Are you sure you treat your daughters and sons the same way?

6. Do you argue constructively and safely with your spouse? (If your marriage has remained in a state of perpetual bliss and you've never so much as considered exchanging a cross word, could you pretend to have an argument just for the children's sake?) Use disputes and differences of opinion as opportunities for children to learn that conflict can lead to resolving matters in a way that doesn't involve one gender dominating and controlling the other.

7. Do you communicate expectations regarding school work that are based on ability, not gender? Not all students can achieve at the same level and everyone has areas of relative strength and weakness, but gender itself doesn't have to be a significant factor.

8. Although day-to-day experiences are probably more influential than abstract discussions, do you try to stimulate the occasional debate on gender issues? It can be interesting to find out the extent to which teenagers feel there are real differences in ability or appropriate roles. It can be even more interesting to challenge their views and assumptions -- remembering, of course, to listen carefully to their opinions without interrupting daughters any more than sons.

9. Is it likely your children believe that, in addition to sharing household tasks, you view their upbringing as a joint responsibility? Are both parents as equally involved in their lives as schedules permit? Is it always one parent who takes them shopping, helps them with homework, goes to school interviews and open houses, exercises discipline, and takes care of doctors' appointments? Single mothers obviously have much less opportunity to demonstrate that child-rearing can be shared, but they can include this area in discussions with their children. Asking their teenage sons what type of father they'd like to be if they decide to have a family at least introduces the idea that the question "what do you want to do when you grow up?" doesn't refer only to employment outside the home.

10. Do you discuss employment options in a way that cuts across traditional gender lines? By the time our children reach their teens we've often acquired definite ideas about their strengths and weaknesses. This awareness can prompt discussion about areas they might want to explore as possible career choices. But are your suggestions about careers based on their abilities or have they been determined partially by what you consider to be masculine or feminine occupations?

I have no desire to take the spontaneity out of family life. It would be tedious, oppressive, and somewhat absurd to maintain a schedule of whose turn it is to drive the car or insist that your son be allowed to join the local synchronized swimming team while his sister dons a football uniform. But the attitudes we communicate in our day-to-day interactions with our children do make a difference. The way in which we relate to the opposite gender and our approach to raising our daughters and sons affords us an opportunity to counteract the limitations of traditional stereotypes.

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Excerpted from Now I Know Why Tigers Eat Their Young: Surviving a New Generation of Teenagers by Dr. Peter Marshall, with a foreward by Barbara Coloroso. Copyright 2007 by Dr. Peter Marshall. Excerpted with permission by Whitecap Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced except with permission in writing from the publishers.