A growing number of parents, teachers and experts say we should be raising children the ‘gender-neutral’ way. But is it a good idea? And what does it even mean?

Abbie likes Spider-Man. She likes the way he can shoot webs out of his fingers. So last summer, the seven-year-old opted for Spider-Man-themed sandals. “You’re a boy, you’re a boy,” taunted her classmates.

Abbie has long brown hair, a penchant for train sets, and a reserve that could be taken for shyness. But when challenged by the boys in her class, Abbie “took matters into her own hands,” as her mother Kim Carnell puts it, offering evidence of her gender by flashing them. The anatomy lesson may have proved her point, but it landed Abbie in trouble with her teachers – and it was only later that Abbie plucked up the courage to tell her mother what had prompted the incident. Abbie refused to wear the sandals again.

On a recent rainy afternoon, my son hurtled around the Imperial War Museum in London, singing loudly. “Typical boy,” a fellow visitor remarked companionably, as I chased him. “Boys need to be outside - they just don’t do museums!”

Tootsa MacGinty's unisex children's clothing. Tom Pietrasik

But was Henry being a “typical boy” or a typical 18-month-old who, after 20 minutes of hushed tones, had hit his limit?

As we left the museum I asked my daughter, who is three, whether she thinks girls and boys are different. Antonia replied, “Girls can do anything boys can do.” After a moment’s reflection, she added: “But they are different, because girls get purple and boys get green.”

What? “I thought it was pink and blue,” I said. “Those, too,” she replied.

Strict gender segregation in clothing, toys and activities is a relatively recent phenomenon. When I was a child in the 1980s, everyone wore OshKosh dungarees and built with blocks. My children wear dungarees, too, but the bibs of theirs are prominently embroidered with “OshKosh Girl” or “OshKosh Boy” in curly script. The categories of boy and girl seem to have become as rigid as those of horse and cow.

It’s perplexing: many neurologists and psychologists argue that girls and boys are far more alike than they are different. But studies show that, from the moment they are born, they are treated differently: parents talk to girl babies more; they spend longer comforting female children; they let boys play further away from them than girls.

Little Mermaid dress. Disney

The psychologist Dr Christia Spears Brown, professor of developmental psychology at the University of Kentucky, tells me that male and female babies are equally lively. But boys become far more active as they grow older – because, she says, parents encourage their sons to be sporty while girls are urged to be patient and quiet.

Others suggest that dressing girls in pretty shoes and dresses, and complimenting them on their looks, teaches them to place excessive value on their appearance. Embarrassing boys out of playing with dolls could be discouraging their nurturing instincts.

“The stereotypes we see in toy marketing connect with the inequalities we see in adult life,” says Jess Day, a mother of two and a member of Let Toys Be Toys, a group that campaigns against toys being labelled for boys or girls. “By late primary age, research by the Welsh organisation Chwarae Teg shows that children already have very clear ideas about the jobs that are suitable for boys and girls - ideas that are very hard to shake later on."

A growing number of parents, educators and governments want to redress this by making the world “gender-neutral”. The idea is to make all things available to all children. Pink isn’t banned. Rather, it’s up for grabs.

More subtly, and onerously, it means being careful about language and behaviour so, for example, boys are given the same amount of attention as girls when they are upset, to counteract the assumption that girls are more emotional and boys are naturally braver.

This, they say, is the way to stop women being too “nice” to ask for equal pay in the workplace and men from being too stoical to ask for help when they need it. (Men persistently account for the majority of suicides worldwide and 78 per cent of suicides in Britain).

Pronouns like 'he' and 'she' are banished

From nurseries in Sweden to America’s most prestigious universities, the very labels of “boy” and “girl” and pronouns like “he” and “she” are threatened with banishment. It all sounds rather self-conscious and awkward. Perhaps most derided is the Swedish unisex personal pronoun, hen, which is used to replace han (he) or hon (she). Two years after it entered the country’s national encyclopaedia, “hen” still elicits an eye-roll from even the most ardent gender-neutral parenting advocates.

Still, the gender-neutral movement is growing. Toca Boca makes gender-neutral game apps for children. It has had 70 million downloads in 169 countries, including Saudi Arabia. They are second only to Disney for children’s downloads in Apple’s App Store. (Interestingly, Apple is one of the few retailers to organise children’s apps by age instead of boy and girl categories.)

Lego Friends set from 2011

Nestled in a warehouse-style building in one of central Stockholm’s toniest areas, Toca Boca shares a cobbled courtyard with the headquarters of Björn Borg’s underwear empire. So far, so Swedish. But there’s more than a dash of Silicon Valley inside: the Toca Boca staff is cheerful and young with a positively Californian earnestness. When I arrive, they’re clearing up from a staff party the previous day, in which they’d transformed the entire open-plan office into a race track modelled on Toca Boca Cars so staff members’ children could race about, bumping into everything just like in the game.

Toca Boca games are silly and witty. Toca Kitchen, for example, involves preparing meals and then seeing if the characters like the flavours. Often, the child’s concoctions are met with disgust.

Each time the team creates a new game, they ask themselves, “Are characters of different genders able to perform the same actions in the app?” They are painstaking in their attention to gender bias in colour schemes, too. This is worlds away from the pink versus blue segregation one sees in the average toy store.

Back in Britain, I talk to Kate Pietrasik, the founder of Tootsa MacGinty, a unisex children’s clothing label stocked in Selfridges, Fenwicks and independent boutiques across the UK. “Fashion for children matters,” says Pietrasik. “Because unfortunately the first thing someone notices is what you look like.” And that affects the way they treat you. Pietrasik herself is intimidatingly chic, in a way that hints at the years she spent living in France: neat brown bob, leather jacket, Breton top.

Lego advertisement from 1981

“There’s a narrowing scope of what kids can be,” says Pietrasik. The reason, she says, is money. “If we can separate boys and girls to such a degree that they need different clothes and toys, then it’s double your money.”

With bright ikat patterns or images of climbing pandas, the Tootsa MacGinty designs are hip, but also sweetly childish – in stark contrast to the skinny jeans and short skirts available in typical high-street kids’ shops. Each outfit is modelled in the online catalogue by a girl and boy, side by side. Everything is for everyone.

Katarina Lundell, the head of design at the unisex Swedish brand Polarn O Pyret (which is stocked by Mothercare and John Lewis) points out that hand-me-downs are far easier when they’re unisex. Economy may well be a reason for the growing popularity of unisex clothing, in the UK and elsewhere.

I ask Lundell why she doesn’t capitalise on the commercial opportunity in segregating for boys and girls. “Until they hit puberty, girls and boys have the same bodies,” she says. “Why should I make separate clothes for them?”