Of all the little Elsas patrolling my neighbourhood over Halloween, this one stood out. The costume was identical to the dozens, probably hundreds, of others I counted: there were the regulation swathes of crackling polyester in Sybil Fawlty blue, the wiry blonde wig twisted into an unruly ponytail and the feet shoved into wobbly little sandals. Except this little Elsa was a boy.

The surprise shouldn’t have been that there was a little boy in my neighbourhood who wanted to dress up as the lead character from Frozen (this is the San Francisco Bay Area, after all), but that there was only one. Frozen is the highest-grossing animated movie of all time and the fifth-highest-grossing movie ever. Boys love it every bit as much as girls: I have a six-year-old son who knows every word to Let it Go.

Meanwhile, there were plenty of little girls dressed up in “boy” costumes: pirates, Dracula, Steve from Minecraft.

But for all we talk about encouraging our daughters to be themselves and shatter stereotypes, we’re quite happy to see our sons conform to the rigid rules we grew up with. We steer them away from dolls and nail polish and Disney princesses. They say they want to be Elsa; you ask if they wouldn’t rather be Kristoff, Sven or Olaf. Anything but the princess in blue polyester.

We tell ourselves we’re doing it for them, so they won’t get bullied, blithely ignoring the fact that kids are far more likely to be damaged by their parents not letting them be who they want to be.

The truth is that, when it comes to our kids, most of us are guilty of the crudest kind of gender stereotyping. Unconsciously or otherwise, we corral them into familiar roles, ones that see girls as passive, caring and preoccupied with looking good, and boys as active, competitive and interested in sport and science.

In this respect, at least, the world may be changing faster for girls than it is for boys, as parents of daughters reject the tyranny of the pink aisle.

But it is changing for boys too. Arklu, the Irish company behind the adventure-loving doll Lottie, has just brought out a doll for little boys.

He is called Finn, and he’s not the first boy doll out there: there are boy Cabbage Patches and Ikea boy dolls and numerous baby dolls in blue. And, of course, there’s Ken. But Finn is one of the first dolls designed specifically for older boys: the recommended age is three and up.

Refreshingly, there’s nothing remotely loud, competitive or aggressive about either the product or the packaging: Finn is not Super Finn or Max Finn or Finn Force. He doesn’t fight anything or drive anything fast; instead he likes fishing and flying kites and riding his scooter.

He’s not going to change the world, any more than a little boy in an Elsa costume will. But he’s a tiny, red trainers-shod step towards a world where children can be whoever they want to be.

Just when I think the Catholic Church couldn’t sink any lower

Between its response to child sex- abuse claims, its stance on homosexuality and its historic treatment of women, children and non-nuclear families, it is hard to imagine the Catholic Church startling anyone with its lack of compassion.

But hats off: it has once again exhibited an astonishing deficit of empathy. This time, the object of the church’s lack of basic kindness is Brittany Maynard.

Last New Year’s Day, Maynard was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of brain cancer. She was 29, recently married and trying for a family. Exactly 10 months later, on November 1st, Maynard ended her life at her home in Portland, Oregon, where she had moved from California to avail of the State’s “death with dignity” law.

In an online world saturated with demands for our emotional response on everything from kittens on escalators to Benedict Cumberbatch’s engagement, her story stood out as genuinely heartbreaking.

The YouTube videos she made to support the campaign for end-of-life choices have been viewed more than 11 million times. As she said in one of those videos, “I do not want to die. But I am dying. And I want to die on my terms.”

It’s hard to imagine anyone expressing anything but empathy and sadness for her. But that would be to underestimate the Catholic Church’s ability to turn an occasion for compassion into an opportunity for proselytising.

Monsignor Ignacio Carrasco de Paula, head of the Pontifical Academy for Life, called her death last week an undignified “absurdity”.

He told the Ansa news agency: “Brittany Maynard’s act is in itself reprehensible, but what happened in the consciousness we do not know. This woman [took her own life] thinking she would die with dignity, but this is the error.” He added that he was not judging her.

The fact that Maynard was not even Catholic didn’t stop the church moralising about values to which she never claimed to subscribe. So it’s probably too much to hope that anyone in the Vatican would take a minute to read her last message and learn something about genuine compassion and love in the face of the greatest adversity.

“The world is a beautiful place, travel has been my greatest teacher, my close friends and folks are the greatest givers,” she wrote.

“Goodbye world. Spread good energy. Pay it forward!”