When I began writing the column on which this book is based, I was at the beginning of my career in legal education and also a new mother. I didn't see then how these three roles – legal commentator, professor, mom – would intersect in such interesting ways and, together, shape my thinking about gender and discrimination.

My first pregnancy coincided with my first year teaching at Hofstra Law School. As I bid good-bye to my students to begin my maternity leave, a male student yelled out from the back row: “What are you having?” I explained that my husband and I had decided not to find out the gender of the baby to preserve an element of surprise, to torture those people in our lives who felt they had some inherent right to know, and, perhaps most important, to avoid the stereotyped baby gifts – the frilly pink onesies for a girl; Yankees’ uniforms for a boy. (This was New York, after all.)

“But how will you know what color to paint the nursery?” the student called out. I had to laugh, but I couldn't muster any response other than an off-the-cuff, “See, it doesn't matter – get it?” But I was secretly humbled by the daunting task before me – to raise a child, boy or girl, who would develop in the shadow of the gender-role expectations society so strongly imposes. Luke arrived two weeks later, a healthy, full-term baby boy who looked instantly at home in his bright yellow room. And his brother, Ben, arrived little more than two years later. He began life in a blue room, but only because it had been painted that way before he arrived. And they were joined – three years later – by another brother, Milo.

In the many iterations of my sex discrimination class, I taught the usual issues – sexual harassment, work-family conflicts, pay inequity – and helped my students learn the law and policy covered in the pages of this book. And at home, with my three sons, I stuck with the tenets of preschool feminism: do not use or reinforce gender-based stereotypes and do not partake in sexist traditions.