Generally speaking, parents want the best for their kids. They want their daughters and sons to grow up happy and to be successful. Where it gets tricky is how parents define “happiness” and “success,” depending on their kid’s sex.

Seth Stephens-Davidowitz writes, “it’s not that parents don’t want their daughters to be bright or their sons to be in shape, but they are much more focused on the braininess of their sons and the waistlines of their daughters.”

Davidowitz is a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times, and he recently published a study of anonymous, aggregate data from Google searches which suggests that American parents do in fact hold different expectations for their children based on sex. According to his study, parents are two and a half times more likely to ask “Is my son gifted?” than “Is my daughter gifted?”

There were also 160 percent more queries asking “Is my daughter ugly?” than for the same question about a son. For parents in the United States, there were also 10 percent more queries about how to conceive a boy more often than about how to have a girl. Davidowitz also writes that he did not find any significant relationship between these biases and the ideological makeup of a region.

 Although I wish things were different, I can’t say that I am surprised. Granted, Google search date is only available up until 2004 and a lot has changed in 11 years; but Davidowitz writes that there is no evidence to support that things have changed much statistically. As one of four children–three girls and a boy–and as a first generation Arab-American,  I was generally raised along traditional gender norms, as were my sisters and brother.

Now, of course there are traits that my parents instilled in all of us: respect, self-preservation, drive and honesty to name a few. I am so grateful that my parents value education as much as they do. My parents decided before we were even born, that every one of their kids would go to college and get a bachelor’s degree, at the very least. Our education was and is paramount. My parents always encouraged us to be whatever we put our minds to.

In fact, my dad was convinced for the longest time that I would be a pediatric cardiologist. I have no idea why, because I am the least science-minded in the whole family, but that’s what he thought.

Now my brother is a lawyer; my older sister is on her way to becoming a physician assistant; I’m going to (hopefully) be a lawyer one day; and my little sister cannot wait to be a teacher. Except for me–because I always have to be different–my siblings have pursued professions that are dominated by people of the same gender as them.

Physician Assistants are 160 percent more like to be women than men; 84 percent of public school teachers are women; and while more women than men are now attending law school, only 20 percent of partners in private practice are women. The same percentage holds for the gender of law school deans.

On top of that, lawyers who are women make 78.9 percent of the weekly salary that male lawyers make. My point is that even though I believe that my parents would have been just as proud if my brother became a nurse or if one of my sisters was working in Silicon Valley, I can’t help but wonder how each one of us would have turned out differently if we were the products of gender-neutral parenting. It’s counterintuitive to say that things would have been different.

Not only that, but it’s difficult to imagine what gender-neutral parenting looks like. I also sympathize with parents; it can be trying to step out of societal constraints and attempt a non-traditional parenting style, especially if you’re not part of a mass movement Parents are stuck between encouraging their child to embrace his or her true identity and not wanting their child to be confused or to be alienated by others.

I wish I had an answer for how to create a paradigm shift of gender-neutral parenting, but I don’t (yet). I do think there are very simple, concrete ways to avoid tracking children into certain characteristics. One way is to to lead by example: as a parent, avoiding separating responsibilities along assumed gender roles.

I appreciated to way my parents both made dinner and washed the dishes. Another way to parent without gender is to keep room decor neutral and to allow kids to pick their own clothes. Let your son play with Barbies if he wants and let your daughter play with Spiderman Legos.

Your conscious parenting just might start a domino effect.