Cinderella Ate My Daughter

Peggy Orenstein, New York Times magazine writer and author of Cinderella Ate My Daughter, would prefer to be the mother of a boy than a girl.

Her basic reasoning is that the pressure is too great to be, well, a girl. In an interview with Mother Jones, she says, “My biggest surprise as a parent, or one of them, was how much of my job is about protecting my child's childhood.” More specifically, she feels that “Femininity becomes defined for [girls] by sexiness (you know, at the age of four), narcissism, and consumerism - all three of which are problematic for [my daughter].”

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