Mike has another excellent post:

I could understand why there are kids who want to avoid puberty, especially if they are gender non-conforming. The whole masculine – feminine gender expectation thing is very hard to navigate. It is for everyone, because it’s hard to understand exactly what is going on when it comes to gender. Kids are taught through examples of their family, external socializing and through all of the media they have access to, that boys and girls are different. They learn not only the physical differences, such as the external genitals, but the toys they have available to them and the choices in dress they are presented. They learn that girls wear bows and boys wear caps.

They learn that girls are made of sugar and spice, like pink, and carry dollies around. Boys are made of snakes and snails, like blue, and play with toy tractors. They are learning that masculinity comes with expectations, but also with benefits. Boys are favored by adults and receive privileges over girls, even among those adults who try to avoid sexism.

Girls grow up to be The Real Housewives of Wherever while boys grow up to be a long long list of things, all of them more interesting than being Real Housewives.

The parents who are fully committed to avoiding gender-based play for their kids are not doing so in isolation. Children play with other children, meet other adults, watch television, listen to radio, overhear parents talking, have older brothers and sisters. Gender has social momentum with millennia propelling it.

And the older the kids get the less the parents can do to replace or contradict the external socializing.