What Can Boys Be?

Here's a gem of a conversation from my little thinking boy, Calvin:

Cal: Dad, can boys be doctors?

David: Well, yeah. Why do you ask?

Cal: Well, is your doctor a boy?

David: Actually, no.

Cal: And is mom's doctor a boy?

David: No, her doctors are all women.

Cal: And me and Henry and Charlie's doctors are all girls, too. So I thought boys couldn't be doctors, since no one in our family has a boy doctor.

David: Oh. Hmm. Well, boys can be doctors.

Cal: What about bosses? Can boys be bosses?

David: Yeah. Lots of bosses are men.

Cal: But your boss isn't a boy. She's a girl.

David: Hmmm. I guess you're right. But boys can be bosses, too.

Cal: OK. Well, I knew that boys could be firefighters, policemen, and workers [i.e., construction], but I didn't know if doctors and bosses were only girls.

Yeah, a not quite five-year-old put all the stats of his experience with doctors and bosses together and came up with this, when it had never occurred to David or me that all of our doctors and his boss were women, let alone that it might cause a child to wonder if these were exclusively female professions.

Of course, this isn't the first time that he has felt that men don't get to do the really cool stuff in life, and he does think blogging is for girls...

But really, I'm thinking, how cool is it to live in a world (or at least a nation) where girls can be doctors and bosses?

And also, how great it is to be able to tell your boy that he can be anything he wants to be, and know that it's true.