (yes, the child’s name is “Pop”) know the truth. “We want Pop to grow up more freely and avoid being forced into a specific gender mould from the outset,” Pop’s mother has said, according to The Local, a Swedish news site.

The ethics of this “experiment” aside, it reminded that me every parent has a different agenda when it comes to nurturing (or not) their child’s gender identification. This family has taken an extreme stance against what they believe to be stereotypical socialization, but many parents I know also go out of their way to steer clear of the whole pink-blue juxtaposition, disavowing anything princess-y for their girls and enrolling their boys in dance classes.

And as much as it seems obvious to me that my sons are “boy boys,” this story made me own up to my own weird ideologies. My wife, Emily, and I are raising our twin sons as two moms. Ever conscious that there still remains a degree of bias against our family in this country, I often (and this is the first time I’ve even admitted this to myself!) dress them super boyish, so as not to give anyone any ammunition against the idea of two women raising boys. I think I’m unconsciously afraid that people will think we’re “turning” our sons gay if I dress them in pink or if they’re seen playing with a doll in public. Ridiculous, right? Right or wrong, I think we all have our fears and prejudices that influence our parenting decisions.

Not sure where I’m going with this, but I’d love to hear what everyone thinks and how you handle you encourage or discourage or ignore gender stereotypes. Maybe Pop’s parents have a point?

You can't tell me that during your pregnancies you never thought, "Gee, I'd really love a girl." Or maybe, for you, it was a boy. (For me, it was a girl.) Apparently a lot of moms don’t feel this way -- or can’t admit it -- and are furious that someone else does. When we published Baby Boy Crazy by Amy Wilson, who definitely thought she wanted a third boy, it got picked up all over the blogosphere. And the commenters went nuts.

Here’s a tiny excerpt from her story:

"I could handle boys, with their cut-and-dried needs, but girls were so much more complicated. Girls have elaborate hairstyling requirements. They whine and mope, manipulate and triangulate. How was I going to deal with that?”

And here’s what the commenters on CNN.com said:

"Wow, instead of being so grateful to be pregnant you actually took the time to write this stereotypical drivel?" —Joan

"I would be ecstatic no matter what the sex. Do you realize how blessed you are to even be able to get pregnant in the first place?” —Lynette

"As the mother of three spunky, zesty, full-of-life daughters, I absolutely HATE this very common comment about girls: that they are quiet and easy. Really? My three are anything but. I am raising them to hopefully be strong, secure women." —Stefunny

Amy’s happy ending: she adores her daughter now that she has her (of course!). And we give her a big shout out for being so frank about her apprehension, which is actually pretty common.

You can read tons of other comments here:

CNN Living: Why I Didn’t Want a Girl
New York Times.com’s Motherlode: Wanting, and Not Wanting, a Girl
Babble: Don’t Ask if We’re Trying to Have a Boy… or a Girl
Salon: Bad Mommy? Bad Society!
Jezebel: This Mom: Brave Enough To Admit She Wanted A Boy, Not A Girl
Amy's blog post: The Amazing Reach of CNN.com

And tell us what you think! Did you want a boy or a girl more? Would you change if you could? Do you think it’s horrible to even admit to having a preference?

I’m so excited to be having a boy. I’m also a teeny bit petrified. What if I get a wild man, prone to leaping off the kitchen table and beating on his older sister?

Turns out some of the tired cliches I’m falling back on above are founded -- and yet not. A new piece in Working Mother sheds new light on stereotypes about girls and boys. Studies bear out that boys and girls think and behave differently almost from birth (uh oh: one study contends that infant boys aren’t as good at self-soothing), but then there’s a huge individuality wild card. The best thing parents can do is try to pay attention to their kid’s unique talents – whether it’s a nail polish-loving boy or a hockey fan girl – and go from there.

We’d like to know: how have you seen gender stereotypes play out among your kids?

Plus:
Boys or Girls: Who’s Harder to Raise?
What Are You Having? Fun Ways to Guess Baby’s Gender
More on the Differences Between the Sexes

The first time I was pregnant, I didn’t find out the sex. Somehow, though, I felt strongly I was having a girl. In fact, when they pulled my Chloe out, they first announced her as a boy. Instead of exclaiming “Wow” or bursting into tears as you might expect, my first reaction was “Really??” They figured out her gender five seconds later -- guess she was a little messy.

You might be waiting for a delivery surprise too, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have fun trying to guess. That’s why we pulled together all the old wives’ tales about baby’s gender, including the ancient Chinese birth chart, the ring swing and even the wonderfully weird Drano test.

I didn’t put too much stock in this stuff, but this pregnancy most of these tests point to me having a boy – and I am!